Most hobby use cases would be fine with the 1GB, 4GB, or even 8GB versions.
I thought we all established long ago that trying to use a Raspberry Pi like a computer or laptop replacement was not a good idea, because every past Rapsberry Pi thread has been inundated with comments encouraging everyone to get a NUC or a used computer instead.
The Raspberry Pi is great if you need what it offers, but at some point the mainstream Raspberry Pi community lost the plot and started treating them like laptop, desktop, or server replacements, which they were never great at. Now that the people who need a desktop or server have re-discovered that they're better off using an actual desktop or an actual server for their purposes, we should get back to treating these like embedded systems boards.
You could respin, but you can't get that Broadcom part because Fuck You, We're Broadcom™. So now you're looking at a whole new platform if you want to proceed. It's still cheaper to pay loanshark prices for RPIs... for now.
https://www.compulab.com/products/system-on-modules/?gad_sou...
I haven't cross refence but this looks like the Linux SBC that is inside the Eightsleep
https://www.compulab.com/products/computer-on-modules/cl-som...
IDK why anyone would build a full product around one, versus the more sensible option of maybe prototyping with one while planning a shift, whether it's the 'Version 2' or something. Anything other than dependence in a full platform when half the point of ARM was how easy it is to get your own semi-custom spin.
In reality, though, the use cases where you need Linux and GPIO are very slim. It's overkill, an ESP32 is realistically more than powerful enough, and Linux isn't even good for GPIO.
It controls whatevwhatever hardware, reads some sensors, etc.
Then when needed gets oders from a normal computer over network or BLE via some simple protocol.
And now you pay the old 16GB price for 4GB.
The cost of 16GB Raspberry Pi is driven by the RAM. Everything else is a small addition to the BOM cost.
The 16GB was introduced when it was affordable. Now it's just becoming a mental obstacle for buyers who think they should only purchase something if they can get the top model. That's why I suggest everyone pretend it doesn't exist. Unless you really need it for something, the 4GB or 8GB can do most things.
This is not the same stuff an H100 uses, and it’s not even made in the same facilities, is it?
I think it’s more likely that the volume is not large enough to make up for the previously crappy margins on cheap RAM products.
It was great while it lasted.
A workstation user or gamer might want a desktop PC loaded with DDR5. But they'll also consider a desktop with DDR4 or even a laptop with LPDDR4X if they get more for their money.
So a rise in demand/prices for DDR5 can trigger a lesser rise in demand/prices for LPDDR4X
It's a surprise bonanza for the low-end RAM producers. Raise prices substantially with no new investment needed. Some of these factories must have paid for themselves years ago.
If the wafers are the bottleneck, e.g. ASML's god-machines, then yeah, it's annoyingly the same thing.
and also because of the memory cartel.
Somewhat, but not all of that demand was real; some of it was promised and not followed through on.
Also, supply isn't growing to match, in part because some companies exited the business.
If you do need something like a raspberry pi I think the Arduino Uno Q is a solid choice. The 4 GB RAM variant is iirc $80 or so.
Be careful, Sam Altman might be reading this!
That's not to say I don't have much beefier work computers - I do - but for the rPi 500 is a perfectly cromulent home computer. It's a computer. I just plug it in, it works.
Yes, I'm missing an NVMe SSD in there too, but I've got a bunch of older 512GB drives around from upgraded computers.
Power usage is probably lower on the Pi5, but likely not by much anymore in the idle state.
They would be fine with the low RAM models.
This is my point above: Most people should ignore the 16GB model.
Even if using those, if it's not in a robot or a weatherproof box on a pole or something, then a usb gpio dongle on a pc or mac makes 900x more sense.
The fact that something is done does not serve as an example that something makes any sense to do.
Using a pi for a computer is like when women knit sweaters for things that don't benefit from sweaters.
Why are so many people angry at a situation that doesn't exist?
The use cases above don't need a $385 16GB Raspberry Pi 5.
Did you notice they weren't even using a Raspberry Pi 5?
A 1GB Raspberry Pi 4, which would run those applications, is $35 and in stock: https://www.pishop.us/product/raspberry-pi-4-model-b-1gb/
You are the one making up a situation here.
If you don’t need GPIO just go with NUC/Minisforum.
Not only that, I bet most hobby use cases can be served fine by the older and cheaper Raspberry Pi 2, 3 or 4 models, which are still being sold.
I use it as a mini NAS to avoid powering up my Synology too often (crazy electricity prices here). It runs Tailscale, Samba, Docker, Postgres+pgbackrest, nginx, Pihole, and some bespoke apps I developed. Just looking at htop, I could probably get away with the 4GB model, but I wanted plenty of scope for adding more custom webapps and services like HomeAssistant.
*: I am so glad we're finally out of the phase where people were using Pis for hobbyist tasks where an Arduino would have worked just fine. Especially now that there are so many cheap, accessible microcontrollers. ESP32s obviously, but Raspberry's own RP2040/RP2350 have been more useful to me than the Pis themselves ever were.
I need to `npm install strip`
If I had one wish to the manufacturer it would be: PLEASE produce a 3B++ with the same periphery, but some things higher speced:
- 4K HDMI with hardware acceleration for 4K video
- faster Ethernet
- USB-C connector for charging
- Don't you dare to remove the headphone jack and the analog video out
- Don't you dare removing the full sized HDMi jack
- If the CPU can be faster without much cost increase, do it, if not keep it as is
That is it.
If you created a little cube the size of an Apple Watch with built in WiFi and Bluetooth, and maybe put a little LED screen on it, and it could run Linux and could be powered with POE and USB-C or something, people would feel an urge to just buy one, with no real use case for it.
Oh yup... I'm running unbound (DNS resolver) at home 24/7 on a Pi 3 from 2015 since years and years. Zero issue. I run that on a Pi because that one really needs to be on 24/7 and hardly consumes any resources (I mean: it's just DNS queries). But a Pi simply ain't good for much more than that.
> I thought we all established long ago that trying to use a Raspberry Pi like a computer or laptop replacement was not a good idea, because every past Rapsberry Pi thread has been inundated with comments encouraging everyone to get a NUC or a used computer instead.
I fully agree. For the proper stuff I encourage anyone to buy used enterprise gear with proper RAM (i.e. ECC RAM) and a proper CPU (like a Xeon).
I've got four NUCs too but the real workhorse is a used Xeon with ECC RAM.
> The Raspberry Pi is great if you need what it offers, but at some point the mainstream Raspberry Pi community lost the plot and started treating them like laptop, desktop, or server replacements, which they were never great at.
I agree. I've got like seven Pi (I was an early adopter of those) but don't ever plan to buy another.
It's like you said: they lost the plot (not just the community: those who make them too).
The thing is, they are all x86. The currently available ways to get an ARM general purpose computer are... Raspberry, Raspberry clones of various degrees of shittyness, Apple's lineup and a few Chromebooks plus even rarer Windows systems that no one wants because nothing runs on them.
You might want to give Windows on Arm another spin if you haven't touched it lately, because you're either operating on very outdated information or you work in a very narrow field. Everything I tried throwing at it runs on mine. Exceptions are some drivers and kernel mode anticheat in games.
[1] https://itdaily.com/blogs/workplace/qualcomm-snapdragon-x-pc...
I'm sick and tired of this memory austerity. Don't go blaming consumers for issues that the ai companies caused. I should be allowed to want a 32GB rpi5 for €75.
Once you've done that, and your max latency has dropped to 0.7% of what it use to be (yes, really, the SD card had 140x higher latency than the SSD on my system), carve out 32GB for swap and call it done. This will give you vastly better throughput on any likely use case that's not purely dependent on RAM size alone.
If I were using this as a portable desktop system, like I am with my uConsole, I'd rather have 4GB of RAM and fast storage than 16GB and the SD card. One of them is fine, just a little sluggish sometimes. The other is pretty nice, until it grinds to a halt for minutes at a time. If `apt upgrade` is your benchmark, SSD >> RAM by a wide margin.
For example I got several broken screen Huawei P20s from 2018, they were 10€ each. 128GB storage with 4GB RAM https://www.gsmarena.com/huawei_p20-9107.php
They boot up, you can install termux and then whatever is your choice of Linux software. I run several copyparty instances for friends and family
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.termux/
https://github.com/9001/copyparty
The only thing I'm not a big fan of is the charging. Non-removable battery, already 8 or so years old, obviously the phone needs power to work. So I'm a bit worried about the fire hazard.
>The only thing I'm not a big fan of is the charging. Non-removable battery, already 8 or so years old, obviously the phone needs power to work. So I'm a bit worried about the fire hazard.
My family (n=3) owned the Huawei P20 Pro (acquired at the same time in the same promo, perhaps the same batch?). This product line seems to have serious issues with battery swelling. Each phone had spicy pillows at some point within 2 years of ownership. Even outside the warranty period, Huawei was willing to replace the battery at their cost, at their contracted Toronto repair centre. Each of the repaired phones had their spicy pillows return within 6-9 months. Huawei was still willing to repair the phones, but at that point I'd rather have recycled it. I strongly suspect Huawei was avoiding doing a voluntary recall and triaging it through their RMA process, given how little resistance their customer support put up (they immediately sent back an RMA label without requiring any pictures).
Slightly more expensive but you won't have to deal with battery health and the new ones come with a 1GB NIC and USB 3 ports!
They currently go for ~60 USD which steep compared to the pre-ram crisis prices but nothing crazy.
For comparison sake, you can find a few really high-end routers that are faster but most are a lot less powerful than this.
The CPU/GPU actually allows you to emulate a fair amount, up to N64, PSP and Dreamcast (but definitely with some compromise) so they function great as retroboxes as well.
They sip power and run great as a small homeserver. You can even use them as a NAS for media (that you're willing to lose since you won't be running any form of RAID with 1 USB 3.0 port).
There is Android TalkBack (for poor vision) which is available on first boot/factory reset that narrates the menu. Even with a completely broken screen you can get ADB set up.
Secondly, using a device on a battery to run 24/24 is nonsense, you are Puting a lot of work on the battery by constantly getting it at 100% and eventually it will break and with it your data.
Thirdly, these devices have just a usb port. Sometimes usb 2.0. What you gonna do when the 128gb is filled up ?
The battery is a free built-in UPS and isn't a fire hazard unless the charging electronics were designed spectacularly poorly. The BMS knows to stop charging the battery when it's full. All of these phones probably use the same set of well-known BMS chips, I would imagine.
Sometimes there are pretty good deals on laptops, especially off lease. I've seen some $400-500 w/ 32GB RAM pop up on Slickdeals every few months.
Adafruit FT232H Breakout - General Purpose USB to GPIO, SPI, I2C https://www.adafruit.com/product/2264
(or even more cheaply a CH347T board which are dirt cheap on Aliexpress)
Both have decent Python support.
If you REALLY need GPIO then just add a USB-C OTG MCU board like a ESP32, or even the ancient Arduino Uno works as USB GPIO via serial TTY on Android.
Or just use a ESP32 by itself, if you don't need a full Linux OS, just to toggle some GPIO pins via the internet.
Possibilities are endless. Just use your imagination, or ask some LLM.
Rooting with a completely melted screen would be a little harder, but hey, maybe rooting could be done by following the instructions step-by-step with a little faith, and then post-root the USB might work with an external portable monitor? I'm sure it's a solvable problem.
There's laptops or X86 tablets with soldered RAM but those are rare and vanish immediately if they show up at a good price.
Modern top-of-the-line RasPis seem more like ARM PCs with fast, efficient multi-core CPUs and GigE. I bought a RasPi 500 at the beginning of the year just to see what it was like and it's my new "email and light web browsing" daily-driver. Though yeah, I probably wouldn't have paid $410 for it.
I bought my original RasPi mostly for the I/O. I wanted to blink some lights, drive some servos. And if I wanted to do that again, I would probably buy a Pico or Zero.
You want the Pi Zero 2 W, which is under $20 when it's in stock.
You also need to buy somewhere other than Amazon, which is where sellers go to unload their inventory at exorbitant prices between restocks.
Yeah, because a second-hand 13-year-old computer is gonna last quite a long time.
And CPU power consumption is only part of the whole system. And a lot of the system power scales with bus speed rather than inverse CPU age. It's possible recent systems will consume more electrons than older systems.
Except that modern apps and modern websites can be so demanding compared to their vintage counterparts, that they'll rev an old CPU at full tilt for basic modern tasks, while for a new CPU will seem to be idling at the same tasks.
Just try watching 1080p AV1 youtube videos on a vintage CPU vs one with dedicated AV1 decoder and you'll see what I mean. Yes I know h264ify exists, but its existence only reinforces my point.
I have an core 2 quad CPU at my parents place and simply browsing the web (with adblocking enabled even) pegs it at 100% most of the time sucking >90W. Meanwhile a mid level android phone barely breaks a sweat sipping battery on the same tasks.
Ignoring all of that for a second, and focusing on the generalized sentiment:
I have a 60 year old computer attached to my
[...] and it's doing fine
Even "browsing the web" is (highly unfortunately) not a fixed purpose, as web standards evolve and pages (highly unfortunately) get heavier and more JS-dependent.
I miss those days.
Now a slower model like the rpi5 costs more than twice as much.
I think Raspberry Pi is worth it only for some niche use-cases with current prices.
ESP32 handles IO and streams data somewhere else that does any processing needed on more powerful hardware.
I know that ram is expensive but it doesn’t nearly explain these pricing.
For less than a raspberry price, I got a full mini pc with 16gb ram, 512gb ssd and it got a much more powerful x64 amd chipset inside.
This company should be out of business.
for stuff like running vms or other pure compute homelabs, folks should stop using raspberry pis, and just go the used pc route
Most people realized that the Raspberry Pi was never a great desktop or server replacement a long time ago.
It's an embedded system and it's best when used for embedded applications.
These are still purchased and used by hobbyists, but the people who were trying to use them as servers or desktops are not the target audience.
The downside is that it won't just run all the Raspbian images that float around, which is IMO the main selling point of a RasPi: a unified hardware platform that a non-technical user can just burn an image for and go.
The Pi (and the CM in particular) has become a popular base system to build products like touchscreen appliances, control panels, etc. on, because it is (or at least used to be) cheaper than traditional industrial controllers and NUCs. Also Pis can be sourced reliably and in large numbers (probably even decades into the future).
I'm not looking for the usual "buy a used laptop/phone/NUC" recommendation. That stuff makes sense for hobby projects, but it's obviously too janky to build products around.
So what would y'all use? I'm looking for something that supports Linux, is reasonably priced, and available in large volume long-term.
There's no substitution good here.
Why would they ever voluntarily lower prices? They've price fixed multiple times.
The new floor is thousands of dollars for something that was $40 last year. Either suck it up or organize and fight back. That's up to you
That a good point. Let's hope the RAM hoarding will eventually get us that and not bullshitting hallucination machines.
Market bubbles bursting doesn't lead to consumer price drops. The reduced demand from data centres will lead to a reduction in manufacturing rather a lower price.
I was having a ton of stability issues: my filesystem would randomly go read-only after a few minutes. After trawling through my system logs, Claude suggested that it was a memory issue. I ran MemTest86 and it bailed out after 10,000 errors.
So now I was very depressed because RAM prices are sky-high and I currently cannot justify spending ~$150---more than what I paid for when I got this box used off of Ebay mind you---to replace the RAM inside.
Then I remembered my wife had an old laptop she hasn't touched in years lying around. I popped it open and, lo and behold, the RAM was compatible! I felt very fortunate that I was able to do that. Thoughts and prayers for all the folks who need memory---I've felt the despair.
I was looking to try out Joel's TrueNAS on ARM this time with a Pi 5, a PoE and NVMe Hat ... I decided against it and ended up getting a good old cheap x86 compact NAS instead.
The pricing is off.
Reballing the RAM of the Raspberry Pi is blocked by its firmware:
https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?p=2380887#p2380...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49786689
https://github.com/raspberrypi/rpi-eeprom/issues/761
EDIT: See also https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/raspberry-pi-ram-lock... linked under https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50429356
Here's a handy post on how people are dealing with it.
https://hackaday.com/2026/09/22/raspberry-pi-ram-restriction...
Quote from your referenced article:
"even the bootloader is cryptographically signed – no patching out the RAM check code, sorry to spoil it."
So, according to this article, you really have to downgrade the bootloader to an old version that does not yet contain the RAM check.
For everything else, either go lower level with ESP32 or higher level with a mini pc.
That's where we are right now.
$35 today gets you a 1GB Pi 4 Model B. For somebody who actually needs the form factor, it's pretty much a fine value.
For somebody who wants a server, it's always been a weird choice. (sorry Jeff :D )
For somebody who wants a desktop, the Raspberry Pi 500+ was a really fun choice when I bought mine in January. They cost twice as much today, which is sad. (although if anyone is feeling the desire and lives near a store, Microcenter has them on sale for $100 off...)
https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-zero-2-w/
It also has twice the RAM of the original Raspberry Pi (at launch), plus WiFi, plus a lot of CPU power, and a powerful GPU, and a lot more.
I have a 16GB model and I use that much RAM for some specific development work on the Raspberry Pi platform, but now I wish they had never announced the 16GB model. It has created so many complaints from people who shouldn't and won't be buying it.
Let alone has it been hard to acquire for 6mo+ now, it's out of stock until mid-2027. Of course, can find sales for $115+ on ebay.
The development experience of something like Android itself seems super unfriendly for beginners (as someone who is admittedly a beginner to it)
It's definitely a bit odd, the Android environment, but I didn't feel blocked on it. Also ended up unrooting one because termux and the built in debian VM on Android now give everything I need
Termux + X11+ XFCE is surprisingly nice on a vanilla phone
Unfortunately there is no appetite for governments to step in.
The 3B was my Octoprint server for the longest time while I was testing the 4B for a product, but for reasons I don't really understand, the 3B isn't quite punchy enough for Klipper, when it fully should be; it drops connections to the printer. I think any of them may continue to have some uses but perhaps not till I move to a new place.
Haven't gone for a 5B or Zero 2W yet, don't really need to. Rather more interested in what happens with the Picos these days.
What on earth are these SKUs even targeting? 16GB in a raspi is nuts.
0: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/09/inau...
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/raspberry-pi-ram-lock...
They have been struggling for years to match supply with demand, and RAM arbitrage would undermine those efforts... and the market would be flooded with flaky boards remanufactured in the cheapest possible way.
But every single day in the meantime, RAM prices will continue fluctuate, and arbitrage takes advantage of this. And arbitrate markets don't even necessarily track new RAM prices, if someone dumps a bunch of used LPDDR devices in China, people may harvest used memory for arbitrage.
For example, lets say they plan for how many people want to actually buy a 1GB Pi 5. Then they produce that amount. Then scalpers (hypothetically) realize they scape old RAM off discarded cable TV boxes for less than the OEM pays for new RAM. Then the legitimate 1GB Pis will be quickly scalped up off the market, and the market will be flooded with modified boards of higher capacities.
I also don't see any mention of it in this article?
But the USA is definitely forcing Deepseek to learn how to write leaner code! Bring it on.
Since they're still improving models, they still are learning how to program, it's just a meta game now, not the specific intricacies.
the pi5 1GB model is now $45, so with inflation etc that's not too bad considering the feature set.
However, getting your hands on a 1GB model these days is practically impossible unless you go used.
The Foundation and the Trading Company have different goals, and the Foundation is not wedded to the Linux SBC Pi at all for this.
Physical computing education with Python is more than adequately served by the RP2040 and RP2350, and that is more or less where their focus is.
(Beyond that I think most of this is just geek whining, to be honest.)
'Our mission is to put high-performance, low-cost, general-purpose computing platforms in the hands of people and organisations all over the world,'
Hard to do that when you keep jacking the prices up.
1) AI really does require a scaleup in compute power. In other words: you will be upgrading your hardware or use old software (at least if you want to run local or host your own saas)
2) the AI buildout means you can't buy the hardware, you can only rent it "in the cloud", because the AI buildout makes everything too expensive. Including memory, a nonnegotiable component of any computer or server
It only works, of course, if Amazon and Google and Meta and ... keep buying for another 2-3 years but that seems to be exactly what's happening.
Worst of all: monopolies used to at least require investment. But Amazon and Google aren't investing, really. They're still net profitable companies. It's almost insulting.
The fact that Hugging Face was attacked not by a small amount of compute but such a vast amount of computation. It was only possible because its already so centralized by Open AI.
It feels a bit like cyberpunk where only the big companies in reality will have the resource to pull of such an attack.
If my computer fails, I have plenty of old components from older systems that I can swap in. I also have quite a few old phones (my primary job over the past decade has been Android development, so I have older test devices that still function fine for my purposes). And consoles are just very optional (and way more costly than I am willing to pay) when they start costing $1500+.
Overall there are some positives from this, I'll be responsible for less e-waste. This is something I always tried to be cognizant of in the first place, but the economics will really force my hand even more.
Of course, things aren't all that great considering we got into this situation due to technology running in large datacenters running on lots of dirty power like methane turbines.
I mean, sucks to be a buyer right now but as a developer I like where things are heading :( :)
And it runs a fantastic CachyOS (a super tuned Arch) install, called ArmadaOS, https://armadaos.dev/
2026 has been pretty amazing, with the slow work upstreaming Qualcomm support really building. A bunch of really great chipsets have mainline support and actually work. The Thor is a bit behind SM8550, but SM8650 and SM8750 handhelds are also available (just a bit pricier, and non-dual screen yet).
Alas most phones don't have unlockable boot loaders. I'm anti-interested in the sad experience of Android, being unable to read my own files off my device. I really want to be able to read my chrome profile data, for reasons. Absolutely no go.
Call me cynical after being burned countless times on niche-ass platforms. Even my Framework 13" has a flurry of issues I've never seen on more mainstream hardware. Life is too short to worry about bizarre firmware issues in hardware that no one is paid to support.
I for one am delighted that you can buy a modern-ish high performance, advanced processing node based system, that's small, that has such incredible capabilities, that's super power efficient. And that finally it runs a mean Linux!
You'll be told its the price of PCBs and chips, but again, the same company can deliver a box of three Xiao brand ESP32 dev boards to my door tomorrow morning for a hair over $20 including tax and shipping and handling.
You'll be told its a temporary supply chain disruption until you remember they've been pulling that scam for some years now, and as long as people fall for it and throw money at them, they'll keep pushing it.
The problem is they sold out to the hardcover textbook manufacturer business model. Take the head of the EE dept out for dinner and box seats at last night's sportsball game, suspiciously the EE department syllabus now says you need to buy it or else, and the seller says now that its a mandatory purchase "will pay anything for an education" in response they will charge "anything" which apparently is $385. See also Boomers and "will pay anything for medical care" well they know that and wait until you see the bill LOL. Also see real estate bubbles.
I don't see why they don't raise the price to that of an Apple Neo laptop. Its the same market and business model, pay what we ask or die uneducated and unemployed under a freeway overpass. Don't you want your kids to learn STEM and be successful? Well that'll be $385. Its the new "World Book Encyclopedia" scam.