Raspberry Pi 4 3GB Launches, Raspberry Pi Prices Go Up Again Due To RAM (phoronix.com) 45
AmiMoJo shares a report from Phoronix: Raspberry Pi prices are going up yet again due to the continued memory squeeze on the industry. To help offset the memory prices for some use-cases, Raspberry Pi also announced the introduction of the Raspberry Pi 4 3GB model at $83 to help fill the void between the 2GB and 4GB options.
The 3GB Raspberry Pi 4 was announced at $83.75 USD for those not needing quite 4GB of RAM and looking to save some memory given the ongoing price increases. The Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi 5 4GB models are seeing new $25 price increases, the 8GB models seeing $50 price increases, and the 16GB Raspberry Pi 5 is going up by $100. The Raspberry Pi 500+ is seeing a $150 price increase. The Raspberry Pi Compute Modules are also seeing increases from $11.25 to $100 USD.
The 3GB Raspberry Pi 4 was announced at $83.75 USD for those not needing quite 4GB of RAM and looking to save some memory given the ongoing price increases. The Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi 5 4GB models are seeing new $25 price increases, the 8GB models seeing $50 price increases, and the 16GB Raspberry Pi 5 is going up by $100. The Raspberry Pi 500+ is seeing a $150 price increase. The Raspberry Pi Compute Modules are also seeing increases from $11.25 to $100 USD.
Thank Trump (Score:1)
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You might have intended it as a joke, but semiconductor supplies go through the SoH, and while I don’t believe production has been interrupted due to a lack yet the supplies are being drawn down and will eventually run out resulting in increased cost for RAM, CPUs and GPUs and possibly even shortages. About a third of the helium supply goes via SoH and without it you ain’t getting more RAM, nor am I. Or MRI scans. Fortunately there are a few months of supply, more or less. Maybe less.
how? (Score:3)
How is it that 1/4 of a phone costs as much as 1/2 of a phone?
Thank AI (Score:5, Insightful)
How is it that 1/4 of a phone costs as much as 1/2 of a phone?
Because the phone was likely built from components source before the AI-RAM-apocalypse, and if it's from a major vendor, they have better protection...but rest-assured, their costs will go up as well. We're all fucked, component-wise. Thank the big AI players for buying every chip they can find...using revenue passed among themselves in a circular economy, somehow hoping that if they just buy more hardware, their LLM slop factories will produce something somewhat useful, like they promised...instead of the garbage they're slopping out today, which falls far, far, far short of what they claim it does.
Re: Thank AI (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok but this is true in general. Raspi is just grossly overpriced even on a good day.
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If Pi had the sales volume of even a low-tier phone manufacturer, the price would be much lower. There just aren't enough hacker nerds out there.
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I still don't understand why any SBC application that is not emulating classic videogames needs more than 4 GB, let alone 8 GB.
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I still don't understand why any SBC application that is not emulating classic videogames needs more than 4 GB, let alone 8 GB.
A lot of people are using raspis as workstations, with any heavy lifting being done elsewhere. They are perfectly adequate for most normal daily tasks, silent, and use very little power. There's a lot to like about them, they're just overpriced for what little you're getting. If you didn't have to pay extra for basic features like an M.2 slot maybe they would be worth it. After you pay for a case, power supply (and they are picky as fuck about that) and so on, you're not saving any money compared to buying
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Re: Thank AI (Score:4, Funny)
Banana Pi and Orange Pi for about half the price. What did I win?
Orange Pi 5 8GB seems the same price as the Raspberry Pi 5 8GB except that the latter comes with a powersupply for 150EUR, but the Orange Pi 5 comes with just the board for 158EUR.
The Banana Pi M4 4GB is 131EUR, the comparable Raspberry Pi 5 4GB is 119EUR
You won the quick draw award. It is given for people who are quick to shoot their mouth without actually thinking or researching their answer. Due to budget cuts we are unable to ship the award to you, so in lieu of the actual award you can print out this reply and hang it proudly on your wall.
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Ok but this is true in general. Raspi is just grossly overpriced even on a good day.
Define "overpriced". What's the BOM. What's the cost of assembly and production? What's the cost of running the business, including engineer? What are you comparing to, a toy computer vs the sales volume of some of the world's most popular electric products?
Here's a challenge: Find a product that is feature and performance comparable at a lower cost across the range. You did after all invoke the entire range in your post without saying a particular product. So do your exercise for the cheapst Pico, most pop
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Define "overpriced". What's the BOM. What's the cost of assembly and production? What's the cost of running the business, including engineer?
BOM: way less parts than a cellphone. Cost of assembly and production: way less than a cellphone. Cost of running the business, including engineers: Way less than a cellphone. What am I comparing? A much much much simpler and cheaper device to engineer and build since it's just a bare board with some cheap parts including some SoCs that BCM had too many of lying around, which is how they pick 'em.
Here's a challenge: Find a product that is feature and performance comparable at a lower cost across the range.
Too much work. The point is that the devices are very expensive compared to much simpler devices.
A side point is
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Er, I didn't write that right. Edit fail. This part:
The point is that the devices are very expensive compared to more complex devices. A phone has a LOT more hardware. It comes with a LOT more support. It comes with a LOT more software. It's shipped in a nice box with accessories, at least a sim tool if it's got a slot. Raspi has none of that. It's made with excess SoCs, whatever they can get cheap. Every singl
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And at the same time ensure that everyone becomes more dependent on data centres, the cloud etc. So we don't own our own data, and so they can strip-mine it on the way into the cloud to "teach" their beloved word sausage machines.
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Because they're not going to build 100,000,000 Raspberry Pi 4s?
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Only the top 22 best-selling phones ever sold 100,000,000 units or more. Feel free to try again.
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Which phone are you talking about? If it's Samsung, they make their own RAM, although apparently they're getting cagey about selling it to themselves so that phone will probably go up when current contracts end. If it's Apple, they design their own RAM right into their CPUs and typically contract TSMC three years into the future to produce them. If it's one of the Chinese manufaturers they're likely moving to Chinese RAM.
Re:Oh good (Score:5, Interesting)
I own 8 Pis of various kinds, and 7 of them are busy running 24/7 doing various useful things.
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I own 8 Pis of various kinds, and 7 of them are busy running 24/7 doing various useful things.
What are they doing? Honestly... I've been interested in using one for a while - I like the concept and the company. But what is there that isn't better served by a VM on my workstation, or a service on my NAS, or an experiment on my spare mini pc (a Ryzen 5 with 16gb ram)? They do seem quite good when they fit the need, but I can't imagine wanting to run 7 of them at home, unless it's just for kicks.
I do have one project that'd suit it - converting my window shades to powered ones - but it's difficult to j
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Another expensive way to collect dust, disused, on a shelf. Tongue in cheek of course. ;) I own maybe 4 PIs but only used two for actual projects.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of PIs, rendering petrified Natalie Portmans, pouring hot grits down pants.
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Re: Oh good (Score:1)
I own a bunch, but have 4 in service, two of which are general-purpose NAS/jumpbox/home servers on different sites and two of which are Linux hosts attached to slightly esoteric hardware. But I don't use the GPIO for anything. An x86 Linux box could replace any of them. Is that wasteful?
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An x86 Linux box could replace any of them. Is that wasteful?
It really depends on what you're asking, but power-wise, using a normal computer would be wasteful if a Raspberry PI could handle the same work.
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Anything can collect dust if you're a shopaholic with no end goal in mind.
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I find PiShop [pishop.ca] to be pretty good.
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https://www.digikey.ca/en/prod... [digikey.ca]
Don't let "bulk" packaging fool you, minimum quantity is 1. If you spend over $100 shipping is free. Under it's very reasonable.
dskoll's suggestion of pishop.ca is also good. I find their shipping is more expensive, but they've got all the accessories and kits and things. Awesome if you live near Ottawa though.
Mod parent up for truthiness. (Score:2)
The "home lab" hobby proves their point. There is a large selection of used, reiliable tthin clients for very light appliance use and a wide range of "tiny" PCs (and other architectures) for users wanting as or more capable options complete with power supplies, cases etc and with good community support for mods and upgrades including 3D printed parts. Rugged industrial computers and network appliances are also abundant and increasingly well known thanks to enthusiast channels.
If I bought a bare Pi board I'd
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Few reasons... size, weight, power consumption, GPIO, new device vs refurb, support for shields and external boards...
If you're asking why you should buy a Pi instead of a NUC you didn't need a Pi, you needed a NUC.
Radxa (Score:1)
I'm starting to think that Raspberry Pi is coming up with their own fruit tax, like the old familiar 'apple tax'. There is a Radxa Cubie A7S, smaller than the pi 4, it sells for $30.00 with 6gb of ram, and from what I understand, outperforms the raspberry pi 4, and just comes up short of the performance of the raspberry pi 5. The only downside, my purchase of the 4gb model took 9 weeks to ship.
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Raspberry Pi uses western chips, is made in the UK, supported by western staff and has worldwide distribution. It's like anything else: you can get something similar for cheaper from Aliexpress.
Usually when someone mentions a Pi alternative they're more powerful but also quite a bit more expensive. That one looks pretty good, thanks for the recommendation.
Or ... N100 or old Intel NUCs (Score:2)
Raspberry Pi's are the right fit in specific cases.
For example, you need to interface the GPIO pins to some devices.
But there are issues with it in other cases.
For example, the cost rises as you include accessories, such as a case, fan, various hats, and so on.
If you just need a low(er) power x86 platform to run a stock Linux distro, then plain mini PCs or older models of Intel/ASUS NUCs [wikipedia.org] will fit the bill nicely.
You can get a 2018 NUC for ~ $100 or so.
They already come with M.2 slots, and some have SATA con
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I agree. I used to be a big fan of Raspberry Pi and SBCs in general. But I realized for 99% of what I want to do with a small computer, mini computers work so much better even though they are (or used to be) more expensive. I also grew really tired of dealing with custom distros and kernel forks for the various SBCs. For server applications (home automation, little file servers, etc), I'd much rather deal with AlmaLinux on an x86 mini pc. I'm tired of kernel forks and device trees and funky bootstrappin
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Also, for 99% of what you would like to do with GPIO, you can hang a $3 Arduino Nano off of a USB port.
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older models of Intel/ASUS NUCs
You can get a 2018 NUC for ~ $100 or so.
Nice. But how much of that is paying for the case and power supply?
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Didn't get what you meant there.
NUCs usually come with a case and a power supply.
I bought one a couple of months and it came with those, as well as RAM.
It didn't have any storage though, because it was from a corporation, and didn't want to risk selling SSDs with data on them.
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NUCs usually come with a case and a power supply.
Raspberry Pis often can be had as board only. And if one is building some sort of data acquisition system or device controller, the board is easily built into the same box as the device.
April 1st publication (Score:2)
I can't trust anything published on April 1st and posted about in the following weeks
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