The world of Raspberry Pi accessories is vast and wonderful. Thanks to the Pi’s form factor, the community (and businesses) have come up with add-ons that make these tiny computers so much more versatile than anyone could imagine.
However, as with anything there’s going to be some subset of these accessories that seem like you should be buying them, but the truth can be quite different.
The giant aluminum heat sink case you probably don’t need
The latest Raspberry Pi model as of this writing is the Pi 5. When you buy it, it just comes as a bare board, there isn’t even a heatspreader on the main chip. That’s because the processor and GPU on the Pi is so efficient that under most conditions you don’t need any cooling whether passive or active.
Now, if you want to get the maximum performance from your Raspberry Pi, then you will want to add some sort of cooling, but you certainly don’t need one of those all-metal aluminum heatsink cases. The tiny little official active cooler is more than enough to prevent any sort of throttling, and if you only want to use passive cooling, you can just combine a normal fanless heatsink with a well-ventilated case.
If you like the look and feel of these heatsink cases, there’s nothing wrong with using one. It’s just that you don’t actually need it and it won’t give you extra performance or increase the lifespan of your Pi.
NVMe storage (for projects that don’t need it)
As standard, a Raspberry Pi uses SD cards to run its operating system. However, you can use any drive to boot from, including USB drives. So nothing stops you from using a USB SATA SSD, for example, which would be faster and more resilient than an SD card.
With some models of Raspberry Pi, you can purchase an NVMe “hat” which adds the necessary slot to connect a modern NVMe SSD. Your instincts might be that since this is the gold standard for other types of computer, and you need this for your Pi to perform at its best. The truth is that not only doesn’t the typical Raspberry Pi workload benefit from NVMe speeds, neither do the vast majority of computer tasks as a whole.
So, unless you have a very specific reason to use one, you’re better off booting from a USB SATA SSD if it’s extra speed you’re looking for.
Overkill power supplies with no real benefit
Each Raspberry Pi model has specific power requirements. For example, to get the most out of a Raspberry Pi 5, the official 27W power supply is recommended. Any 25W 5A USB-C PD supply should be enough to achieve the same result. However, you don’t need that much for basic operations. If you use a power supply with less wattage or with only 3A current, then the Pi will work just fine, but power on the USB bus will be limited.
Plugging, for example, a 65W power supply into your Raspberry Pi is a complete waste, and likewise if you aren’t connecting any USB devices that need more than basic USB power, then there’s also no point in opening your wallet for a 25W power brick either.
Extreme overclocking mods
I completely understand why the idea of overclocking your Raspberry Pi can be appealing. You paid for the hardware, why not unlock it’s “true” performance? Never mind the risks, or the modifications you’ll have to pay for to hit the highest clock speeds.
There’s nothing wrong with overlocking something like a Pi for fun, just to see if you can. However, most people have no practical reason to do this. I might have understood in the early days of the Pi, but the Pi 4 and Pi 5 models in particular already have performance good enough for anything you’d reasonably want this little computer to do. So, save yourself the hassle of buying better cooling, more power, and experimenting with cases until you find one that works for your hot-rodded computer.
Honestly, if you really need more CPU power than the stock Raspberry Pi 5 can offer, you’re probably better off buying a used mini PC. Even ones from a few years ago will have x86 CPUs with way more performance. Of course, you’ll be giving up the small size and power efficiency of the Pi, but if you’re overclocking a Pi for any other reason than your own entertainment, we’re beyond caring about that anyway.
Massive RAM “just in case”
Since you can’t upgrade the RAM on a Raspberry Pi later, it’s important to choose one that has enough memory for your needs. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of choice. Taking the latest Pi 5 as an example again, it starts with a 1GB model and goes all the way up to 16GB.
That’s not a lot of RAM, even at the high end, but given the ongoing RAM pricing crisis as I write this, the impact it has on the price of your Pi can be significant. After all, the whole reason the 1GB model even exists is in response to RAM becoming unaffordable. On the higher end models, it’s now possible that most of the price is going to the memory alone. The vast majority of people won’t need more than 4GB, let alone the 8GB I myself opted for just to cover my bases. The 16GB model should only be considered if you know that you’ll be needing that much.
Apart from RAM that you need to commit to from the start, everything else can wait. So consider enjoying your Pi as it is, before deciding to deck it out with all sorts of extras that may end up being of no use to you at all.
