The Raspberry Pi 5 is the fastest Raspberry Pi made yet. Its CPU runs at 2.4 GHz compared to the 1.8 GHz of its predecessor, the Raspberry Pi 4, and its GPU runs at 910MHz, over 80% faster than the RPi4. But it could be faster.
Overclocking is the act of modifying your computer hardware to make it perform beyond the default specifications set by the manufacturer. Why would you want to do that? Some people just like to see how far they can push their hardware. Others want to eke out extra frames per second for their games. With the RPi5, the process is simple enough that you can do it just for the sake of curiosity.
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You’re going to need some hardware
When you overclock your processor, you are increasing the number of things it can do in a set amount of time. Performing more actions in the same amount of time requires more power. More power generates more heat, and heat is the enemy of overclocking. If your processor gets too hot, it can be permanently damaged. Therefore, if you are going to overclock your Raspberry Pi 5, you should have some form of cooling on your hardware. Whether that’s a heatsink, a fan, or both, you’ll want something to bring your temperatures under control.
You’re also going to want to ensure that your Pi has enough power to crank out those higher numbers. The official Raspberry Pi recommendation for the RPi5 is to use a 5V5A power supply. If you use something like a 5V3A supply, your processor will be underpowered and therefore, unable to live up to its full potential.
So fast it hertz
In order to get that extra speed from your Raspberry Pi 5, you’re going to have to add a few lines to your /boot/firmware/config.txt file. Specifically, you need to modify how fast the CPU should run, how fast the GPU should run, and maybe, how much power you want to provide them.
Before you jump into it, you should be aware of something called the silicon lottery. Every processor is unique, so some will be capable of more overclocking than others. One chip may only be able to go up to 2.8 GHz, while others may be able to reach 3 GHz or beyond.
By default, the RPi5 has a CPU clock speed of 2.4 GHz, and a GPU clock speed of 910 MHz. If you want either one to run at a different value, you’ll have to specify that speed in the config.txt file. The best way to figure out how much you can overclock is to increment your CPU and GPU by 200 MHz and 10 MHz, respectively. If you can boot up at the new speed without any problems, then crank it up another notch. If not, start dropping the value a bit until you find the sweet spot where you can keep your Pi running without any problems.
To change your CPU and GPU speed from the default, add “arm_freq=2600” and “gpu_freq=920” to the end of config.txt. If you start to have issues, add the line “over_voltage_delta=50000” to config.txt; this will make a little bit of extra juice available to the Pi to help the processor run at the new, higher speed.
There is a small chance you could damage your Pi while attempting to overclock it, but if you follow the precautions outlined here, those chances will be minimized.
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Raspberry Pi Active Cooler for Raspberry Pi 5
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Raspberry Pi 5 Power Supply
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Your mileage may vary
Following the above steps, using the first-party active heatsink and a 5V5A power supply, I brought my Pi’s CPU up to 3 GHz and the GPU up to 960 MHz without any major problems. Running Geekbench 6, I got a baseline score of 790/1689. After pushing it up to 3 GHz, I bumped that up to 919/1717. What does that mean in the real world? For me, not much. I played a little bit of Quake 3 Arena as I incremented my clock speed and only noticed a marginal increase in FPS when playing at max settings. Likewise, 1080p YouTube videos ran just fine at both speeds.
All in all, it was a fun learning experience diving into how to get this done. The Raspberry Pi 5 has a hard limit of 3 GHz built in unless you’re willing to change some low-level system settings. If you overclocked your Pi, let us know how you did, and if you still feel like tinkering, check out this list of awesome Raspberry Pi HATs.