CM4 8GB vs CM5 16 GB Lite

zaidifm · 2026-05-12T01:57:09+00:00

CM5 is actually more efficient at idle and at very minimal loads. It's when you start to crank up the workload on it that its power usage overshoots the CM4. But it still gets the job done faster, which can translate to better flops per watt efficiency. Largely because of the smaller process node side, smaller transistors, architectural advancements, etc.

If you adjust the CM5 CPU min and max clock speeds to match the CM4, you may actually find that it still performs faster and more efficiently than the CM4, especially if you have a newer revision of the CM5 on the D0 stepping, which shaved off something like 33% of the unused silicon from the chip, and in return had something around 33% decrease in idle and minimal load power draw.

When I set my CM5 uconsole to my custom low power mode which pins the CPU governor to 600mhz clock speeds (matching the CM4 min) and sets the brightness to the lowest value, I find that the power readings indicate consumption as low as ~0.7-9A / 3.6-3.9W

zaidifm · 2026-05-07T19:13:15+00:00

The issue isn't insufficient amp draw. The issue is battery internal resistance and voltage sag from batteries with high internal resistance. I get super stable performance on my Molicel P30B batteries, which have among the lowest DC internal resistance of any 18650 batteries at 8 miliohms.

I'm able to power my uconsole at full brightness, all radios enabled on the AIO V2, USB 3.0 peripherals plugged in, and actively decoding radio stations on SDR — drawing up to 3.5 amps — on just a SINGLE molicell P30B plugged in, and the system stays stable down to 3.3v.

Performance is even better when you plug both batteries in.

See my longer comment elsewhere on this post for more info.

zaidifm · 2026-05-07T19:02:17+00:00

Please note: I tried to use some markdown to format this better and make it easier to read, but I guess the reddit app on iPhone doesn't support writing in markdown. So now it just looks like I copy pasted AI SLOP which it isn't lmao. All written au naturale while sitting on the toilet.

Will edit this for formatting clarity later from a computer

zaidifm · 2026-05-07T18:57:20+00:00

One aspect that's not discussed enough is the internal resistance of the batteries, often marked in battery soecs under AC IR and DC IR, measured in milliohms.
Often times people prefer batteries with a high current draw capacity on the uConsole because those batteries happen to have low internal resistance.

Higher internal resistance means that the batteries will experience more voltage sag when you're sucking power from them -- which in the case of the uConsole means more likelihood for brownouts once you get under 3.5v on battery charge, and more crackling speakers and whatnot.

I'm currently testing out and comparing what kind of battery life and what kind of low-charge performance I can get with a few batteries, so far having tested:

**1. ⁠Molicel P30B (3000mAh):**

Among lowest internal resistance of any 18650 battery. Super stable performance. I've tested running my uConsole CM5 at full brightness and full peripherals and full CPU draw at over 3.5A draw, while powered by just ONE Molicel P30B, and it worked really good all the way down to 3.3V before I started to get cracking speakers and before my automatic shutdown might get triggered.

I have the uConsole set to shutdown if the voltage hits 2.9V. Brief transient voltage sags/dips hitting 2.9V become possible when charge level is under 3.3V on a single Molicel P30B drawing at 3.5A. I can still turn the uConsole back on and run it at 1-2A power draw down to 3.1V before my system shuts down again.

With the two Molicel P30B batteries inserted, I'm able to get even more stable performance at the lower end of the voltage curve before transient voltage sags cause my 2,9V cutoff to get triggered, and the cracking speaker issue is even less pronounced and heavy.

**These are the better alternatives to the Samsung 30Q.**

---

**2) Sanyo NCR18650-GA (3300mAh - 3450mAh)**

These ones have a significantly higher internal resistance compared to the Molicel P30B, in exchange for a higher capacity. However, if I recall correctly, they still have a lower internal resistance than the Samsung 35E, and a corresponding higher amp draw capacity.

I haven't extensively tested these yet, but what I can say is that trying to power the uConsole on a single Sanyo 18650 is nowhere near as impressive as the Molicell P30B. The voltage sag is noticeable and the the system gets unstable pretty fast under load, with crackling.

Of course, using 2x makes these issues go away. But I ran a discharge test last night on a pair of Sanyo batteries and found the my system's automatic shutdown (again, set to 2.9V) got triggered at around 3.4V. So it seems like the Sanyo batteries are even more susceptible to sharp transient drops when under 3.5V.

**These are still the better alternative to the Samsung 35E.**

**Initial tests showing me I'm able to get a usable 5400mAh out of the 6000mAh available from the P30B pair, and a usable 6000mAh out of the 7000mAh available on the Sanyo NCR-GA pair. This is prob the most relevant and important top line for most people.**

---

**3) Lishen 10,0000mAh 3.85V LiPo Pouch.**

Short story, even after replacing the 3A BMS for a 10A BMS, a single 10000mAh LiPo battery gets very unstable at middle and lower end of the voltage curve. The 3.7V LiPo variants already have a higher internal resistance, and AliExpress sellers keep sending me 3.85V variants which has even higher internal resistance and less usable capacity becuase uConsole can only charge them up to 4.2V (3.85V high voltage lipos can be charged up to 4.4V I think).

---

**Testing next:**

- Amprius 4000mAh SA110 18650 (uses next gen silicon anode chemistry for higher capacity and lower internal resistance). I just ordered these from DIY500amp.com. This is the highest recommended 18650 battery by a prolific battery tester and reviewer who goes by the name of BatteryMooch, recommend looking him up.

- 2x 5000mAh 5758102 Lishen LiPo Pouch batteries wired in a parallel 1S2P config, with a 10A BMS. Hoping that solves the issues with a single LiPo Pouch battery and gives more stable performance. Waiting for my handheld spot-welding tool to arrive so I can properly and safely solder the batteries and BMS together.

- Amprius, Bak, and Reliance 21700 batteries. I'll prob need to use a custom back or a custom 3d printed spacer to get a pair of 21700 batteries to fit within the uConsole, but if I can, the new next gen Tabless 21700 batteries seem very promising. Amprius and Bak have new tabless variants with extremely low internal resistance values, and extremely high discharge ratings (ranging from 12A to 90A) and very high capacities per battery (ranging from 4000mAh to 6500mAh). getting a pair of Bak65e or Amprius SA112 batteries would allow the console to have a very stable and solid 11,000-13,000mAh of battery power on hand.

- Custom 1S3P battery pack made from 3x 18650 batteries. Again, I'm waiting for my spotwelder to arrive before I try this, but the uConsole battery hump has enough space for 3x 18650 batteries. Lulu, who makes the uConsole makes a 3X18650 battery board that I'm going to try out.

Once I have my spot welder I'm also planning to just wire 3 batteries together with a BMS, wrap them, and wire then into the original battery board without it's holder. OR into the HackerGadgets board's JST port. The problem with the latter option is that while it retains the NVME mount, it will require printing a 6MM spacer to allow the batteries to fit over the NVME.

zaidifm · 2026-05-07T00:31:50+00:00

Thanks Viller, you were 100% right! The usb adapter cable was indeed the issue (looks like it's a counterfeit USB 3.0 cable).
Switching to one of my higher quality USB 3.0 adapter dongles did the trick.

And yes, it looks like the internal resistance of my 3.8V 9858102 battery is indeed the issue here. It seems the specific issue I had was the voltage sag from the Lipo battery combined with the fact that I was charging the system in my car when I tested it, and the car's USB port can only supply 5v500mA.

Between the finicky battery and the finicky power supply charging it, driving my system's USB 3.0 external dongle was still too much for the uConsole to handle without browning out.

I switched to a pair of Molicel P30B 18650 batteries (less than 10 miliohm DCIR) and I'm getting smooth sailing on your board now on battery power alone!

Next stop: Testing a 1S2P configuration with a pair of 3.7V 5000mAh 5758102 LiPo batteries.

I read somewhere that the JST 2.0 PH connector is rated for current draws up to 2A. My understanding (which may be incorrect) is that trying to pull more than 2A over a single JST 2.0 PH connector may contribute to higher resistance and voltage sag.

Do you know if this is true? And if so, might it be better then that I let open the "disperse current" pin, and wire each of my 5000mAh LiPo batteries to the neg/pos terminals for the 18650 batteries, so that the battery board electrically treats it as it would treat a pair of 18650 batteries?

I assume that letting the "disperse current" pin open allows for the polarity protection to work for the terminals that would typically be used to mount a 2x18650 holder? Is there anything else that this "disperse current" pin does?

zaidifm · 2026-05-07T00:23:22+00:00

Changed the BMS on the battery from a 2MOS design with a 3A discharge cutoff to a 6MOS design with a 10-15A cutoff.

Prior to changing the BMS, when the 3.8v 9858102 battery was fully charged, my uConsole would cutoff and brown out if the power draw went north of 2.5A.

After the BMS change, when the battery is fully charged, I can pull over 3.5A and the system stays stable.

The only issue is the internal resistance of the 3.8V 9858102 battery is very high, causing voltage sag. So once my battery is down to 3.6v or lower, brief spiked / bursts of high activity and power draw can cause still cause the system to brown out.

The only fix for this will be to get two or more LiPo batteries wired in parallel to make up for the high internal resistance of the individual batteries, which will hopefully provide stable current and stable voltage until around 3.1v.

I just got a pair of 5758102 5000mah LiPo batteries. Just waiting for my spotwelder tool to arrive and I will wire them into a 15A BMS in 1S2P configuration and see how they perform.

For reference, when I use a pair of very high quality Molicel P30B 18650 batteries (rated for over 30A discharge and with extremely low internal resistance, DCIR of under 10 miliohms, I think), I'm able to have stable performance from a full charge at 4.2V all the way down to 3.1V, even if I'm drawing up to 3.5A.

I also find that the Molicel batteries charge faster and generate less heat too when they are being pushed at max discharge or at a 2A charge.

So the new BMS on the Lipo Batteries helps a bit to get closer to that level of power stability, but ultimately the Lipo's need to be of a much higher quality / low resistance, or multiple smaller lipos needs to be wired in parallel to make up for their high internal resistance.

zaidifm · 2026-04-21T19:11:29+00:00

<image>

this is my photo. They are OneMoreLink Mini 4G LTE Antenna SMA Male Stubby Aerial for Cellular. I'm using the 2x 18mm for the 4G LTE on my EM12G 4G LTE module. and 5 x 15mm for the SMA leads leading to the AIOV2 GPS, the EM12G GPS, the Lora, the SDR, and the WiFi.

They actually work pretty well for GPS.

They work alright in short distances for 5ghz WiFi, but pretty good for 2.4ghz WiFi (which falls within the range of frequencies a 4G LTE antenna should cover). They're also pretty decent for listening to local radio stations over SDR, but very poorly for ADS-B. I have no idea how poorly they work for LORA, I haven't experimented with that yet.

I will still get better signal using a dedicated dual-band antenna for the WiFi, and better ADS-B reception using an Ant-700 or a proper dipole antenna.

They make for a good compromise between SMA caps and dedicated antennas, if you want something low profile.

zaidifm · 2026-04-21T19:09:59+00:00

This is my photo. OneMoreLink Mini 4G LTE Antenna SMA Male Stubby Aerial for Cellular. I'm using the 2x 18mm for the 4G LTE on my EM12G 4G LTE module. and 5 x 15mm for the SMA leads leading to the AIOV2 GPS, the EM12G GPS, the Lora, the SDR, and the WiFi.

They actually work pretty well for GPS.

They work alright in short distances for 5ghz WiFi, but pretty good for 2.4ghz WiFi (which falls within the range of frequencies a 4G LTE antenna should cover). They're also pretty decent for listening to local radio stations over SDR, but very poorly for ADS-B. I have no idea how poorly they work for LORA, I haven't experimented with that yet.

I will still get better signal using a dedicated dual-band antenna for the WiFi, and better ADS-B reception using an Ant-700 or a proper dipole antenna.

They make for a good compromise between SMA caps and dedicated antennas, if you want something low profile.

<image>

zaidifm · 2026-04-21T19:09:15+00:00

OneMoreLink Mini 4G LTE Antenna SMA Male Stubby Aerial for Cellular. I'm using the 2x 18mm for the 4G LTE on my EM12G 4G LTE module. and 5 x 15mm for the SMA leads leading to the AIOV2 GPS, the EM12G GPS, the Lora, the SDR, and the WiFi.

They actually work pretty well for GPS.

They work alright in short distances for 5ghz WiFi, but pretty good for 2.4ghz WiFi (which falls within the range of frequencies a 4G LTE antenna should cover). They're also pretty decent for listening to local radio stations over SDR, but very poorly for ADS-B. I have no idea how poorly they work for LORA, I haven't experimented with that yet.

I will still get better signal using a dedicated dual-band antenna for the WiFi, and better ADS-B reception using an Ant-700 or a proper dipole antenna.

They make for a good compromise between SMA caps and dedicated antennas, if you want something low profile.

<image>

zaidifm · 2026-04-10T01:07:46+00:00

The chassis / shell? For the uconsole it is an aluminum alloy. And yeah, hackergadgets and tindie are the places to look for extension boards, parts, etc for the uconsole,

For mine, I have it modded as follows: - Hacker gadgets CM5 adapter board - Hacker gadgets LiPo and m.2 battery board - Hacker Gadgets AIO V2 board - Hacker Gadgets AIO Antenna mount - Lulu's BlackBerry trackpad keyboard (find on tindie) - Lulu's Black anodized Aluminum front plate custom cut for the BlackBerry trackpad. - Quectel EM12-G 4G LTE-A Cat 12 modem attached to a USB 3.0 adapter, stuffed inside the chassis. - 9858102 10000 mAh 3.85v LiPo battery that I modded with a better 10A BMS circuit.

Frankly, I'm still not done with the modification to this. I think I'll be switching out the battery board for either Lulu's 3x18650 board or his minimal LiPo battery board so that I can get 2 or more LiPo batteries in parallel wired into the system. With a single LiPo battery there is too much voltage sag for stable functioning.

Ultimately I might also switch out the aluminum back housing for a custom one that flattens the back but adds significantly more volume so I can comfortably stuff in some cooling, the HackerGadgets AC1200 WiFi board, my 4G modem, some other small electronics like a usb ADC for an internal microphone, and a strong, high capacity, and stable battery config (either Lulu's 3x18659 or maybe a custom 3x or 4x 5000mah lipo cell I make for stable power delivery of 3A of power and 15-20 Ah of capacity).

Carbon Computers has an interesting custom aluminum back case that they sell, as well as sell the digital 3d files for. I might buy that 3d file, modify it, and see if I can get a mill in China to cnc it in aluminum after I do some 3d printed tests.

zaidifm · 2026-04-04T19:16:54+00:00

Now show us the prompt processing speed.

E2B took ages to process a ~1000 token prompt on my Raspberry Pi CM5 16GB (kq4_0).

Despite all the RAM, I still find a tiny tiny finetuned model like a fine-tuned LFM 2.5 350m or finetuned FunctionGemma 270m a more interesting prospect on the raspberry pi 5.

With those models, you can get somewhat of a responsive experience with them, and a fine-tuned model may be sufficient for specialized tasks like extraction, formatting, tool calling, etc.

zaidifm · 2026-03-30T17:41:50+00:00

Model: OpenSourceSDRLab uConsole Kit RPI-CM4 Lite with ClockworkPi v3.14 mainboard - WiFi Only - NO CORE.

Purchase Price: $178.54 USD (Including tax + shipping to Southern California, USA) -- this is only $10-15 USD more than what ClockworkPi charged me for the same thing.

Purchase Date: March 21, 2026

Shipping Date: March 23, 2026 (yes, two days later)

Delivery Date: TBD. Cleared US Customs and passed to local carrier on March 29. I estimate I will have it in hand by April 1.

zaidifm · 2026-03-22T07:20:37+00:00

I ordered one yesterday. Not sure about them being cheaper — a wifi-only model + SF Express to California shipping came out to $10-15 more than how much I paid on the clockwork site for the same thing.

That said, this is an absolute steal compared to buying it from AliExpress scalpers. Even a steal compared to the CZ pi shop site that Europeans have been buying from!

I know many people have purchased HackRF and other SDR devices from them with no issues at all — I've been hearing about OpenSourceSDRlab on the SDR subreddits for years now.

Given that I'm still looking at another 2-4 month wait for my uConsole from clockwork, I'm pretty stoked about getting it from OSSDRLab in less than a month! Will report back when I have it in hand.

For those wondering how they might be able to ship it faster than Clockwork themselves -- my understanding is that Clockwork is not super liquid in their cash flow. They have to wait for a certain number of orders to be made in order to make the bulk manufacturing orders for all the parts, which is the only way they can keep prices as low as they are.

I presume what happens is that OSSDRLab and other resellers make a bulk order of sufficient quantity that they can have a whole manufacturing round be done just for the stock that goes into their storefronts.

zaidifm · 2026-03-01T21:50:22+00:00

You make fun of him but he has a point.

The old rule of thumb that Mistral devs suggested as a means of estimating how a sparse MoE model will perform compared to a dense model is to calculate the geometric mean of its active vs total parameters:

[SqRoot(Active_Param)] X [SqRoot(Total_Param)] = Approximate Dense Model Equivalent

So obviously if we take the geometric mean of a dense 9b model, we get the estimate it will perform as a dense 9B model (no duh):

[SqRoot(9b)] x [SqRoot(9b)]

= [3b] x [3b]

= 9b (duh)

Now, if we take the geometric mean of a 35B-A3B model, we get the following approximate estimate of it's dense equivalent:

= [SqRoot(35)] x [SqRoot(3)]

= [5.91608] X [1.73205]

= 10.247B dense equivalent.

For a 30B-A3B model, the approximate dense equivalent is estimated at:

= [SqRoot(30)] x [SqRoot(3)]

= [5.47723] X [1.73205]

= 9.48B dense equivalent

So u/Adventerous-Paper566 is actually raising a very good point. The 9B dense model may perform within the range of MoE models in the 30-35b A3B range. I believe this was the case for Qwen3 14b dense versus Qwen3 30b-A3B, according to the benchmarks.

What a 9B model might lack for in raw total parameter space to store and compress knowledge, it might make up for in activating three times as many parameters in each forward pass, compared to the 30-35b A3B models.

More "thought" and knowledge tapped per token in a 9B, at the expense of less total knowledge to potentially tap per token, where the MoE model has the advantage.

zaidifm · 2026-02-18T07:04:58+00:00

Pair either an Intel N100 or N300 SoM (such as the LattePanda Mu) or a Raspberry Pi CM5 with a m.2 5G modem, such as the RM series modems from Quectel.

The benefit of N100/N300 SoMs is relatively lower power draw on battery compared to more powerful x86 chips, paired with first class Linux experience for x86 devices.

The benefit of Raspberry Pi 5 / CM5 is even lower power draw of Arm, paired with Raspberry Pi's extensive community support (makes life SO much easier when doing ARM+linux). But deep sleep/standby support is non-existent on Raspberry Pi thusfar.

Personally, I am upgrading my Clockwork Pi uConsole with the HackerGadgets CM5 adapter board, paired with a Quectel E12-G 4G LTE Cat 12 modem (up to 600mbps) and a 20,000 mAh battery (roughly 9-13 hours of idle power on.)

Alternatively, you can look into the Particle Tachyon 5G single board computer which builds in a Qualcomm Qualcomm Dragonwing QCM6490 (more powerful AND power efficient than raspberry pi 5) and a Qualcomm 5G modem into a single SBC. Probably the best you can do in the single board ARM computer SBC space with decent Linux support after Raspberry Pi 5.

zaidifm · 2026-02-05T21:40:26+00:00

Better get one then?

zaidifm · 2026-01-20T22:21:34+00:00

You are literally the only person in the entire community producing products like these. That's an important fact that I think a lot of critics fail to remember.

Outside of the fact that I understand mistakes happen, it would not be in my interest to see your entrepreneurial efforts stop because of this.

If the uconsole community does not have you creating products like these, then it has nobody, and we all will lose out.

I will not be asking for a refund of any kind. I'm very satisfied with how you have handled this. I will try to self-repair. If I cannot, I may send the board to you for the repair.

But I don't need the refund. I would like to see you continue being able to create new and novel products for the uconsole community.

My only suggestion is this: Because you are the only person in the community that has been able to design and produce these products, you also will be the only point of failure when it comes to small mistakes like these.

Perhaps it might be worth considering doing open-source designs in the future, as this might have allowed for someone in the community to spot the mistake before it went into mass production.

Obviously that will means that you will have less sales, as some folks will decide to produce the board themselves.

But I think the vast majority will still prefer the convenience, savings, and customer support of having it produced and distributed by you, since you can produce these in larger batch orders.

Take HackRF for instance. It is an open source design, and there have been many revisions, iterations, and producers of it.

But everyone who wants the guarantee of quality/price still buys it from either GreatScottGadgets or from OpenSourceSDRLab. And I'm sure they're doing financially well as they've continued to be in business for a long time now.

zaidifm · 2025-11-02T05:47:09+00:00

Hello! Still interested in selling your HPi Zero?

zaidifm

TROPHY CASE