Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+

WHEN WE NORMALLY look at hardware on these pages, it’s either because it’s aesthetically stunning or so expensive that the vast majority of us can only dream of getting our hands on it. Not so with the latest entry to the Raspberry Pi family. At $35, this mini marvel is well within everyone’s financial reach, and to be frank, it probably isn’t something you’d want to tear out and stick on the wall of your den. Indeed, the beauty of the RPi 3 B+ isn’t on show, but rather what’s happening under the surface.

This new revision boasts the same processor as you’d find on the RPi 3, although it’s a new package, which means that it now sports a new heatspreader, enabling the core clock be pushed higher, to 1.4GHz as opposed to the last generation’s 1.2GHz. The fact that it’s still the Broadcom BCM2837 chip means that everything that worked previously still works no problem.

It’s worth noting that the new board is much tidier than previous versions, because a lot of the power regulation has been sucked into a new Maxlinear chip that can be found in the bottom right-hand corner, next to the USB power connector. This improved power management is also a contributing factor in the new chip being pushed 200MHz harder.

This is the general ethos of the new Raspberry Pi 3 B+, a lot has been tuned to make for a tighter, leaner device that performs better and even more.