We know what day it is but these Raspberry Pi price hikes are no joke

Raspberry Pi has introduced a 3 GB variant of the Pi 4 as soaring memory costs are passed on to customers. Just over a year ago, we were scratching our heads over the 16 GB Pi 5 blowing past the $100 barrier, but prices have climbed even since then. There was a $25 rise in December 2025, followed by another $60 in February …

[ICL1900-G3]

Love

I love Raspberry pis, I've had at least one since they first arrived, but difficult to justify ar those sort of prices. They were a cheap, low power solution. And now they aren't.

[werdsmith]

Re: Love

Yes they are still cheap, effectively cheaper than when they arrived in 2012. It is not compulsory to buy the higher spec’d devices in the range.

[Ian Johnston]

Re: Love

You can buy a second hand desktop with much faster processor, much more RAM and an SSD (no paint around with SD cards) for a fraction of the cost of a Pi. So unless you have an actual need for a small box ...

[ChrisC]

Re: Love

...or a need to not be using second hand kit. Otherwise, why not compare against the cost of a used Pi to see how cost-effective it might be to remain within that ecosystem?

[sured]

Re: Love

There is no RPi ecosystem, just various independent devices. That should equal choice and be a good thing, but modern RPi products seem like different desktop form factors. The 40pin is now there out of obligation and not application.

Today you can buy a Intel N150 (x86) and match the power usage of a RPI for any embedded project with the advantage that you can increase power consumption and performance with the N150 if you need to.

[ChrisC]

Re: Love

So you're saying that every single RPi variant has its own unique software stack, and any experience you might have in developing for one is utterly useless when tasked with developing for another? Or that they all have unique hardware specs such that it's impossible to migrate from one RPi-based design to another without having to relearn everything there is to know about the physical interface between your electronics and what's on the RPi itself?

Hmm no, I think you'll find there's actually quite a lot of commonality across the range, which means that once you've adopted RPi into your R&D team, it becomes much easier to continue using future variants than it is to adopt a completely different platform. That's what I was referring to by "ecosystem".

N150 as an alternative - sure, so long as I'm able to either:

a) learn enough, quickly enough to meet the required development timeline, about integration of naked x86 devices so I can stick the N150 directly onto my PCB, or

b) find an off the shelf board which does all of that nasty low level integration work for me, whilst also offering a similar level of integration difficulty as a RPi board/CM, or

c) find an off the shelf N150-based system which already meets, or is capable of meeting, all of the requirements (size, regulatory approvals etc.) our overall product has to meet

That's the point about RPi - across its entire product range, it already offers most things to most people, so it shouldn't be difficult to understand why it's become the processing core of choice for an increasing number of products. Yes, you may well be able to find an alternative that ticks *some* of the boxes, and which might therefore be genuinely viable as an alternative for products which only require *those* characteristics of the RPi, but it's not quite as simple as just saying "oh yeah, use an x86 thing instead", because whilst that will tick the performance box quite easily, if performance is the only concern in your design then you might already have based it around an x86 box anyway. It's all of the *other* boxes ticked by the RPi family which make it harder to replace.

[werdsmith]

Re: Love

No, you can’t.

A small box, low power consumption, GPIO, unparalleled maker support and community, long term guarantees. Buyers warranty.

I mean, I could go to the local shop for a sandwich this lunchtime, or for the same price I could get a second hand bicycle pump.

The matter being addressed is that Raspberry Pi in 2012 brought a $35 to market for a cheap way to experiment etc. In 2026 they still sell a $35 computer and some even cheaper ones.

I can go and buy a second hand bore box, or take one off the shelf here, but that is totally irrelevant.

[retiredFool]

Re: Love

I'm not sure why you were downvoted. I buy pi's because they have gpio. I don't use them for general use so I don't know why people compare them for that. And I've started to use their pico's for exactly the same reason, and add pretty low power @40ma or less draw. I've also a few beaglebones for the same reason, but found the community support for beaglebone not as good.

[Simon Harris]

Re: Love

"I don't use them for general use so I don't know why people compare them for that"

I suspect there was a bit of that going on with the article subheading's "underpowered Linux computer",

but like you, I'd use them for homebrew gadgetry rather than as a substitute for a desktop/laptop computer, so they don't really compare for me either.

[doublelayer]

Re: Love

"I don't use them for general use so I don't know why people compare them for that."

I'd have thought it was obvious: some people do use them for that, likely the people doing the comparisons. There's a reason why "general use" is called that. That can be a reason why the comparisons aren't useful to you, but it doesn't make them invalid or really argue against them. I'd note that the keyboard 500s and 400 are especially likely to be used for general use and there are plenty of people who have those.

Many of the things I do with my Pis could be done with equal ease on a laptop with nothing connected to the GPIOs at all. I use the Pis there because I don't need as much computing as a bigger computer could provide, I like the silent and low-power operation when running all the time, and I have them already. Those are reasons I chose those even though I could have gotten more computing for a similar price (though my experience with secondhand machines isn't as good as those making these comparisons). It is a valid comparison I made when choosing and I chose the Raspberry Pi after doing it.

[BartyFartsLast]

Re: Love

Agreed, there seem to be a number of people here who just don't get the point of a Pi and seem to think it's only purpose is as a Linux desktop to replace an Intel or AMD PC.

[DS999]

Re: Love

Depends on where and what for you need GPIO. There are plenty of USB to GPIO solutions, and there are also USB extenders over cat5 cable. In the few instances over the past 20 years I've needed GPIO it turned out the latter was a much better solution since I needed the GPIO to talk to a particular application that was running on a "real" PC I had. Adding a RP in the middle would have made it a lot more complicated, and I had or could easily install "dark" cat5e to bridge the distance.

[retiredFool]

Re: Love

Timing, I'm guessing it wasn't critical for your project.

[mark l 2]

Re: Love

While for some things a second hand x86 PC might be cheaper and offer better value than a Raspberry PI, power consumption isn't generally one of them. Where as a Raspberry PI or other SBC can be left on all 24/7 and only using a small amount of power without you worrying that your next electric bill is going to give you a heart attach.

For example I have a used Dell Optiplex that you could pick up easily on ebay for just a few quid, but it also draws about 65W of power at idle and 100W when the CPU is stressed out. And a ARM based SBC (not actually a Raspberry PI but similar) which runs off a 10W PSU and usually draws about 5W at idle.

[Caspian Prince]

Re: Love

I'm not sure the £1 extra on my electric bill is really going to upset me that much.

[Spanky_McPherson]

Re: Love

But it's not £1 extra, is it? For those of us buying electricity in the UK, a constant 65W draw costs over £140 per year. (0.065kW * 24h * 0.25GBP/kWh * 365).

I spent £300 on a new machine (intel core ultra 7 155h) averaging 10W, to replace a ryzen 3700x desktop averaging 150W. Performance isn't much different, and I'll make the cost back in electricity savings.

Same reason you should replace your old tumble drier with a heat pump model, even though it's £200 more expensive to buy.

[retiredFool]

Re: Love

I believe it was Intel who coined the phrase "a buck a watt" in the early 2000's when juice in the US ran about 10c/KWh. Now probably closer to a buck fifty. So yes, power sounds like a nit unless you add it up 24x7.

[Roland6]

Re: Love

>” Same reason you should replace your old tumble drier with a heat pump model, even though it's £200 more expensive to buy.”

I passed on that one; I wanted my washing to dry in a reasonable amount of time. Plus I wanted my drier to be simple enough so that it could be fixed and would last circa 20 years without needing to be replaced. Talking to service engineers, heat pump driers aren’t generally field repairable and so are more likely to be scrapped early.

Just had to replace a 20 year old washing machine (design defect / built-in obsolescence in the drum mountings), the laugh is the old one used a few more litres of water than the new one, but has very similar electricity consumption. However, it could comfortably handle a family of 4 adults washing in one day (along with the tumble drier), unlike the new washer (same vendor as old one) which struggles to complete a wash in under 2 hours and lacks many of the useful features. The sad fact is given the build quality the manufacturers own engineers don’t expect the new washing machine to last 10 years, hence why the maximum warranty is 6 years…

Obviously, having solar panels, my energy considerations differ to those who are wholly dependent on the grid supply.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Love

That’s the difference between being able to USB C or Solar power something …. and requiring mains electricity.

[Contrex]

Re: Love

I scored a used Lenovo M900 Tiny desktop with 8 gb RAM and a 250 GB ssd for £100 from eB** because I wanted a replacement for my R Pi 4 that has been my home NAS for 7 years (it works fine, just fancied some hardware to play with). It was advertised with Windows 10 but when I started it there was Windows 11 Pro. That soon got replaced by Debian 14. Everything is just peachy. 6 USB 3 ports. I still have 2 Pis if I get the urge to make a robot or a weather station.

[Francis King]

Re: Love

True up to a point. That's why I have a lot of secondhand Lenovo laptops and secondhand Xeon workstations - ideal for Linux and BSD - but there are a few things where Raspberry Pi has been important to me - building a PiDP-10 - running Mathematica.

Mathematica is an expensive piece of methematical software. I have an old copy on an HP laptop which is now falling apart. Mathematica is free on Raspberry Pi for personal non-commercial use.

[MataS90]

Re: Love

The rpi is meant to be small, cheap and reliable. Not a whole PC. It's meant to be a computer. Not a personal computer

[Dan 55]

Re: Love

Yes, RPi should do the impossible and hold prices down on their flagship products, i.e. subsidise them, while the entire world is raising their prices because the supply chain is completely broken.

[Roland6]

Re: Love

Well, this price increase does reveal an Achilles heel - the use of soldered on memory. There really should be a variant that takes one (or two) DDR3 or DDR4 SoDIMMs, ie. The modules that were commonly used in laptops 5 or so years back - the devices (and memory modules) that are heading towards landfill…

[Richard 12]

Re: Love

The sockets and board area for those used to cost more than the RAM. That's probably why they didn't do that.

[Valeyard]

Love my pis. still use a few of the original lineup and a zero w, but everything since and in between has been too much

[werdsmith]

I noted today that at one of the official Pi sellers the Pi 500+ is now priced just £4 cheaper than a 32K BBC Model B cost in 1982.

[Dan 55]

Does it come with Granny's Garden though?

[Mishak]

Did you allow for inflation?

If not, the you still get a lot more for a lot less ;-)

However, RAM prices are crazy at the moment - even Apple's RAM upgrade options look "reasonable".

[Anonymous Coward]

I've no idea whether you're referring to the short-lived £335 launch price or the £399 it went to very shortly after that.

Regardless, UK prices have gone up almost four or over five times since then (*), so while the 500+ may be expensive by Pi standards, it's still just a fraction of the price of the BBC MIcro in real terms.

(*) Former is CPI-based figure, the latter is RPI-based.

[werdsmith]

I was going for the coincidence of the absolute figure, just for the laugh. Nothing serious.

I appreciate the BBC was a rich persons machine. In fact web sources suggest an average annual salary back then was £5000 making the Beeb a more than a months take home wages. So it was Sinclair for me and 3 years of credit agreement for the parents of spoilt kid Kevin.

[Anonymous Coward]

Was considering saying something similar, i.e. that the BBC Micro was a great computer, but it was *never* cheap.

And it also has to be borne in mind that the base price didn't include the disc drives and Microvitec Cub monitor (*) that most of us got used to using it with. I don't know the exact price of either, but given the price of disk drives and colour monitors at that time, I suspect that, collectively, they'd have seen that base price double at the very least.

(*) I'd wondered whether my experience was purely local- i.e. maybe due to a purchasing agreement with the regional council in my part of Scotland?- but apparently the BBC-Micro-and-Microvitec-Cub pairing was ubiquitous throughout the UK.

[Vometia has insomnia. Again.]

I just know that as a kid in Jarrow, £400 for the model B without any extras (which would've meant using it with the B&W portable and granddad's cassette player) was way out of my family's league; and most others too, there was only one kid in our year who had one at home I can remember offhand. The school had several for small values thereof, in addition to the inevitable PETs and a 380Z that used to roam around the science labs on the trolley with the big telly.

[Dan 55]

Microvitec are still going, if you need a monitor which can do old aspect ratios and refresh rates.

Edit: No they aren't, their website seems to have disappeared sometime over the past year.

[Michael Strorm]

Assuming you mean microvitec.co.uk, that appears to have been still active circa mid-January 2025, but was replaced by a holding page by the following month.

Still surprising it was going that long, wonder if it was (technically) the same company- older versions of the site describe it as "Microvitec PLC" rather than "Microvitec Ltd." as they did latterly.

[Roland6]

> I appreciate the BBC was a rich persons machine.

No that was the IBM PC at circa £1700, the BBC micro B (£399) was much more budget friendly. Although the Amstrad PC launched in 1986 at £399 illustrates how quickly prices dropped once there was a market.

The surprising thing is how much the IT industry derides the second user market (eg. MS W11 hardware requirement) - which enables a much larger (and less well off) audience to use the products, even though industries like the motor industry practically depend on it.

[werdsmith]

No that was the IBM PC at circa £1700, the BBC micro B (£399) was much more budget friendly.

I illustrated in my comment that the Model B 32k was more than a months take home wages for the average salary in 1982. There were budget friendly micros on the market but the Beeb was not one of them. It was equivalently priced to a Max Studio or a well spec'd MacBook pro.

The IBM PC just didn't exist in my world then, it was a business computer rarely seen outside corporate offices.

[Roland6]

> There were budget friendly micros on the market but the Beeb was not one of them.

I don’t remember the Beeb being targeted at being parent budget friendly, it was more school/aspirational parent friendly, which given the price of computers back then was “cheap” for the industry.

Yes £2,500 (median UK net pcm income 2025) does buy a decent spec PC (laptop or desktop) and a not badly spec’d MacBook Pro 14-inch.

> The IBM PC just didn't exist in my world then

Well given it only launched in the US in 3Q81 and prior to its official Uk launch in 1Q83 was only available as a grey import, it didn’t exist in many people’s worlds.

[Dwarf]

Rich is always a relative term.

[Lost in Cyberspace]

My Pi 4Bs are currently unused

2x Pi 4B devices currently sitting on the side, waiting for a use. Too valuable to sell off, but too underpowered for what I wanted to use them for (I set up a couple of N100 machines with 16GB and 2TB NVMe a while back instead).

I figure that I can find something hardware-based that uses the headers... but maybe they are a solution just looking for a problem right now.

[Vometia has insomnia. Again.]

Re: My Pi 4Bs are currently unused

Get a PiDP10 and 11 for them! Flashing lights and everything, they're awesome.

[DoctorPaul]

Re: My Pi 4Bs are currently unused

Sounds perfect for a pair of pi-holes. Mine are running on a pair of 3Bs and have been faultless for many years, including the recent addition of unbound so my DNS is completely independent.

[BartyFartsLast]

Re: My Pi 4Bs are currently unused

Overpowered for a Pihole, mine runs on a Pi2 now, until a year or so ago it was on a Pi Model B and I don't actually remember why I retired it

[Dwarf]

Re: My Pi 4Bs are currently unused

Probably because it ate its MicroSD card.

This is generally when I decide its time to rebuild mine, then its always a rummage in the spare parts box to see what might be a better solution for the next couple of years. Then when I've realise there is nothing useful in there, in comes the next delivery from your favorite delivery company of the day and off we all go again for another couple of years.

[Annihilator]

Re: My Pi 4Bs are currently unused

“ Too valuable to sell off”

Arguably the ideal time to sell if you don’t have a short to medium term use for them

[Anonymous Coward]

The 500+ is good, but not that good

Typing this on a 500+ I bought on release day. Its an excellent desktop computer, perfect for light gaming through WINE, mail, browsing etc, but holy hell if I was going to spend 450 on a new computer now I would wait a bit and get a Macbook Neo. Luckily I have enough spare Pis for what I might need to do in the next year or so until the AI bubble pops and we can afford nice things again.

[Bebu sa Ware]

3Gb ram ?

Curious whether that is the board populated with 2Gb and 1Gb parts or a defective 4Gb part that is good for 3G ? I wouldn't have thought there was enought board real estate for two parts.

Just checked the RPi5 16Gb on my usual Pi shop's web site: AUD500.00 ± loose change - I can purchase a refurbished 10th or 11th gen i5, 16Gb mini system for that or less (Dell, Lenovo, Acer, or HP if you insist) with Win11 pro preinstalled (if that is your preferred vice.)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 3Gb ram ?

I bought a refurbished mini desktop rather than a Pi for experimenting with Home Assistant.

I'd probably have learned less about Linux if I'd bought a Pi because this way I ended up making the machine multipurpose. And now I know barely anything about Docker as well.

[ChrisC]

Re: 3Gb ram ?

Second hand x86 boxes are all well and good if all you care about is getting the most performance for the least amount of money, but that's *always* been true. Pis haven't just been popular because of their price/performance ratio when compared against a regular PC, they've also been popular because of the other factors - e.g. reduced power consumption and physical size - which remain differentiators compared with a desktop/laptop PC.

So yes, a second hand box might be a viable alternative, on a price/performance basis, to a new Pi for some users, but if their use-case can be reasonably met by the former, then just how much of a target customer for the latter were they in the first place?

[graemep]

Re: 3Gb ram ?

The physical size is not so appealing: there are very small x86 machines now. Especially true for the 500.

The cheaper and smaller ones, yes.

You can also embed a Pi in something else, and that is where SBCs excel.

[LBJsPNS]

Re: 3Gb ram ?

And of course my clients will be overjoyed when the interactive exhibit I deliver is running on a second hand system. Because that's a very professional approach.

Yeah, it will work in your home lab. But definitely not in all applications.

[Tron]

Re: 3Gb ram ?

How exactly would they know it was a second hand system? A PC is a PC.

Pi PCs were nudging towards becoming a real option as a cheap PC alternative for the retail environment, but there were still roadblocks. 2nd hand PCs come with built in HDDs, CD/DVD drives, more USB ports. For the retail chain, that matters. As does the need to come to terms with Linux.

The 2nd hand problem was one EVs face, They were never going to compete with second hand ICE vehicles on price. Only the wealthy were going to buy them for some time.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 3Gb ram ?

Ah, excellent, you're advocating dishonesty as a business practice.

[doublelayer]

Re: 3Gb ram ?

Why would they know or care? I'm not sure what the interactive exhibit is, but I'm imagining a thing in a museum. So as long as the computer it's running on fits into the space for it, what does it matter whether the computer's new or old? The professional approach is making sure it's not going to fail, not buying new for the sake of saying so. If you bought a damaged system whose SSD is going to fail any minute, that's a problem, but in the exact same way that it's a problem if you build a Pi-based solution which is going to destroy the cheap SD card you put in it. Use components you don't expect to fail and either can be as professional.

[Hants]

Re: 3Gb ram ?

Agreed.

Try adding a second hand anything to a bill of material for an actual product, and wait for the unrepeatable responses from the purchasing department!

And what about availability in 5 or 10 years time? Products tend to stay in production much longer than initially predicted.

[doublelayer]

Re: 3Gb ram ?

It doesn't sound like the interactive exhibits are products that need to be frequently reconstructed. In that case, the only requirement is a computer of some kind capable of running the software, and there's no need to match a certain model. When building a bespoke system that there's only going to be one of, then there's little need to produce a rigid set of required hardware and advantages in not doing so like being able to replace or upgrade components when they break rather than requiring exactly the same thing.

There are plenty of valid reasons to use a Raspberry Pi. Continually narrowing things down to a requirement that says "it must be a Raspberry Pi, therefore your alternative is unacceptable" doesn't respond to comparisons considering the many cases where that is not required at all or it isn't required yet, comparisons those opposing the Pi are making since they're not yet committed to it. If someone is looking for a thing to run a DNS filter on, pointing out that someone else has designed an entire product range around a Pi and therefore can't just replace it does nothing to prove that they too should use one or that their argument about whether it's competitive is wrong. If you're trying to argue that it is wrong, you have to consider the situation they're arguing from, and one of the axioms there is that there are multiple options that could work and they're trying to optimize among them.

[LBJsPNS]

Re: 3Gb ram ?

"It doesn't sound like the interactive exhibits are products that need to be frequently reconstructed."

These are exhibits that children pound on eight hours a day seven days a week. Things break more regularly than one might assume, particularly when the exhibit is in a traveling exhibition. And there is no traveling exhibit company in the world that will accept second hand equipment. Most won't accept refurbished or B-stock.

[Rogerborg 2.0]

Re: 3Gb ram ?

The Hunterston B backup-backup rod drop logger system was delivered running on a 2nd hand PC, running NT 3.50 (with the 49 day overflow bug). Because that's what the customer had specified in the tender, and by Jove, they weren't going to be fobbed off with a free update to better, newer hardware and a (slightly more) functional OS.

[xenny]

Re: 3Gb ram ?

https://fudzilla.com/new-raspberry-pi-4-models-split-ram-across-dual-chips/ - they've started selling a Pi 4 revision with memory above and below the board.

[Dwarf]

Re: 3Gb ram ?

Silicon yields are always important. Flipping a couple of fusable links to permanently turn off the bad bits is always an option.

This way, partly working devices can be sold as functional devices, with a lower spec. I see nothing wrong with this approach, since it keeps things out of the rubbish bin for a bit and cost / performance is always a sliding scale. How much CPU power / RAM capacity / cost is enough for your project ?

[lglethal]

Hopes vs reality?

"We've said it before, but we'll say it again: the current situation is ultimately a temporary one, and we look forward to unwinding these price increases once it abates."

I really, really want to believe him when he says this. But I cant remember the last time that ANY company reduced prices after a supply chain debacle like this led to an increase in prices. When the prices go down, the profits go up, and well there's always an excuse for holding on to that extra cash ("We can reinvest it in the company to make you better products"*cough*pad our bonuses).

Maybe Raspberry will be different, because them being cheap IS there market. BUT, once higher prices are normalised, well things rarely come down, is all I'm saying...

[Michael Strorm]

Re: Hopes vs reality?

> once higher prices are normalised, well things rarely come down, is all I'm saying...

Except in the world of computers where prices over the long term haven't just come down, but have done so by many orders of magnitude over the decades. (Even if that trend has somewhat- finally- slowed in recent years.)

The current price increases are obviously the result of an AI-driven component shortage, and it's open to question what will happen after that bubble bursts (as it seems to be generally-accepted that it will at some point).

The RPi hasn't survived because it's the absolute best bang for the buck- you can get cheaper knockoffs from China, but they generally don't have the ecosystem or support that makes the RPi attractive. However, that only goes so far- if they kept the price high when component prices had fallen back to sane levels, there certainly would be the possibility of a much cheaper rival gaining traction and critical mass.

[doublelayer]

Re: Hopes vs reality?

The long-term example with computers is the same thing that most prices did in the initial stage of technological development because of extreme competition and fast improvement. Using the price trends from the 1990s isn't a good basis for predicting things today. I assume that RAM prices will eventually go back to normal and that Raspberry Pi will bring theirs down to match, and it helps that there are mostly only those two steps required since there are fewer parts in a Pi than there are in other computers. That's not a guarantee of either, and it's certainly not a guarantee that others will follow suit.

For example, I don't expect Apple to decrease their prices even though they claimed RAM prices is what made them increase them. Apple has been raising the price of the base-level iPhone for some time, and I expect they'll keep doing so until they think they're losing market share from doing it which might be why they decided to do a cheap Mac this year. Perhaps they could have, and if you compared the last three decades of Apple machines' prices then they did at various points there, but neither convinces me that they will again soon.

[Michael Strorm]

Re: Hopes vs reality?

To be clear, I was talking about bang-per-buck. My PC from last year was only somewhat cheaper than the one I bought 25-30 years ago, but the RAM, HDD (or rather, SSD) and CPU specs are all orders of magnitude higher.

Though, again, the improvements that led to that are skewed towards the earlier part of the period and have definitely slowed in recent years.

I take your point about Apple and the iPhone, but as I said, if RPi didn't decrease its price back down (even if it improves the spec to justify the higher price) and/or focused on the more expensive models, the pressure for someone else to fill its former low-end niche *would* eventually overcome RPi's established player advantage.

[xenny]

Re: Hopes vs reality?

here you go, albeit from early 2020: https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/new-price-raspberry-pi-4-2gb/

"The fall in RAM prices over the last year has allowed us to cut the price of the 2GB variant of Raspberry Pi 4 to $35."

[ChrisC]

Re: Hopes vs reality?

"But I cant remember the last time that ANY company reduced prices after a supply chain debacle like this led to an increase in prices."

The temporary rise in the price of electronics components due to the covid-related supply chain interruptions, and the temporary rise in the price of petrol/diesel following the invasion of Ukraine, are two that immediately spring to mind. Prices might not always drop as rapidly as they rise (hence the oft heard "prices rise like a rocket, but fall like a feather" criticism of suppliers), but it's rare for them not to return sooner or later to their previous levels once whatever it was that caused their rise is now done and dusted.

[abend0c4]

The inversion of capitalism

We seem to have reached a weird point in the history of capitalism where companies are bankrupting themselves (and possibly everyone else...) in their frenzy to supply things nobody wants while making it impossible for people to acquire the things they do want.

[bazza]

Re: The inversion of capitalism

It is pretty crazy.

It may balance out in the end; there's be a lot of bankrupt companies and second hand hardware fire sales. And, new prices will become cheap again. We kinda saw that when everyone stopped using GPUs for Bitcoin mining...

[ecofeco]

Re: The inversion of capitalism

Oh we've been here for quite some time.

Quite some time.

[Androgynous Cupboard]

Re: The inversion of capitalism

The ghost of Karl Marx is rubbing his spectral hands with glee and mouthing the words “called it”.

[bazza]

As a hard-nosed, old fashioned. don't-like-to-waste-resources programmer, I'm wondering how all those folk who've gotten lazy are getting on. Bloaty languages, inefficient data representations, large runtime environment memory requirements; they're all looking costly at the moment.

There once was an idea that it's OK to have containers replicating most of the same dependencies in both storage and in RAM. That's now looking a bit daft. There's a reason OS developers made sure that things like shared libraries were shared, both in RAM storage and on disk...

Probably folk could save a ton of money in looking at some glibc tweaks. The allocator in that - like many these days - likes to ask for and hang on to more memory than the program has actually asked for; it's good for ultimate speed. However, there may be some merit these days in reigning such allocator behaviour in. If one did that for all processes in an OS, that'd probably automatically cut RAM consumption for everything (even Java, C#, and other higher leverl languages).

I know that some versions of VmWare can de-dupe RAM. Neat trick. Do any other hypervisors do the same thing, or is that a Broadcom exclusive?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don’t believe my eyes

Did I just read something critical of Raspberry Pi in The Register?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Did I just read something critical of Raspberry Pi in The Register?

Are you new here?

[Anal Leakage]

Re: Did I just read something critical of Raspberry Pi in The Register?

No I am not. Maybe criticism in the comments but usually in articles it’s fawning praise and editorial defence of the platform’s long march away from what it was conceived to be, and toward what it was intended to counter.

[BinkyTheMagicPaperclip]

Only the Pi Zero and lower end Pis are a compelling case

For everything else you should look long and hard at whether a similar embedded or second hand (if you're a consumer) PC are a better option.

The Pi Zero is probably overkill compared to other embedded devices, but it's so cheap that the tooling provides an advantage, and it doesn't affect the overall price. Lots of interesting projects created with that.

Pi 3, 4, or 5? Vaguely like a PC, but with a pain in the arse 'BIOS' (via configuration files), the utterly cursed micro HDMI ports, USB ports that aren't actually USB ports because their power output is shared between all ports and doesn't meet the USB spec if fully populated.

Then you've got the fact the graphics hardware is generally a closed source black box (I understand this may be changing.. slowly) that necessitated reboots when used heavily every few weeks when I tried it. Just get a low power PC and be done with it.

I tried using it as a desktop - bad, bad idea. Moved on to a Wyse 5070 (great if you limit memory to <30GB), then a Dimension 3000 fanless client, where their only real disadvantage is the embedded intel GPU is a bit anaemic, but then again it was never designed to be great.

[James Hughes 1]

Re: Only the Pi Zero and lower end Pis are a compelling case

The 3D and graphics drivers have been fully open source for years. Your understanding is wrong.

I use a Pi 5 as a desktop, works fine. micro HDMI? Great! Pi 5 USB ports can provide up to 1.6A spread ofver the 4 ports. Not quite 500mA each (USB spec), but good enough for 99.99% of use cases. Need more power? Use a powered USB hub.

Second hand PC/laptop prices are going to increase rapidly, as demand increases.

If you having to reboot a Pi every few weeks, you are doing a lot better than my brand new Dell laptop/Win11 which freezes and needs rebooting two or three times a week. And that was over £1000.

[Gary Stewart]

I have been through many roller coaster RAM pricings over the last 50 years

Yep, the rising cost of Raspberry Pis due entirely to RAM shortages have reached the point where it is very difficult to find a good reason to buy one. Unfortunately this is clearly not limited to the Raspberry Pi and has indeed made the purchase of any new computer be on a must have basis. I'd like to throw in fast rising SSD prices as a major contributing factor for PC price rises. And while older preowned computers can fill some of that gap there are a couple of major problems with that. As more people turn to purchasing them the rise in demand will certainly cause their prices to rise too and in a lot of cases they will not comply with the Windows 11 "requirements". Being converted to a die hard Linux only user since Windows 7 (I actually began using Linux at Release 0.99 around 1992) the second one is not a problem for me but it will be a killer for a lot of people. Luckily being a Raspberry Pi user since it's introduction I have a couple of Pi 4's and 5's available for some ongoing projects where low power operation and/or portability are the main factors and their compute power is more than adequate. One is a home CUPS printer server and the other is a portable NFS server for my laptop. I also have a Pi 4 I want to use for a PiDP11 kit that I REALLY need to build. I'm just glad I bought them all well before the current massive price increases. As an example on the PC side I have a virtual server project that is on semi-permanent hold due RAM and SSD prices and most if not all cheaper PCs will not have enough RAM, storage, or compute power for this use. As I said in the title this not my first dance with RAM price increases although in all the previous cases their prices did eventually drop and keep dropping even as capacity and speed increased until the next price increase cycle. This time feels different as AI's hunger for RAM and storage, SSD and hard drives, seems to be insatiable even as it continues to increase it's demand to "feed me". I'd like to say that AI is doomed but there are some compelling applications that it appears to be very good at mainly dealing with sifting through vast amounts of prior research along with other data and coming up with novel solutions to material, chemical, medical, astronomical, and other scientific and engineering problems. I'm much less impressed with it's more human side attempts at "I" although language translation seems to be an area where it can be very useful. There are probably at least a few others I am not familiar with. So I believe that AI is here to stay in areas it works well at and most of those still require vast resources that will continue to increase. Only a massive increase in manufacturing capacity (as well as some Krell power technology) will help to tame the monster and it is for now more than a couple of years away.

[ecofeco]

Best recent quote

Best recent quote I've seen: "Remember when new tech actually benefited the average person?"

[Dan 55]

Re: Best recent quote

I’m Tired Of These Useless Jackasses Making The Computer Expensive

[weirdbeardmt]

Cover

I’d wager the regular price increase ofer the last couple of years are as much to do with going public as they are manufacturing and/or component prices; the latter serves as a neat cover.

[James Hughes 1]

Re: Cover

You would lose that bet. RAM prices have gone up 7 fold. These price increases are solely down to that.

[Groo The Wanderer - A Canuck]

The only way I'm buying any hardware in the near future is if I win the lottery or if I end up with a disaster and receive and insurance payout as a result. Otherwise I'm leaving the insanity of the current price models alone, hunkering down, and playing the games I already have on the hardware I already have with the software I already have. I'm off the treadmill for as long as possible...

[Lee D]

Just before Christmas I had the sense to order a Framework laptop to replace my ageing Windows 10 gaming laptop. The keys were falling off my old one, and even with an eBay spare, I was running out of W, A, S and D's.

So I got the Framework with the RTX 5070 in it. And I was going to order it with a ton of RAM, but I thought "No problem, I'll just buy some of my own later!".

FORTUNATELY, it arrived a little early and I saw the RAM prices starting to go up and said "Now or never" and managed to find Amazon's last 64GB DDR5 SODIMM, shipping from some warehouse in Belgium. It would take a few weeks to arrive but it was that or nothing, because everything else was suddenly twice the price.

I got it just right... the laptop arrived while I had the RAM on pre-order, and then I used it with 16Gb for a few weeks before the RAM arrived.

And now that I've retired the last Windows machine in my house, and I have a full-on gaming laptop, with Linux, a decent graphics card, a decent amount of RAM, and double-NVMe... I think I'm done now. The only other things in my house are a rack full of Pi's that are low-power and run off my solar and each do a few allocated jobs, which clearly I won't be adding to! And a Steam Deck. But I think I'm done for a few years now.

I blame MS for Windows 11 / TPM... forcing upgrades that nobody wants, so everyone clung to their old hardware, then AI for the RAM/storage problems, now Trump-problems...

There are a lot of people who are about to learn how to make the best of their machines, a lot of developers that are going to have to optimise their stuff before release, and even MS are now backing down from the local-app web-based nonsense that just consumes cycles and going back to native executables.

I think I've managed to duck under the wire, both personally and at work (where we replaced every single device last year), but I can imagine there are a LOT of places that are stuffed and will be ekeing out their kit for years to come by any means necessary (my previous workplace actually had 10 year old computers 2 years ago, and their solution was "Let's run ChromeOS Flex on them to get some more life out of them" - I don't want to IMAGINE what they're running now, or what they're going to have to be spending soon).

[Lee D]

Yeah, I was sucking my breath in through my teeth on my last Raspberry Pi 5, and that wasn't anywhere near these prices.

Absolutely nothing to do with the Pi people going fully commercial, right? Because ever since it's just been price hike after price hike.

I have every gen of Pi and a couple of extra 4's and 5's precisely BECAUSE they were cheap (and low power, which makes them cheap to run 24/7). If we're just throwing that aspect away now, then they're dead.

I might as well just buy a range of other devices that are more powerful, more suitable, etc. now.

[James Hughes 1]

Correct, nothing to do with going public. This is entirely due to RAM prices going up by a factor of 7 in the last 9 months.

Odd you should say going fully commercial. Raspberry Pi Ltd have been a fully commercial entity for 14 years since they split from the Foundation. The IPO made no difference to that, its just moved owner ship from the Foundation to the Public.

Good luck with finding alternatives - everything is going to suffer from the RAM prices hikes. This is not just affecting Raspberry Pi. Other SBC makers might be able to hold on to pricing for a bit longer, as their sales are relatively small and stock stays on the shelves longer, but they will have to raise prices, soon.

If you still want low costs, the Zero 2W is still at $15, and lower RAM varients of the Pi 4 and 5 have not changed, much, if at all.

[vh1]

Oh, boy... we'll have to go back to writing efficient software again...

[martinusher]

Is it a shortage or is it speculation?

We hear a lot about the demand from AI sucking up all the DRAM but that only makes sense if you assume that all DRAM is equal. Which is definitely not the case. A RPi doesn't need the kind of memory you'd find in AI systems, its a relatively low performance device. It might be said that all DRAM production is focused on high end parts but that doesn't make sense.

I reckon that its just old fashioned speculation. Finding out how much the market will bear by constricting or cornering supply (depending on who's doing it).

[fred_flinstone]

Bloat be gone

My first computer was a ZX Spectrum with 16k!

You could play games, write programs and even do serious stuff with 16k.

Now, my digital watch likely has a mb or two.

Point being maybe this is a good opportunity to relearn the art of efficient memory use, which could even lead to less bloat on mainstream software. And that would be a good thing.