Can 3A/3.5A PSU power Raspberry Pi 5?

As the title of this post goes by, this is a question that arises for many Raspberry Pi fans. Before we discuss further on this, let us first understand about the power supply for Raspberry Pi. Initially many were using different type of power supply and we at Cytron also received many complains from the customer regarding this. Most of the time this happens because the user were using their mobile phone charger to power up the Raspberry Pi. There is a difference between a power supply and mobile phone charger. A power supply will provide a constant voltage all the time whereas a charger works differently. All this are solved when Raspberry Pi released the official power supply. 

With the release of the new Raspberry Pi 5, the Raspberry Pi has also announced of a new type of power supply as well known as Pi 5 USB-C PD. Do you know what PD means? PD stands for power delivery. The USB-C PD is capable of supplying a greater power than standard wall chargers. Coming back to our question, can 3A/3.5A psu power Raspberry Pi 5? The answer is YES. You can power up your Raspberry Pi 5 using 3A/3.5A PSU. At Cytron we have try to power up the Raspberry Pi 5 using 3A/3.5A PSU and it works!

During the boots up, there will be a notification on the top right corner which says "This power supply is not capable of supplying 5A. Power to peripherals will be restricted". One of the restricted affect is that the USB3 can only supply current up to 600mA only. Whereas using the official Raspberry Pi 5 power supply, the USB3 can supply up to 1.6A.

Below are the videos which shows the usage of 3A/3.5A psu to power up Raspberry Pi 5 for different purposes. Hope this article clear your doubts.