Cheaper 1 GB Raspberry Pi 5 lands as memory costs go through the roof

Raspberry Pi has raised prices across much of its latest lineup while launching a new $45 Raspberry Pi 5 with 1GB of RAM, it's first sub-$50 model in the series. The increases hit the entire Pi 5 range: the 2GB model jumps $5 to $55, while the 16GB version rises $25 from $120 to $145. Select Raspberry Pi 4 models are also …

[m4r35n357]

a1

The gift that keeps on taking. Fuck you very much.

Those 16GB machines must be flying out of the door . . .

[A Non e-mouse]

Re: a1

They're lambasted when they released the 16GB version. And now they're being lambasted for releasing the 1GB version.

What should they release? One with 3.14GB of RAM?

[theOtherJT]

Re: a1

Yeah, but if they did that would be objectively really funny.

[m4r35n357]

Re: a1

They are riding the a1 hype train as hard as anyone. Serves them right.

[werdsmith]

Re: a1

They are riding the a1 hype train as hard as anyone

Got an example to back up this hyperbole?

[m4r35n357]

Re: a1

(Article - 16GB Raspberry Pi 5 on sale now at $120) "the threefold step up in performance between Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi 5 opens up use cases like large language models and computational fluid dynamics, which benefit from having more storage per core" - Eben Upton, 9th Jan 2025.

https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/ai-kit/

Enough for now?

[James Hughes 1]

Re: a1

Really? A general purpose computer than could be used for AI but usually isn't, and that's riding the wave?

Now if you mentioned the AI hat then maybe, but that's just one add-on product. So it's a really small wave.

[m4r35n357]

Re: a1

Well I _could_ have mentioned it - not doing so does not render it nonexistent - so consider it mentioned!

Another official page:

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-ai-kit-projects/

Reaching out to young minds . . . .

[James Hughes 1]

Re: a1

So what is actually wrong with this? Pi's are used for practically every compute task out there, AI is just one of them. Raspberry Pi are not "riding the wave" by any stretch of the imagination. One AI product, targeted at video processing (which works pretty well), not LLMs.

Were you savaged by a Pi when young? Because you certainly seem to have a bee in that bonnet.

[that one in the corner]

Re: a1

Ok, we get it, you aren't a fan of computational fluid dynamics.

[m4r35n357]

Re: a1

;)

Actually 16GB (just) puts the Pi in the territory of the ultimate CFD, the Einstein Toolkit - https://www.einsteintoolkit.org/ - but it is not really quick enough.

[Korev]

Re: a1

> Ok, we get it, you aren't a fan of computational fluid dynamics.

He's Openfoaming at the mouth...

[MyffyW]

Re: a1

I'll be honest it was my first year university lecturer (god rest his soul) who properly put me off fluid dynamics of the computational or any other kind. We used to call him Dr Death, because he was such a happy, cheery man. But I digress.

Yeah, Raspi is not really peak AI bullshit, as evidenced by their we're-definitely-not-nvidia share price.

[Not Yb]

Re: a1

No, not really.

That component has nothing to do with how much Raspberry has to pay for memory chips, since it's basically just an AI co-processor with no RAM on it. It's mostly designed for use with the Pi camera, not LLM usage.

Modern AI isn't just "chatbots". There's much that's actually useful, particularly in computer vision processing, machine learning, and small scale robotics.

[werdsmith]

Re: a1

Enough for now?

There is an optional component that people can buy to play with visual AI inferencing if they choose. It was announced way back and then an upgraded one and I've heard little about it since, despite being immersed in that world.

And this is "riding the wave hard" ?

Seriousy? What a weirdo.

[m4r35n357]

Re: a1

Latest update, today:

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/software-updates-for-raspberry-pi-ai-products/

[Not Yb]

Re: a1

People would then object that it wasn't precisely 3.141592653... GB

[David Hicklin]

Re: a1

> What should they release? One with 3.14GB of RAM?

nice one , I was going to suggest 640k

[ComicalEngineer]

Re: a1

AI is driving up the price of all memory chips.

Hang on until the bubble bursts and prices will come down again.

A 1GB Pi will be adequate for quite a number of basic tasks, which is what a lot of users will want.

16GB is you really need it but it costs more. Quelle surprise!

[theOtherJT]

AI is now top of my list...

...of things I wish could be un-invented, knocking off the previous title holder of those automated phone lines where you can press 1 through 4 to do a variety of things that are nothing to do with what you want, or hold to be transferred to a different call centre who will disconnect you while transferring you to another department.

[Flocke Kroes]

Re: AI is now top of my list...

You have reached the psychiatric help line. For obsessive/compulsive press 1 repeatedly. For multiple personality disorder press 2, 3, 4 and 5. For paranoia just hang up. We know who you are.

[Pussifer]

Re: AI is now top of my list...

See icon ---->

[Gary Stewart]

Re: AI is now top of my list...

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1. After spending a great deal of my professional career doing assembly language programming I came to the conclusion long ago that being obsessive/compulsive is a definite plus. I'm just not sure if I was obsessive/compulsive to begin with or if assembly language drove me to it. I believe that it was the latter. Having spent the rest of my career, at least when not doing hardware design, programming in C I came to the conclusion that while not absolutely necessary, it is within a hair's breadth of being required there too.

Getting a little closer to the topic at hand, rising memory prices affect AI too and one has to wonder given the massive amounts of memory, processors, energy, and water needed if there will be enough money left over for profits. And what will happen if there is not.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: AI is now top of my list...

"And what will happen if there is not."

A welcome glut of cheap 2md hand memory for the rest of us.

[that one in the corner]

Re: AI is now top of my list...

But not necessarily in a format we can use.

Just like all the "GPU" boards that are missing the bits needed to actually get the graphics out onto a display.

[joeldillon]

Re: AI is now top of my list...

Hmm well I do assembly language programming on a hobby basis because my hobby is my own compiler (well it actually generates straight machine code, to be fair). Writing assembly is a fairly niche thing even with small microcontrollers these days given you can program a Cortex-M purely in C.

[AceRimmer1980]

Re: AI is now top of my list...

I learnt about pointers, arrays, calling API's, more besides, all from assembly coding in the 80s. Today's vibe coders just run away crying if their hands aren't held for them the entire way.

[Dan 55]

I see the future and it's some very thin clients

If Raspberry Pi though that 2GB for the Pi 500 could be too expensive and had to launch a 1GB version, we'll probably be going back to X terminals pretty soon. The AI bubble couldn't have worked out better for Big Tech who prefer renting over selling and cloud over local, almost as if they engineered it that way deliberately...

[werdsmith]

Re: I see the future and it's some very thin clients

Pi 500 has 8 GB. The 500+ has 16GB. There is no 2GB version.

[Dan 55]

Re: I see the future and it's some very thin clients

Oops, slip of the keyboard. I was thinking of the Pi 5.

[DrewPH]

Re: I see the future and it's some very thin clients

As we all realised, apart perhaps from werdsmith.

[werdsmith]

Re: I see the future and it's some very thin clients

Nope, I realised it, but I decided to play because it was a very silly straw man comment anyway.

[Dan 55]

Re: I see the future and it's some very thin clients

Really? HP's already warned their laptops are going to be more expensive and have less RAM. Expect laptop memory to halve but 4GB isn't enough for Windows 11.

[that one in the corner]

Re: I see the future and it's some very thin clients

> going back to X terminals

X? X?

Don't you know we're supposed to be supporting Wayland now and washing our hands of all that dusty old-fashioned "X" stuff?

Surely you *meant* to say

> going to Wayland terminals

just like this - hang on, it doesn't seem to be working; it can't be broken, it's the very latest thing...

[MyffyW]

Re: I see the future and it's some very thin clients

Yes, AI or otherwise, we are well and truly back into the era of rentier capitalism.

It'll be feudalism next, and we'll look back at even these days as some sepia-tinged bliss.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ouch

The price rises for the Pi 5 are quite steep - 21% for 16GB, 19% for 8GB, 17% for 4GB, and 10% for 2GB. Memory now accounts for almost a fifth of the cost of the 16GB version.

I expect there is also pressure to increase the price of the 8GB Pi 500 and 16GB Pi 500+.

For a product which had such appeal for being low cost I don't know what its future is now Raspberry Pi are moving more towards desktop and industrial products. I don't see the 16GB offering value for money and I can't see a Pi 5 1GB having much appeal even for makers - Are there many applications requiring the speed of a Pi 5 but not memory?

The $15 Pi Zero 2W, even with only 512MB, seems to be the best option for makers. If they increased its memory it would be even more popular but would cannibalise other sales.

I think Raspberry Pi have lost their way and the steadily declining stock price reflects that.

[Flocke Kroes]

Re: Ouch

Presumably the competition will also experience cost pressure from RAM and will increase their prices too. All comparable products will have a similar drop in value for money.

[Dan 55]

Re: Ouch

If the price of RAM has quadruped in months, do you expect RPi to absorb that cost and lose money on every purchase?

[Jason Bloomberg]

Re: Ouch

It's a shame Pi and other SBC don't have socketed memory; then you could buy what you can afford and upgrade when prices fall.

[Gary Stewart]

Re: Ouch

Ah, sockets I remember them well. Unfortunately the "socketed" memory due to modern IC packaging would have to be some form of memory module. Since there is no standard SBC memory module specification it would probably increase the price. Using standard laptop SO-DIMMs might help keep the prices down but they are large compared to most SBCs. I'm not sure how much the new CAMM2 laptop memory module would help with that.

[James Hughes 1]

Re: Ouch

But the socketed memory is more expensive than chip down....

[that one in the corner]

Re: Ouch

> For a product which had such appeal for being low cost

He says, missing the bit which said

>> 1 GB Raspberry Pi 4 could be had for the same price as a 256 MB Raspberry Pi 1 from 2012 – $35.

Then continuing with

> The $15 Pi Zero 2W, even with only 512MB, seems to be the best option for makers

So R'Pi are still producing boards of useful to makers and tinkerers. Which leaves us with

> I think Raspberry Pi have lost their way

You basically don't think that R'Pi should ever have any boards that are useful to other segments, they should just restrict themselves and thumb their noses at anyone who has a different use case?

[Jimjam3]

Re: Ouch

Ah, yes they should diversify. Maybe start selling computer displays or how about low cost fashion? /s

[GraXXoR]

Re: Ouch

Mainstream branded DDR5 RAM prices have exploded... Take this 32 GIG of Corsair PC5-44800 (16x2) just reached 100,000 yen in Akihabara's Yodobashi Camera, the largest electronics and appliance store in Japan. I purchased that in September for 22,000.. That's close to 500% what my school purchased it for 3 months ago.

That's $US 640 for 32GB which it $US 20 per GB...

The last time RAM was this expensive was around 2003.

AI has literally set RAM prices back 22 years.

[Steve Graham]

When the AI bubble bursts, there will be loads of gear available at knock-down prices.

[Dan 55]

I wouldn't bet on RAM prices falling as quick as they rise.

[theOtherJT]

Unless you're looking for rackable gear I wouldn't bank on it. The half dozen ML servers I have sitting in my build room waiting for the finance team to finally agree that they've depreciated to the point where we can throw them out* are most definitely not the sort of thing you'd want in your home office, and the new ones are even more specialised.

The GPUs rely on case airflow for cooling, the mainboards have so much random shit in their bioses that they take an age of middle earth to boot, and all the CPUs are dog slow but massively multicore because that's useful for orchestration to the GPUs, which is what they were for - oh, and obviously they're all full of ECC ram which most consumer boards won't take. It'd be pretty hard to repurpose them to anything end-user facing.

* We did a cloud migration thing, and now we're not allowed to use any on-prem iron any more because otherwise we're not "Getting best value" from the cloud, but the on-prem machines still have a book value too high to get rid of, but not high enough for one of the finance team to take the time out of their busy schedule to establish if they have any actual resale value and try and move them on, so there they sit...

[Doctor Syntax]

You seem to be underestimating the huge value of beancounter's time. I'm sure everything they're doing is perfectly optimised.

[CountCadaver]

Unless manufacturers/corporates landfill the lot and write it off as a "tax loss"

[MyffyW]

That, unfortunately, has a non-zero chance of happening

[Blackjack]

No thanks I think I will use my 17 year old computer instead; it has 4 GB of Ram.

[werdsmith]

Thanks for letting us know.

[LogicGate]

You showoff!

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

In the UK doesn't your computer have to be over 18 to read el'reg ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out the Intel 3rd gen “Penryn” 45mn. The pi4 is faster, but it doesn’t heat your room at the same time.

[Richard Tobin]

But just think

how cheap it will be when the AI bubble bursts.

[GraXXoR]

Re: But just think

Yeah, but that's assuming we'll still have jobs and enough residual wealth to buy anything beyond subsistence.

[Anonymous Coward]

Users who need more memory for modern applications

"Modern", but so rarely "better". For the user. Especially the insane requirements for a web browser.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Users who need more memory for modern applications

"What do you mean, 3TB of virtual memory for a web page is too much?"

[Dwarf]

Slop, Slop, Crash, Reboot

So, AI increases the costs for those that don't give a damn about AI - by consuming everything - everyone's data, all the graphics cards, all the CPU's, all the RAM, all the storage, all the power and pushing ther prices up for everone, whilst producing inaccurate regurgitations of other peoples information or generating random fake videos that nobody needed.

The time can't come soon enough when this all falls flat on its face.

[James Hughes 1]

Re: Slop, Slop, Crash, Reboot

Yup, I think that just about covers it.

[Jimjam3]

Rasp pi

Had a Pi some 9 years ago used as a DNS server but it died within a year.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Rasp pi

Lesson - Always go for a 17 year old PC with 4GB ram

[Lee D]

Re: Rasp pi

Okay, so I "beta" tested the RPi 1 back in the day, and my kit was used to help diagnose the early USB/SD bus-sharing problems directly with Broadcom.

The early ones weren't AMAZING but they were still pretty good.

I now run my house from a rack full of Pi's, doing all kinds of jobs, and have no association with Broadcom/RPi. In fact, Pi 5 will likely be my last due to commercialisation and selling out (not the original purpose).

They are incredibly stable and very low power. A rack full of them runs off my homebrew solar setup and costs nothing to run.

And they're running everything from Plex to HomeAssistant to BirdNet-Pi to tvHeadend to Traccar to FlightAware to RTL-433 (three of them, pulling in different frequencies for different purposes including home-automation) to netboot.xyz to Apache to DNS, DHCP, VPN, etc.

They're pretty bulletproof.

Now you can criticise them for the shit that was "this is for education" (I work in education, they've never given a damn and their resources are worthless for teachers). You can criticise them for still running with pathetic RAM capacities and increasing prices (sorry, but going DOWN to 1Gb is ridiculous... they really should just make nothing less than an 8Gb version nowadays), for selling out to industry (so much stuff is just a Pi in a branded box nowadays, and they always prioritise stock to those rather than to the hobbyists that helped launch them, it was almost impossible to get a high-memory Pi 5 for over a year), for failing to care about any other OS than Raspi (Ubuntu - any version - still can't run the DVB-T hat reliably because it doesn't bundle the correct kernel driver and NOBODY has fixed it for years now), etc.

But the kit itself? It's pretty reliable and stable now.

Shame is that it's getting too expensive, and obtaining the one you want is often difficult. My next may well be a clone in the same footprint and then starting to replace the Pi 2, 3, 4's that I still have in active service (and several Pi 1's that work just fine but just aren't powerful enough nowadays).

[werdsmith]

Re: Rasp pi

Now you can criticise them for the shit that was "this is for education" (I work in education, they've never given a damn and their resources are worthless for teachers).

Many people haven't yet worked out that Raspberry Pi Ltd are computer hardware developer and vendor with strong software support.

Meanwhile Raspberry Pi Foundation is the organisation with charitable status that deals with education.

The two are separate in their main purpose, one begat the other and they have a familial relationship but they are two different things. Raspberry Pi foundation give many damns and they are engaged in education, and for this they don't necessarily need or use Raspberry Pi hardware to do that.

[James Hughes 1]

Re: Rasp pi

Yes, it's very annoying that even after 13 years (when they separated), people still think the Foundation is the one behind the hardware.

[doublelayer]

Re: Rasp pi

There are two problems with these complaints:

1. The person whose post you're complaining about didn't once mention either entity's name. They never said "Raspberry Pi LTD [sorry, Raspberry Pi Holdings now] doesn't care about education", so pointing out that it's the foundation that's supposed to doesn't indicate an inaccuracy.

2. The foundation and the limited company that make the hardware are ostensibly still connected in that the foundation controls 49% of the shares of the company, five times as much as the next highest shareholder. Even if the post had made the mistake, which they did not, the responses are written as if this was explaining that the McDonald's restaurant company and McDonald Centre at Oxford are not the same when the difference is supposed to be much smaller.

As responses to challenging the foundation on its primary stated purpose, incorrect pedantry isn't the most useful.

[Lee D]

Re: Rasp pi

The Foundation's resources are SHITE for teaching unless you're already an RPi (and other electronics) expert.

Sorry, but it's always been true.

25+ years working IT in education, and no matter how many times you give that stuff to even ICT teachers, they don't consider it of much value at all.

[45RPM]

I think I’m probably as close to being a Pi flanboy (see what I did there?) as anyone. I love a Raspberry Pi and, yes, there are cheaper devices - but they lack the support and the ecosystem so, for me, Raspberry Pi reigns supreme. But…

What’s the point?

Maybe I’m missing something but I think that a computer as powerful as the Pi 5 (or even the Pi 4) needs more than 1GB RAM. If you can get by on 1GB RAM then you’ll probably find that the Pi 3 or even the Pi 2 is adequate for your needs. This just seems to be a marketing thing - Pi 5 now available for super cheap (except not really).

If you want a 5, save up. Get one with at least 4GB. If you think 1GB is fine just save and get a 3.

[werdsmith]

It was probably easier to make a 1GB Pi5 than a Zero 3W with 1GB, but the Zero 3W 1GB would cover most uses for a 1GB Pi5 (which is probably for headless dedicated tasks).

But keeping a low cost version available is important for perception, as is keeping the 1GB Pi 4 at $35.

[45RPM]

An excellent point. The biggest limiting factor for the Pi Zero is its limited memory - otherwise it’s excellent for those headless use-cases.

And now I have an ear-worm. Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner.

[blu3b3rry]

I'm not sure that RPi will be alone in having to increase prices....had a look recently at a 32GB DDR4 kit for a spare PC and the cost was simply not worth it for brand new! I'll probably end up accepting a bit of risk and buying some second hand.

All up the 8GB Pi5 desktop setup I put together earlier this year including the nicely made Argon ONE case, 500GB NvME SSD and PSU was ~ £160.

I didn't think that was too bad for a machine with ten years of support and likely a far better lifespan than one of the Intel N100 N95 no-brand mini PC's you find on Amazon, which are all you can really get for a similar price if you want new.

Perhaps not as powerful as one of the mini PC's but it's more than adequate for web browsing and office stuff, and likely quieter too.

[James Hughes 1]

Yes, the DRAM prices hikes have been mad across the board - Google will find loads of PC manufacturers hiking prices. It's affecting everything.