BPI-M5 Pro: Banana Pi releases new Raspberry Pi alternative with optional metal enclosure
Two months have now passed since Banana Pi presented the BPI-M5 Pro. Since then, it has become possible to purchase the KunPeng Pro with an unusual Huawei HiSilicon SoC. Now, the company has released the BPI-M5 Pro globally alongside the smaller and less powerful Orange Pi CM5, details of which we have covered separately.
As CNX Software notes, the BPI-M5 Pro is available in some cases as the Armsom Sige5. At any rate, both single-board computers (SBCs) feature a Rockchip RK3576 chipset within a 92 x 62 mm motherboard weighing 43 g. For reference, the Rockchip RK3576 combines four ARM Cortex-A72 CPU cores clocked at 2.2 GHz with four less powerful Cortex-A53 cores limited to 1.8 GHz and a Cortex-M0 microcontroller (MCU) running at 400 MHz.
Additionally, the BPI-M5 Pro has a Mali-G52 MC3 GPU and a 6 TOPS (INT8) AI accelerator at its disposal, as well as 8 GB or 16 GB of LPDDR4x RAM and the following I/O:
- 1x 40-pin GPIO header
- 1x HDMI 2.0
- 2x Gigabit Ethernet
- 1x M.2 Key M (PCIe SSDs)
- 1x MicroSD card slot
- 1x MIPI DSI
- 2x MIPI CSI
- 1x USB 3.0 Type-A
- 1x USB 2.0 Type-A
- 1x USB Type-C (DisplayPort Alt Mode/Power Delivery)
- 1x USB Type-C (Power Delivery)
Currently, the BPI-M5 Pro is orderable from AliExpress for approximately $130 with 8 GB of LPDDR4 RAM and 64 GB of eMMC flash storage. Alternatively, the company offers the same configuration with an enclosure, pictured above, for just over $145. The SBC should be available in other memory configurations eventually though, with up to 16 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage shown on Banana Pi's website.
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