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jokinin
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Raspberry pi 3 b+

Wed Jun 27, 2018 4:57 am

I have two simple questions. Is a Samsung tablet charger rated at 5V and 2A enough to act as a PSU for a raspberry 3 b+?
Do you need a heatsink for it under regular use?
 
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Re: Raspberry pi 3 b+

Wed Jun 27, 2018 5:51 am

jokinin wrote:
I have two simple questions. Is a Samsung tablet charger rated at 5V and 2A enough to act as a PSU for a raspberry 3 b+?
Do you need a heatsink for it under regular use?

Unfortunately, neither one of these questions are simple!

A 2A charger might work. The specs say to use a 2.5A power supply, but that includes power to run devices plugged into the USB ports. So it'll probably depend on what USB devices you're using with it.

You don't "need" a heatsink, in the sense that using it without one won't cause damage. If the CPU starts to get too hot, it automatically reduces its clock speed (thermal throttling) to keep the CPU temperature within spec. Whether or not you will experience thermal throttling depends on the temperature of the environment the Pi 3B+ is being used in, whether there's any air movement across it, and how CPU-intensive your "regular" use is. You might not notice thermal throttling even if it occurs. If you do experience noticeable thermal throttling, then a heatsink would reduce or eliminate it, improving performance.
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jokinin
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Re: Raspberry pi 3 b+

Wed Jun 27, 2018 7:26 am

Thanks for the reply!

Well, typical use will be mostly watching youtube videos online and some downloaded movies offline. Don't pretend to run it 24/7 at full load. At most I will plug the usb keyboard+touchpad reciever, and an USB flash drive to transfer info from and to the machine. Maybe I would plug an external USB 3 2.5 inch hard drive at most.
 
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Re: Raspberry pi 3 b+

Wed Jun 27, 2018 7:43 am

Unless it has its own power adapter, you will want to use a powered hub with the external HDD. Even with a beefier power supply the Pi may not be able to supply enough current for the initial motor spin-up.
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Chuckaluphagus
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Re: Raspberry pi 3 b+

Wed Jun 27, 2018 8:27 am

jokinin wrote:
Thanks for the reply!

Well, typical use will be mostly watching youtube videos online and some downloaded movies offline. Don't pretend to run it 24/7 at full load. At most I will plug the usb keyboard+touchpad reciever, and an USB flash drive to transfer info from and to the machine. Maybe I would plug an external USB 3 2.5 inch hard drive at most.

I have a Pi 3 B+ sitting here on my desk, running from one of the WD hard drives that were customized for the Pi, using a mechanical keyboard and a Microsoft wireless mouse with RF nub for input. If your power supply can sustain the current to the Pi, you shouldn't have any trouble with those tasks.

If you are having trouble with either the power supply or the temperature, warnings will appear at the top right of the display: a lightning bolt for undervoltage, and a thermometer for temperature. If you don't see either of those, assume that you're good to go.
 
jokinin
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Re: Raspberry pi 3 b+

Wed Jun 27, 2018 3:12 pm

In the end I decided to buy this kit: https://www.amazon.com/Raspberry-Pi-Des ... B0757ZYW4T
It comes with a PSU, so I guess it will be good enough. Hopefully it will arrive on friday, I'm impacient.
Is Raspbian the best option for it? Or do you recommend some other options? I do have some knowledge in Linux, I'm not scared of using the terminal

Thanks for all the replies. :)
 
Chuckaluphagus
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Re: Raspberry pi 3 b+

Wed Jun 27, 2018 3:34 pm

I use Raspbian and Ubuntu Mate on my Pis - I recommend both of those. Can't speak to other OS options, but the Pi seems to be well supported.
 
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Re: Raspberry pi 3 b+

Wed Jun 27, 2018 3:41 pm

jokinin wrote:
In the end I decided to buy this kit: https://www.amazon.com/Raspberry-Pi-Des ... B0757ZYW4T

That's a B, not a B+. You OK with that?

jokinin wrote:
It comes with a PSU, so I guess it will be good enough. Hopefully it will arrive on friday, I'm impacient.
Is Raspbian the best option for it? Or do you recommend some other options? I do have some knowledge in Linux, I'm not scared of using the terminal

Thanks for all the replies. :)

Raspbian is your best bet for a general-purpose distro. There are other options which are optimized for specific use cases (e.g. RetroPie if you want to set up a game emulator).
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jokinin
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Re: Raspberry pi 3 b+

Thu Jun 28, 2018 4:29 am

Sorry, I put the wrong link to the product, I've double checked it and I purchased the 3 B+ version.
Having read your answers, I will go for Raspbian, which seems to be the best supported distro on the Raspberry.
I hope it is good enough to play Full HD videos, and youtube streaming.

Thanks again for your replies.
 
Chuckaluphagus
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Re: Raspberry pi 3 b+

Thu Jun 28, 2018 7:17 am

jokinin wrote:
Sorry, I put the wrong link to the product, I've double checked it and I purchased the 3 B+ version.
Having read your answers, I will go for Raspbian, which seems to be the best supported distro on the Raspberry.
I hope it is good enough to play Full HD videos, and youtube streaming.

Thanks again for your replies.

The decoder chip in all Raspberry Pis, even the original from six years ago, can do 1080p h264 video at 30 frames per second perfectly as long as you're not otherwise engaging the system. The advantage of the more recent Pis is that they're much better at general purpose computing now that they have more and faster cores, more RAM etc.
 
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Re: Raspberry pi 3 b+

Thu Jun 28, 2018 7:40 am

Yeah, RPis are based on what are essentially smartphone/tablet SoCs, so reasonable video decode performance is a given.
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jokinin
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Re: Raspberry pi 3 b+

Sat Jun 30, 2018 5:03 am

As an update, the thing is already running with Raspbian, it was pretty easy to setup and upgrade the OS. I just had to install Kodi, to be able to watch movies, without having to follow long instructions or installing other programs, because by default, it only provides a command line video viewer.

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