Intro: Raspberry Pi 4 for Game Development

in this series of videos I’m going to be looking at using one of the new models of Raspberry Pi to see how effective it is for game development as a sort of desktop replacement so I’m going to be looking at some programming but also at 2d art and 3d art and modeling and how the new Raspberry Pi stacks up so I recently received delivery, I’ve not even had a chance to run it yet but here is my new Raspberry Pi computer delivered from Pimoroni and if I open that up you can see something that looks fairly familiar for anyone that’s used a Raspberry Pi in the last few years but there are some differences that are worth noting compared to the model 3 or some of the other slightly older versions so I’m going to crack open my raspberry pi 3 here so I have my Raspberry Pi 3B it’s got four USB it’s got an HDMI when we come to the Raspberry Pi version 4 the most obvious difference is the HDMI slot has been replaced by two HDMI connectors and these are micro HDMI connectors if you look at the USB slots two of them are in that familiar blue that indicates it’s USB 3 so the high-speed standard for USB slot so a step up so we now have a machine that’s capable of running two monitors and have high-speed USB connections one other change of note is the power adapter is now USB C tyoe power adapter so that might mean requiring a different connector or a new power supply for your Raspberry Pi if you’ve already got one the reason I’m slightly less keen about some of these changes are but it adds an extra price to the Raspberry Pi 4 so if you are to buy Raspberry Pi 3 when introduced for the kept price point the same so about 35 pounds if you’re ordering it in the UK but that’s not the total cost because you need other things you need power supply obviously you need an HDMI cable to connect it to a television you will need something some keyboard or mouse the one other thing obviously is micro USB [SD card] for the operating system so I’ve got a micro USB [SD card] in here with the operating system installed so those things unless you happen to have them all lying around they will add a few elements of cost there if the Raspberry Pi 4 with in my experience and expectation not many people will be using a Raspberry Pi 4 to run dual monitor displays on the other hand very few people also have micro HDMI cables or connectors or adapters so that’s maybe another five pounds you can have to spend on the Raspberry Pi 4 they… it’s a little bit more power hungry than the older versions of Raspberry Pi so you probably will need to get a new power supply you might have I’m about a mobile phone [charger] with a USB C connector but it might not deliver enough power to reliably run the new raspberry pi 4 so you really should get a new power supply as well I’ve got official power supply well I’ve gone for the official Raspberry Pi case for the model 4. I quite like the official cases they’re quite nice those lots of alternatives some more colourful some more business-y looking but the official one is quite nice and I quite like it so you start adding in extra costs and it does come above 35 pounds and also you’re going to need your memory card so it does start to add on. The other thing with the Raspberry Pi 4 is it’s got a much faster processor much more powerful processor and it runs a bit hotter and when it runs hot is it throttles it’s performance so actually slows down a bit again so you’re gonna need a heat sink as well to help keep it cool or something like this. This is the Raspberry Pi fan shim and this connects to the GPIO pins on the Raspberry Pi and is a fan cooler so that will keep it nice and cool and if your going to try to use this as a games machine that’s really going to be necessary we’re gonna be running software that’s going to really be pushing the processor so we’re going to need something here to try and help keep it cool that’s gonna be super essential compared to the Raspberry Pi 3 a nice increase in power so it’s gonna allow us to do a lot more but if I wasn’t going for this particular task I wouldn’t actually bother with the Raspberry Pi 4 at all I would have kept with my Raspberry Pi 3 because I see these things these extras of you know cooling active cooling a different power supply having to buy in a cable I don’t have, you know so I’m the sort of person I’ve got you know just about every cable that’s ever been in a drawer but when I ordered on my Raspberry Pi 4 I couldn’t start it straight away because I forgot to order the micro HDMI cable so there’s an extra cost and a thing that people are unlikely to have lying around the house so if you’re getting started with the Raspberry Pi 3, it’ll cost you 35 pounds you will have some of the things you need lying around the house it will work with a lot of mobile phone power supplies it will work with a standard HDMI cable or people have those lying around and you won’t need anything else for the Raspberry Pi 4 you’ll definitely need the cable, I highly recommended you get the power supply so when you get all the different bits I did on you’re looking at maybe an extra 15 pounds more or possibly as much as 25 pounds more on getting started with a Raspberry Pi 4 than you would spend on a Raspberry Pi 3 so although the board itself is the same price however for running things like game development and 3d creation your going to probably want that power so got myself a Raspberry Pi for not even go to set up yet I’ll look forward to doing that and we’ll see in future videos how it performs .