Say I want to upgrade my uConsole to a CM5. Should I get the Lite or the eMMC version? I understand that the uConsole’s SD card slot will be rendered useless if I opt for the eMMC version. Let’s say I go the eMMC way, can I still boot/run off a USB SD card reader if I want to boot off another distro? Would the performance be much worst than the built-in SD car reader?
I mainly want to run Bookworm, but every full moon, I’d like to try something else and still have it being usable.
If you want to switch around distros at all or experiment in a way that might break your system I’d go the lite route. The EMMC will become a problem at the worst time, talking from personal experience.
I have both and won’t use the eMMC version in any enclosure again. It runs very hot and draws so much power, I get a warning that it’s unable to power some of my peripherals. The Lite version has never given me any trouble at all.
Somewhere on the forums there was a link and graph showing some speed/performance comparisons of eMMC and SD versions. While the eMMC was faster, to me it didn’t seem to be so much faster that it was worth all the hassle people have posted about on the forums.
The only argument besides a marginal read/write speed increase I’ve seen mentioned is the idea that SD cards will die and need to be replaced in time. While eMMC should theoretically last longer, it would eventually die too after enough reads/writes and at that point you’d have to either toss out and replace the entire CM4/CM5 module or try to desolder and solder a new eMMC component onto it. SD cards are cheap and easy to replace. And there are plenty of discussions online related to Raspberry Pi hardware where users either save logs to memory and only write to SD periodically (to not wear out the SD) or just log less stuff less often.
I have yet to see a solid argument for why eMMC is better in a device like this. Seems like it’s more an availability thing when purchasing?
Hi! Perhaps slightly off topic, but did not want to start a completely new thread. Curious what made you decide the 16 GB model. I am personally about to buy one, and torn between the 8gb and 16gb models. I want to “future proof” it as much as possible, just a bit worried that the slow Microsd speeds and potential heating issues might become an issue before the extra 8gb ram start making a difference. Since the price hike is pretty steep.
And if anyone else actually has experience with the 16gb model, would love to hear too!
I am getting a Lite version, i want to be able to switch OS´s on the go. And reading the comments bit further up, eMMC will cause even more heating issues.
Ghehe, im in no way an expert on cooling, but i know its more than just sticking a fan inside. Would need proper airflow, and probably some cooling fins on CPU, eMMC and maybe even RAM to do much.
And just pulled the trigger btw, the 16gb was available, the 8gb was not. CM5116000 it is!
On my normal computer I won’t go below 16gb due to modern ‘wepbapps’ (and even 16gb is quite not enough already),
on uconsole though 8gb more than enough for me as I do not use uconsole as work tool, but as “toy”.
So you should decide how you are going to use it, what you will run. would you like to run vscode on it? spotify? docker? many tabs in browser?
Check how much ram you use on your PC right now and think what workflow you will have on uconsole.
if you won’t abuse disk operations (like for LLM for example) sd card speed should be enough for you.
cm5 supports NVMe drives, but uconsole’s motherboard not. for future proof better hope they will release new motherboard/adaptert revision
Short answer: future-proofing / because I could. I’ve never regretted choosing more RAM over less, and in this case, it isn’t possible to upgrade the RAM so, the more the better, and 16 isn’t excessive. I mainly use VSCode+Python for data science, and will do some SDR stuff (SDR++ and SDRTrunk, SatDump) and LoRa / Meshtastic experimentations when I get the HackerGadgets board.
Similar case for me. I could afford to indulge and I want to have the most capable version of the RPi. I wouldn’t ordinarily go with anything less than 16 GB on any machine where possible. I understand that some people already have very clear ideas about how to use their uConsole, and that 8 GB tends to be enough for tinkering and emulation, unless you’re doing something funky like an offline LLM.
