Raspberry Pi Doubles the RAM with a New Raspberry Pi 5 16GB Variant
New $120 model tops the tree with 16GB of RAM, twice the previously-available maximum.
Raspberry Pi has announced the launch of a new variant of Raspberry Pi 5, now boasting an impressive 16GB of memory — a move telegraphed late last year by the promise of a Compute Module 5 with the same amount of RAM.
Launched back in October 2023, the Raspberry Pi 5 delivered a serious upgrade over its predecessors thanks to a considerably more powerful Broadcom BCM2712 system-on-chip and a user-accessible PCI Express lane for high-speed storage or artificial intelligence accelerators. What didn't change between the generations, however, was the amount of RAM available: the single-board computer launched in 4GB and 8GB variants, later followed by a lower-cost 2GB model.
The launch of the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 in November last year, built around the same Broadcom BCM2712, came with the promise of an upcoming 16GB variant — leading to speculation that the Raspberry Pi 5 would enjoy the same in an unannounced refresh. Now, in the early days of 2025, that refresh is here and the Raspberry Pi 5 is now available with a spacious 16GB of RAM.
The board itself is largely unchanged from the last Raspberry Pi 5 board revision, featuring the same ports in the same places and complete software and hardware compatibility with the 8GB, 4GB, and 2GB models. The biggest change, apart from the extra RAM itself, is to the solder points where the memory capacity is indicated: the silkscreen labels are gone, replaced instead with a larger "16GB RAM" marking directly underneath the general-purpose input/output (GPIO) header — a design choice that will likely follow through to other models in the range in future production runs. The 16GB model also uses the latest "D0" stepping of the Broadcom BCM2712 system-on-chip, which will also be used for other capacities in future production runs.
The Raspberry Pi 5 16GB is priced at $120, and is available to order from Raspberry Pi's network of authorized resellers today.
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