When will this stop? The Raspberry Pi 5 16GB SBC now sells for $385

FLeXMurphy

Speaking of, it's been a while since I've seen a jeff geerling submission on HN front page.

orthogonal_cube

The disruption to consumer electronics, both PCs and SBCs, will last for several years at minimum

throwa356262

Actually, I am happy that mess has lead to people finally questioning if a calculator really needs a full browser backend and use 4GB. I mean, sucks to be a buyer right now but as a developer I like where things are heading :( :)

pkoird

I don't understand? Should they be sold at a lower price when people are still willing to buy at the current higher price?

trevithick

Look, it's a misallocation of resources for you to own any RAM at all, and you should thank Sam Altman for letting you have some at any price.

nshm

Why do you want Pi5 if you can get a smartphone with a screen?

ByteOfWood

Presumably the only customers buying Pis right now are companies who use them in their products. There are much better options on the used market for people needing small computers/servers.

alentred

The prices are crazy, but the uncertainty makes the choices even harder. I have my eyes on a Framework laptop 13 for some time. I was considering buying it with less RAM now, and then buying more RAM later. Now what I fear is: by the time RAM prices become reasonable, we might as well be using DDR7. So, even with a custom-built desktop PC or a Framework laptop it would be a pity to have to upgrade everything. On the other hand, it may well be our new reality, so maybe better buying in into 64GB RAM now? Not even sure if my reasoning is correct.

haunter

I'm buying up broken screen old Android smartphone instead. 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.

vkaku

You know, a RPi 5 1GB is $77, 4GB is $109, 8GB is $170 and 16GB is $385. None of it makes sense, especially if anyone starts a reballing shop. 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.

batrat

And it all started with $32. Also 16GB of RAM is a lot for RPi, IMO.

paimapi

ESP32 devices are still cheap enough but with a less-good ecosystems due to the Pi's popularity. I do plan on picking up a few Pi 2 Ws which are still selling at a MicroCenter near me for $18 with only three bucks of markup just for setting up a Pi-Hole and some other IoT project but yeah, looking at even the Chinese made boards like Raspberry Orange sees prices north of $70 which is just not worth it for something with this capability. At this point, why not just get a refurb'd thin client or mini-pc?

varispeed

Thankfully greedy Raspberry PI locked down memory upgrades, so nobody can save money by soldering off market chips.

georgemcbay

As a 53 year old, I've been starting to feel like there's a very real chance I will never buy another brand new computer (for personal use), phone or gaming console in my lifetime, which would be very surprising if you told this to me ~2 years ago. 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.

a1o

I bought this at launch and didn’t think much. It’s weird seeing price go up as much.

reeredfdfdf

If you need GPIO pins, ESP32 is good enough for lots of use cases. If you just need a small low-power PC, used enterprise thin clients and mini-pc's (google project tinyminimicro) offer more while still idling around 10W or less. Those can be still bought for like 40-100 USD with SSD and 8GB or more RAM included. I think Raspberry Pi is worth it only for some niche use-cases with current prices.

hoppp

Used laptops have always been a better value.

cheschire

make a 128GB version and call it Raspberry Ai What on earth are these SKUs even targeting? 16GB in a raspi is nuts.

OhMeadhbh

Sure... but... the original $35 RasPi is closer to a modern RasPi Zero 1, which looks like it's selling for $45 - $50 on Amazon. 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.