Element14 Raspberry Pi 3 B+ Motherboard

For $35 dollars, this little computer is incredible. My model did not come with an operating system out of the box (and they typically don't, unless you purchase a kit with an OS pre-installed on a MicroSD card), but installation of NOOBS and then Raspbian went very well. Make sure to format your MicroSD card BEFORE putting any installation files on it!The Raspberry Pi 3 b+ comes with four USB 2.0 ports, an HDMI port, an Ethernet port, audio out port, a RPi camera port, a MicroUSB port for power purposes (you power the Pi with a 2.5A or 3A 5v power supply and a microUSB cord, like what you'd use to charge an Android phone), and a GPIO pin board for all sorts of things. Each of these ports is quite rigid, especially the audio port, which I really got scared for when I was plugging in headphones for the first time to test my audio capability, but so far, the board has held up very well and all plugins have stayed in and remained stable throughout all operation and any maneuvering I had to make with the board. The GPIO pins are very sturdy and seem well built. The Wifi and Bluetooth that comes natively with the Raspberry Pi 3b+ works very well and seems reliable.My model is the 1 GB RAM version, and so far, the single GB of RAM has done a great job of juggling different programs, and I've had no major issues with bottlenecking while running programs like Chromium (Raspbian's native lightweight Chrome-based web browser), a few terminals, htop ( a resource monitoring utility that sits in a terminal window), and a Python IDE for programming purposes.As a test, the first night I received this product, I fired up some updates while running two Youtube videos (at 360p, which is what Chromium's codec allows for on the Raspberry Pi 3 b+, alongside htop, a python IDE, and a couple of terminal windows, and fired up a temperature monitor I programmed to check for temps. The Pi was sitting around 50 degrees Celsius in a room that was about 25 degrees Celsius, which I thought was pretty good considering I had no heatsinks or fans installed on it, and it was just sitting on my desk. So, it can handle stuff pretty well without turning into an oven so far.At this point, I definitely highly recommend this product. I can think of no device that can be purchased for this amount of money that has the sheer amount of utility, potential, and geek-factor. Nothing even comes close. The Raspberry Pi and variations of it have infinite usability, and they are the PERFECT gift for an aspiring programmer, kid tinkerer, novice engineer, or for anyone wanting to take a dive into the world of Linux-based operating systems and programming. The Raspberry Pi can do it all, and I'm incredibly impressed.

I don't understand the hostile reviews claiming it was falsely advertised as ARMv8 when it's "actually" a v7. The reason it shows up as a v7 when running system info tools is because it's running in v7 mode due to software not being up to snuff for it to run in v8 mode. I *believe* it's due to it being a 64bit chip only running a 32bit OS, but I can't remember entirely. There is documentation right on the RPi website explaining this, and I also pulled the number that's stamped directly on the chip itself and it's exactly what they said they sold us all. There is no bait and switch or false advertising.The Pi itself is awesome. I have an original B+ and this thing runs circles around it in Raspbian; it's WAY faster. I started learning some Python with the GPIO pins, and as stupid as it sounds, it's really cool when you can type something and watch an LED light up. Even the most basic programming gives you a good amount of satisfaction, I hope I learn alot messing with this. My first Pi was just used for Kodi/XBMC and now PiHole so I'm attempting to learn a bit of actual programming this time. The bluetooth is a nice touch for wireless inputs. Make sure to use a quality power adapter AND cable. The little lightening bolt with tell you if you aren't, and I also found that when the bolt appears on the screen, you are losing performance as well until voltage comes back up high enough.These things are great fun with tons of support for a decent price, pick one up!

**UPDATE: 07/12/2019 Ok so the ARM version will be reflected based on the Operating System you’re running. For example: if you’re running Raspbian, it will show v7, but if you install something different that was meant for v8 (aarch64) like Ubuntu Mate (aarch64), it will show v8. To find out the version, open a terminal and type this: cat /proc/cpuinfoThen hit enter. It will spell out the CPU for you or give the CPU architecture number 7 or 8. With 8, you can run 64-bit. Cheers!**UPDATE: 10/1/2018 Works great but it comes with ARMv7 not 8. Beware - false advertising**———————————————————Firstly, make sure you have a micro as card with the OS of your choice installed. I have one sd card with the NOOBS installer for the Raspbian OS (Raspberry’s de facto operating system). All I had to do was download NOOBS files, format the sd card to FAT32, and copy the NOOBS files onto the card, and plug it into Raspberry Pi motherboard. When I turned it on, the motherboard picked up on the system files and walks you through the install, and there’s various OS’s you can pick from. I also have another sd with RetroPie (video game emulation OS). RetroPie needs to be imaged onto the sd card before being plugged into the Raspberry Pi. I bought a housing unit with a fan for this thing that also comes with heat sinks (a must-buy if you ask me). If you are new to Unix-like OS’s, learn a few Terminal commands to learn how to do just a few things on here like running things as an administrator, navigating files, creating folders, etc. This product is a great buy. If anyone has any questions about this, feel free to comment.