The Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 Review

I put the Compute Module 4 through its paces, and compare it to the Raspberry Pi 4 and Compute Module 3+, highlighting some great new features like a PCI Express 1x slot on the IO board and NVMe support.
For even more detail, check out the blog post that goes along with this video:
www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/202...
And check out the CM4 announcement on the Raspberry Pi website: www.raspberrypi.org/blog/rasp...
#RaspberryPi #ComputeModule
Support me on Patreon: / geerlingguy
Sponsor me on GitHub: github.com/sponsors/geerlingguy
Products mentioned in this video (affiliate links):
- Syba USB 3.0 PCIe card: amzn.to/2T3QX35
- XPG SX6000 NVMe: amzn.to/2IBcKgp
- Samsung 970 EVO Plus: amzn.to/37ip3sA
- Samsung EVO Plus microSD: amzn.to/3582XGv
- NGFF NVMe PCIe adapter: amzn.to/348orUs
- MZHOU NVMe PCIe adapter: amzn.to/2Hf9Jlv
- NVMe USB 3.0 adapter: amzn.to/2IK5e3b
- External U.FL antenna: amzn.to/3k7sYfm
Contents:
00:00 - Introduction
03:29 - A Complete Redesign
04:35 - PCIe, USB 3, and NVMe
10:04 - Networking - Wired and Wireless
12:37 - CPU Performance
13:41 - eMMC Performance
14:54 - USB Boot
15:50 - NAS/NFS Performance
17:05 - IO Board Features
19:47 - Summary and Final Thoughts
20:50 - Bloopers

[@chiragsukhala]

your red t-shirt clone always gives me heart attack, he almost hack sawed the pi's i/o

[@JeffGeerling]

You gotta watch out for that guy.

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

@@JeffGeerling I came all the way back here to like his comment for starting all this.

[@ryen3k]

I've actually had to do this for hacking off pcb tabs from display boards

[@raspberrypi]

Awesome video, Jeff. Thank you. We're glad you like the Compute Module 4 as much as we do!

[@JeffGeerling]

You knocked it out of the park on this one, you didn't under-promise, but you did over-deliver (I thought the price was going to have to go up, but it didn't!).

[@user-rx1hv7jo3e]

Is the cm4 still intended for industrial applications?

[@grmasdfII]

@John Chrysostom Rev 3:9 There weren't any computers in your collection of 2-3000 year old folklore, get off the net.

[@photonicpizza1466]

@John Chrysostom Rev 3:9 Your attitude is gross, homophobe

[@AarshParashar]

You guys have any plan for official Chrome OS image for Raspberry Pi 4?

[@energyideas]

Fantastic edited video, great fast code cuts. And the bloopers are priceless. Oh yeah, great technical info on the new board. Thanks.

[@RavianXReaver]

Love these bloopers! :D you should include them in every video haha

[@khangging]

glad i found this channel as i jump into the raspberry pi world. bloopers at the end are great!

[@johnpomaro1731]

This is the first video of yours I've watched. Very good job! Thorough and informative, not just a hyped dictation of the spec. sheets, like a lot of others' videos.

[@JeffGeerling]

Thanks, I try to put a lot of effort into giving relevant information and not just rehashing a blog post or a spec sheet. Glad some people appreciate that :)

[@eXsoR65]

Thank you for the deep dive in to it. Really looking forward to the new Turing PI Board V2

[@soulrobotics]

I didn't know that jason statham was the brain of raspberry pi... Me: Hey you, where are the USB 3.0? Eben: SMASH, PUMM, CRACK!!, ...BOOOM! Me: aaaaarghh!

[@BenjaminEggerstedt]

I was about to make this comment, glad I‘m not alone ... :)

[@buggerlugz6753]

Wish he'd crank up the PI to the level he does in that film. A decent vidcore would be nice.

[@LucasHartmann]

The change in form factor was very well justified with a bunch of new features. Being parallel to the IO board will make your cluster wider, though.

[@joelg1318]

So true the dimm is expensive when designing a board.

[@AndrewPerry1]

Yeah, I didn’t get what he meant at the end when saying it takes up less space, it seems it will take up more at least in the horizontal plane.

[@stale2665]

Couldn't a custom cluster IO board be designed in a way that lets you mount the CM4s at a 90 degree angle? perhaps by using a sort of riser cable for the outermost connector.

[@LucasHartmann]

I believe you would be better off simply populating both sides of the mainboard with CM4. Cooling would be easy too.

[@stale2665]

I was having that in mind too.

[@Electromakerio]

Fantastic overview Jeff. We gave this video and your channel a shoutout in this weeks episode of The Electromaker Show :)

[@nelsonr.9450]

Just came here after ETA Prime's video!

[@JeffGeerling]

Tell ETA hello! 👋

[@RoyalKnightinarms]

Haha I will be doing the opposite and going to ETA Prime after this video 😂

[@nelsonr.9450]

@@JeffGeerling will do ;)

[@nelsonr.9450]

@@RoyalKnightinarms lol

[@vaibhav2831]

Me to

[@DennyMANSART]

By far one of the best review I watched. Awesome explanations

[@BullCheatFR]

6:50 that’s your issue! Modprobe is only temporary

[@hackmiester1337]

Yes, modprobe hot-loads kernel modules. Rebooting undoes this process.

[@ElectricEvan]

As a person who will be buying one of these for integration in an actual device it's way more important to have every i/o possible than for the board to be smaller.

[@maurofoti526]

Indeed that's a development board intended to better develop the more integrated solution the compute module is meant to be used in. Kinda weird that there's no usb3 though

[@Equilibrier]

Thanks for this Jeff. Very professional presentation (like always) and useful info. It shows you are a hard working pro !

[@staviq]

6:50 Modprobe loads kernel modules dynamically, so doing a modprobe and reboot completly cancels each other out.

[@misternobody6798]

That's what I was thinking but since I am not really an expert in this department I thought he definitely would know better, let's see if someone (or Jeff) could get it to work.

[@larrywebber2971]

Awesome video Jeff. Very informative and (at the end) humorous. Thanks.

[@inux3dmanufacturing]

Great video and excellent presentation. In depth analysis and very informative!

[@charles2000wang]

Use a modern AMD GPU card with a 1x to 16x pcie riser often used for mining. You should then be able to get a modern gpu running on the raspberry pi 4 CM.

[@BrunodeSouzaLino]

That works with almost any GPU. PCIe is backwards and downwards compatible and latency tolerant.

[@charles2000wang]

@@BrunodeSouzaLinoI specifically said AMD GPU because of the opensource drivers in the Linux kernel which should work on ARM ISA not just x86.

[@Peter_Gamerrr]

or just open up the back of the 1x slot with a hacksaw also works

[@red13emerald]

@@Peter_Gamerrr I mean a hacksaw is pretty extreme but some flush-trim snips would do the job. I’d be concerned about stability, though. Using a mining riser allows to lay down the GPU so it can’t damage the breakout board.

[@kdb424]

@@Peter_Gamerrr You would need the riser anyways as the PCIE sot is expected to supply power, where risers can be powered with a molex/sata power cable for that power. GPU's don't only pull power through the 6/8 pin power cables as the PCIE slot is normally rated at 75 watts.

[@pedroramirez2215]

U just earned a subscriber, very nice explanation/review👌🏻

[@paulgray1318]

PCIe access - called it. Next prediction - they shift the eMMC memory into a slot and cut down on production models and more flexibility.

[@DanielPinel]

eMMC on a board, a la Pine64? YES

[@UrThysis]

I'm so excited for this

[@FalseDev]

The bloopers are awesome! 😂 :)

[@TigerGreene]

This was awesome. Well done, Jeff.

[@deanlawson6880]

Wow! What a great video Jeff!! This is really fascinating what the Pi gurus came out with, and all the possibilities for connecting up all the accessrories you can now hookup! Just the PCiE alone is really really interesting, and opens up a whole new world of fast connectivity! Thanks again for this great video!!

[@mayurchavhan8590]

Finally...It arrives.

[@stephensu4371]

finally they got pcie and emmc

[@DDBAA24]

When I saw this a few days ago the first thing I thought about was , lets go see what Jeff plans on doing with these things... So much potential, I knew clusters would be at the top of the list ! Happy to hear it

[@DerekMurawsky]

Oh this is awesome... So glad to hear about these upgrades.

[@thevidco]

Great content as usual - thanks for the hard work

[@braydennturner]

Quality content, just subbed!

[@deechvogt1589]

Awesome news. I need to start paying more attention to the Raspberry Pi foundation website. Thanks Jeff.

[@cinobro6393]

Wow, I'm glad I didn't work on my project expecting the Pi4 compute module to be in a sodimm factor.

[@dystopianchic2975]

So i’ve been using this CM4 for a couple of weeks now.. 👌🏼

[@pvdgucht]

You had me at PCIE, I've got to buy this!

[@vincei4252]

Thanks! Already bought mine.

[@hardwarelabor1631]

When you want to plug in a video card you can use a pcie x1 to x16 Riser and also use basicly any other pcie device

[@Draknem]

Yes, pci devices are usually able to run with less lanes. Would really like to see it tested.

[@dv7533]

You are correct, I've tried both PCI-E 16x and 8x graphics card in 1x and 4x slots with risers and it works just fine, just at the lower bandwidth of the slot.

[@hardwarelabor1631]

@@dv7533 yes beacause pcie is dowardcompatible

[@detroxx56784]

I haven't watched the video yet, but I'm pretty sure the Pi can't handle PCIe GPUs. I've had a look into this topic a while ago for the RK3399. Basically those small CPUs lack some sort of cache/memory that would allow them to operate a dedicated GPU. More precisely: This cache is too small.

[@BrunodeSouzaLino]

PCIe is not only backwards compatible, it's also latency tolerant, as demonstrated by the guys that hacked the PS4 by making use of the the PCIe bus connected to a serial port and it worked.

[@TmanaokLine]

So hyped for that compute board!

[@ChristOfSteel]

Hi, regarding the graphics cards, you can plug in a graphics card designed for "longer" PCI Express slots into a PCIe 1x slot. I did that a while ago with an external GPU solution. The card will not use it's full potential, but that affected mainly loading times, like texture loading. Basically anytime the GPU requests data from the rest of the system. Regarding drivers, have a look at AMD cards, they are open source and are included in mesa and should work.

[@syndaquil4838]

You're right, but in this case it doesn't look like the PCI-e slot was manufactured with the back open to support that. He could open it up with a rotary tool, but it isn't something most people would be willing to do.

[@ScottPlude]

Great video!! BTW the bloopers are the end are priceless!!! more bloopers! I wish everybody included their mistakes.

[@JeffGeerling]

I'm glad you enjoy them. It takes a bit more time to add them on, but I find it's best to be able to laugh at myself too :)

[@spicybaguette7706]

Imagine what you could do with this. You can make a super compact computing cluster, or attach it to a custom PCB and make a cheap arm laptop that actually does something (or you could just buy the pinebook but you get the point right). The possibilities are endless!

[@TonySesek]

If they keep the same connector, you could just swap out the module and keep the screen/keyboard/etc

[@michaeltraxler3379]

HI Jeff, very informative video as I find all of yours. Did you ever put out the video around how to boot off the eMMC from the Compute 4 IO board?

[@illyau]

Very well made video, subbed :)

[@friggthis333]

You call that food? 😋 Excellent, comprehensive review. Thanks!

[@bartz0rt928]

I think it's also worth mentioning that the new IO board is about 1/3 the price of the old one while having pretty much the same features, and that most of the power regulation is moved to the CM so rolling your own interface board should be a lot easier now.

[@yuryeuceda8590]

Love this review, so powerful

[@RandomActivities]

I love that new Pi computer module and motherboard! I'd love to build an ARM based PC around it! Looking forward to one with 16x PCIe!

[@CarlosGomez-vt9pk]

What I like about this is that you can take a mini ATX case, drill some mounting holes, and fit the IO board in. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if someone makes an adapter to mount the IO board in place of an Intel board.

[@markifi]

you're good. no time-wasting, lots of research

[@davkdavk]

Liking your videos, mate. Keep it up

[@LasVegasVocalist]

GREAT VIDEO Jeff!!!!

[@anders_nilsson]

Just FYI, you may be able to get an PCIe x4, x8 or x16 card to work in an x1 slot using an adapter. This will of course only achieve x1 speeds but the other lanes will just remain unused, if following the PCIe spec properly. Some PCIe x1 slots even have "open back ends" to accommodate cards with more lanes. And some modders create the open back of the slot manually using a saw, file or similar :)

[@bucklelanefarm]

Great vid Jeff. Turing are going to have their work cut out making that 2x100 connector work.

[@donporter8432]

Absolutely fantastic! A preview of Pi 4C or 5B, I predict! Great computing days ahead! ♥️👍

[@JeffGeerling]

My hope is for a Pi 5, there might be more bandwidth available for PCIe, and maybe built-in USB 3.0 instead of 2.0 (in the Soc). I don't know enough about the Broadcom lineup to know if any of their SoCs already support it, but that would be pretty cool and let us devote all the extra IO to things like NVMe!

[@donporter8432]

@@JeffGeerling You don't predict a new CPU in the 5B? That would arguably follow the 1,2,3,4 pattern. BTW, Greetings from Thailand, Mr. Jeff!

[@stuartford5556]

Drooling over a new Touring Pi solution!

[@kian8382]

Glad that you've got Jason Statham to confirm the PCIE extension.

[@SalvatorePellitteri]

It's time to run discrete gpus on the Pi. You can find 30$ pcie 1x to 4 1x ports switch, usually used for crypto mining rigs, with that you can connect multiple pcie cards.

[@ethanlai1044]

People can run a mining rig on these new compute modules. How nice, it lowers cost so much.

[@SalvatorePellitteri]

@@ethanlai1044 Don't know but maybe is possibile to use more powerfull gpu for better desktop and browser performance also kodi and plex hardware video encoding and decoding + more usb ports, nics, raid controllers, ecc...

[@DanielLopez-up6os]

Awesome stuff, man missed the Fact that the Compute Module 4 Had PCIE!!! WOHOO!

[@thanielxj11]

This video is cool and you're doing crazy stuff which is awesome. The Raspberry Pi is a single-board computer that you can plug into other boards and then plug other boards into that at some point it's just going to be a CPU

[@CraigMullins1]

How much power? Any videos on how to make this a motion sensing and recording webcam? What software would I use? hardware? Never used this board before, only a pi...

[@avejst]

Great update Thanks for sharing :-)

[@utzufideli9769]

Why not try running the x86 linux drivers through box86 or using an AMD card with the open source MESA drivers?

[@petrsmrz6671]

Interesting video I wonder if external antenna for CM4 module can have also positive effect on Bluetooth signal?

[@russwilliams8274]

"old Mac Mini (2011)" * watches this video on a mid-2010 Mac Mini *

[@gorudonu]

You really got me excited for compute module with motherboard! As for nvme - maybe you could put /boot on emmc and rest on nvme. For nvidia drivers - you could use open source nouveau driver, should work for ARM too? I was wondering what is the max speed for over locked compute module with radiator and fan on it?

[@ianoconnor1515]

Is there a 1x AMD GPU? there drivers are sepost to be open sorce so might be able to be compiled for ARM

[@jansirkia3809]

Thanks Jeff!

[@johnathancrotzer5491]

You can use a 3080 in a 1x slot but expect around 1/16th the speed if the cpu can keep up. First you will need to cut the stopper at the end so the rest of the pcie slot can go through. But also good luck powering it unless you have a spare power supply and a way to jump the connection on boot. This also will apply to any pcie device like a 1x card in a 16x port or 4x card into a 1x port you just loose the bandwidth witch will slow down the device you plug in

[@ArshaansEdits]

use WoR and windows drivers, because it has most chance in my opinion, as i tried installing many x86 apps and they do work.

[@ethanblagg]

It's like Steve Buscemi reviewing tech, and I love it. (that's a complement)

[@davidlewis5953]

I subbed just to make this exact same comment!!

[@zahlex]

Now I'm stoked for Pi 5. Hopefully with all that good stuff, M.2 on the board and NVMe boot support. 🤞

[@iamthekoma]

Try to build a NAS! PCIE RAID would be so cool!

[@LampJustin]

Finally PCIe backed SATA so awesome!

[@MCMinerHQ]

YES

[@stevefan8283]

Not quite. It's all about sacrificing SATA with USB3. When I saw a PCIE X1 slot I immediately think about the possibility of CM4 NAS but I was intrigued by the slow speed of x1 Gen2: 0.5GB/s. This means 500 MB/s and yes it theoretically max out for a single SATA3 while real world performance should be 150MB/s RW per HDD. This means we can only have ~100MB/s for each disk in CM4 NAS counting the packet overheads/bandwidth/weak processing power. Still this is a trilemma for me to pick between a 10GB card*, 4 Gigabit LAN (btw each theoretically 125MB/s so 1 port will get starved, wrt to real life they are 95MB/s maxing out so no worries) or do this NAS project. Help me pick a choice. *Using a 10GB card to run PXE network boot and offload the system from storage through a iSCSI from my existing DIY NAS.

[@iamthekoma]

@@stevefan8283 well yes but a NAS with 100mb r/w performance in a low-cost scenario is still a bargain. An entry level dual disk nas with 100mb throughout is 3/400 euro (filled). Printing a case and adding disks here you can easily get a 200euro nas with 4 disks.

[@Ian-yy4cz]

Someone should design a Compute Module IO board with only a few USB ports, Gigabit NIC and two or four SATA ports. Even the Pi 4 runs awesome as a NAS, I‘m able to write with 110MB/s via SAMBA to my external SSD without a problem at all.

[@ishcabittle]

you're a legend, geerling!

[@oswynfaux]

The DIMM slots look better for making a cluster, with those new connectors you would need to attach each module to a daughter board that then slots into something like a DIMM to get them into a tighter form factor.

[@jamesprocter102]

You are truly in a class all your own. I always come here to get the cutting edge info on all things pi. I hope your wife will go a little easy on you food really is over rated but ( pi-e) is everything. clips at the end show a more human side. Keep up the great work gift is on the way.

[@cdp181]

Excellent write up.

[@wingowingo2928]

I love the information provided in your videos, the speed of your speech is a bit too rush for me.

[@youjean83]

Hi, thanks for the review. Is there something like a GPIO+USB-Shield for the Compute Module 4?

[@pnnytx]

saw the pcie end barrier to put x16 gpu like madlads

[@chuckvandien5738]

BTW, awesome video, VERY WELL DONE!

[@engineer9975]

I love that we are back to full-size HDMI. I would have been fine with the RPi4 having a single full-size HDMI in place of two micro HDMI(perhaps with an additional connector for an expansion board to break out the second), but this is because my RPi uses are for servers. I have gotten my hands on the CM4 and have been using it with the raspberry pad 5 from BTT and have been loving it!

[@TheOleHermit]

YES! YES! YES! I've been waiting 6 months for the CM4 launch! AND it's even better than expected! But, all it needs is a compact carrier board with Power, USB-C, HDMI (connectors along one side), M.2 (SATA or NVMe) (connector oriented to allow the SSD to mount on board), plus an optional GPIO header. That would be smaller yet more powerful than the RPi4, IOW the smallest, most versatile SBC/PC available. Having connectors along one side allows for easier packaging for weatherproof devices as well as clustering along a backplane. Yeah, I get it. The new carrier board is more like an all purpose development board, not designed for end products. But, I'm sure that many 3rd party manufacturers will fill the market's demands, so patience is a virtue, I guess. Oh well, I'm in, so sign me up. At least I can start developing 'stuff' on the CM4 platform. WooHoo!

[@gautrstafr]

Interesting... sounds like the best option for storage would be a small-ish EMMC for OS and then an NVMe for massive fast stuff.

[@getwreck]

I keep thinking how cool it is that we have the same USB drives, then I remember I just bought every USB drive you listed in the video you made about fast USB drives

[@JeffGeerling]

Haha, nice.

[@SpringDivers]

You got me. I ordered mine.

[@williamapodaca8614]

Just use a 1x to 16x riser, you can buy one of the standard "extension" ones for $10 on amazon and use a hack saw to cut off the other 15 lanes on the male part (and desolder the ribbon)

[@ThylineTheGay]

i feel like it would make a great security camera controller

[@GreatDilla]

thanks for this review Jeff.. have you tried using a drop-in replacement for the RPI CM4 (Radxa CM3) using the same IO board? it seems the RPI CM4 are out of stock everywhere.. replacement needed. thanks!

[@adameichler]

CM4: *exists* Jeff Geerling: Is this free real estate?

[@V0L4T1L3]

The problem is that since they changed the form factor there is not longer a confidence in a suitable upgrade path. Previously you could be designing a platform that uses the RPi3+ with the intention to use the latest compute model once you enter production (or as a later model/upgrade path), however, by changing the form factor they have alienated anyone who was using their earlier platform.

[@yourkalamity]

You could try building the graphics adapter drivers from source, sounds like pain though

[@joeytbone7139]

Please always include your outtakes.

[@Sundheden]

I hope you soldered on that wireless interface with a spoon and lighter, or Raspberry need to improve their QA.

[@JeffGeerling]

The hardware I had was pre-production; I'm sure the final boards have better finish quality since they are probably not touched by many/any hands.

[@andrzej_autko]

Go ahead on the cluster project, I'm very interested in it!

[@Storm_.]

Why can't the multiprocessor capabilities of the Turing setups be automatically used for general purpose computing? Like a standard multi threaded application etc? I wonder

[@thyTwilightGoth2]

Latency, the response times would be too slow for practical use, unless you used a pcie network.

[@pradeeplanka6976]

very good, Excellent Narration.

[@GrigLarson]

The support for parallel/serial cards that work off PCIE is significant for hobbyists, although I suspect that they were already hand-wiring the 40pin connector on the regular pi already.

[@JeffGeerling]

Ha, quite true. Hobbyist is just another name for someone who loves torturing themselves by soldering dozens of pins and wiring up hundreds of breakout boards :)

[@TheMoneyCanManNL]

yes try the gpu, it would be really great to see an external gpu running on this device.

[@juri14111996]

you can also mount a x16 gpu, just cut the pcie socket open in the end. some mobo have open pcie slots, so you can install x16 devices in x4 or x1 slots.

[@JeffGeerling]

Ordered the Zotac, and will test it! I don't have the budget to go around ordering $200+ GPUs though, this channel ain't that big :P

[@energyideas]

@@JeffGeerling Don't get sucked down the GPU rabbit hole.

[@jayphodium]

In regards to the gpus, pci-e cards do not care in what slot they are, they just run at a lower bandwith. You can literally chop the back off of a x1 slot and plop a x16 card in it..

[@JeffGeerling]

Interesting, this I did not know. Last time I messed with a GPU at all (besides using whatever came in my laptop) was pre-2003 when I last built my own desktop... and back then I think it was AGP slots, which were entirely different :D

[@jayphodium]

@@JeffGeerling Maybe some gaming on a pi afterall :)

[@dv7533]

a x1 to x16 riser is less destructive and you can move your GPU to a more convenient position

[@robertrocheville7769]

On my old pi I would use my SD card as a boot kicker to my HDD. Could that work with the PCI adapter?

[@decent_human_]

It has arrived!