DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market
by ingve on 4/1/2026, 9:36:41 PM
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/dram-pricing-is-killing-the-hobbyist-sbc-market/
Comments
by: jonathantf2
DRAM pricing is killing the <i>everything</i> market.<p>We just had a vendor uplift our quote 50% per unit for some machines because of a mix of memory + supply chain issues.
4/1/2026, 10:09:45 PM
by: bashtoni
Helium supply issues are only going to make this worse.<p>I feel like for the first time in our lives we might have seen peak technology for the next few years. Everyone is going to have to make do instead of depending on ever increasing performance.
4/1/2026, 11:03:16 PM
by: fidotron
OTOH things which belong on microcontrollers are now being pushed back to microcontrollers for cost reasons, so there is a win to be found there.
4/1/2026, 10:06:18 PM
by: JollySharp0
There are ups and downs in the prices of components. Often people forget that during COVID prices were high for SBCs because of supply chain issues. Video cards just were not available in the UK and afterwards (every supplier had long lead times) and are still relatively expensive (at least there are now lower priced options). Raspberry Pis you couldn't get hold of and many people (Jeff Included) was using a website checking for availability which was non-existent for anything other than low end models.<p>I remember 15-20 years ago when hard drive prices went up through the roof because there was a flood in Thailand and it too years for prices to come down.<p>There is going to be supply chain issues due to the current Geopolitical situation (Helium comes out of the Gulf and that is need in chip manufacture) is also going to affect the price of components.<p>Eventually in a few years (as the article states) the situation will change. It just sucks at the moment.<p>TBH I am more worried about my ability to fill up the tank on my car as both Petrol and Diesel is unavailable locally. I can make do with whatever computer equipment I have.
4/1/2026, 10:37:21 PM
by: michaelt
<i>> The price increases bring the 16GB Pi 5 up to $299.99.</i><p>Meanwhile, a refurbished corporate laptop with 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD can be yours for $199 [1]<p>I'm sure there will still be people who want the Pi 5 but at these prices, I ain't one of them.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.ebay.com/itm/327079631563" rel="nofollow">https://www.ebay.com/itm/327079631563</a>
4/1/2026, 10:27:17 PM
by: jokoon
it's probably time to call those old retired programmers to ask them how to reduce software memory footprint<p>or to teach that again
4/1/2026, 10:07:40 PM
by: rtpg
am I crazy for thinking that the 16GB Pi 5 is just there to absorb money from people who purchase the most expensive version of things? Like really nobody needs that much RAM on a Pi?
4/1/2026, 10:52:12 PM
by: esskay
The SBC markets been on life support for a long time. Youtubers making videos about them don't seem to grasp that and keep pumping out reviews and projects like its still 2019. The pi specifically has plummeted in popularity and for most use cases they just aren't a cost effective option when second hand micro pcs are dirt cheap and vastly more capable.
4/1/2026, 10:49:30 PM
by: jl6
Time to break out the Small Web protocols and start living within our means!
4/1/2026, 11:10:44 PM
by: qmr
Does this mean the Atom 8GB boxes I have laying about are now more valuable?
4/1/2026, 11:41:29 PM
by: Aurornis
The extreme DRAM market has had an unexpected side effect of triggering a lot of panic buying. I know several people who delayed PC upgrades for years but then panic bought new systems in this market. The trigger was seeing all of the "It's only going to get worse" and "This is the end of personal computing" headlines.<p>They're already regretting spending so much now that prices have started to tick downward.<p>I keep telling everyone: If you don't have a pressing need to buy right now, please wait 6 months and check again.
4/1/2026, 10:53:15 PM
by: Rapzid
High speed NVME is soaring too. Some popular Samsung kits are up 3X compared to 12 months ago.
4/1/2026, 11:14:20 PM
by: lm411
Yep. I just bought a Pi CM5 for my son, for his ClockworkPi uConsole. CAD $200 for the 8GB module. I bought a whole Pi5 16GB not long ago for under CAD $200.<p>I will not be buying any more SBC's at this price point. I wonder if Raspberry PI will survive.
4/1/2026, 11:08:48 PM
by: culi
Does anyone mind explaining why the 2GB model only increased by 20% in price while the 16GB model nearly tripled in price?
4/1/2026, 11:21:38 PM
by: Lwrless
Got my RPi 5 16GB quite a while ago for around $160 and already thought that was expensive... It’s still powerful enough for almost everything I throw at it, honestly a bit overkill in most scenarios.<p>With prices steadily going up, for me it's starting to feel more sensible to repurpose the RAM sticks I've collected from old PC builds / laptops and just throw together small amd64 boxes instead of buying more RPis.
4/1/2026, 10:34:50 PM
by: Havoc
Bought a couple of 32gb SBCs before this all hit the fan. And also built a SSD NAS before the wave hit.<p>So timed that all pretty great. What worries me is my desktop is up for a full new buy somewhere around early '28. That could be a train wreck depending on how taiwan situation goes
4/1/2026, 10:49:31 PM
by: observationist
Apple and Sama didn't do the consumers any favors this year.
4/1/2026, 11:10:00 PM
by: contextfree
what are the barriers to new DRAM supply coming online?
4/1/2026, 10:48:14 PM
by: roughly
We're somehow in a race between LLMs curing cancer, destroying the planet by "You're right to be mad, I shouldn't have issued those launch codes, it's even in my Claude.md file, I'm sorry," and rendering modern technological civilization uneconomical. I know this is statistically the best time in history to live, but lord, I could use a vacation.
4/1/2026, 11:01:21 PM
by: wpferrell
Totally agree. Just like graphics card prices. Is it worth building a pc now?
4/1/2026, 9:46:05 PM
by: fortran77
My PDP-11 runs fine on 512K
4/1/2026, 11:16:18 PM
by: elwebmaster
It's terrible. Fake money is fueling the exhaustion of real resources in search of questionable outcomes ("AGI"). Imagine if all of these money were invested in curing cancer.
4/1/2026, 10:21:33 PM
by: walrus01
Unless you're really using the GPIO pins or other weird I/O, I really fail to see the purpose in having an 8GB or 16GB RAM Raspberry Pi (at a much higher price than it used to be) as a desktop workstation with a GUI on it.<p>The idea of putting sixteen gigs of RAM in a raspberry pi is nuts. The legit thing you want to use a raspberry pi (or a competitor) for as an embedded headless thing with no KB/mouse/display attached should run fine in 2GB of RAM or less, assuming an ordinary debian-based OS environment.<p>I would much rather have a used, ex-corporate/ex-lease, small form factor or ultra small form factor x86-64 desktop PC (Dell, HP, Lenovo, whatever) with 16GB of RAM in it and an SSD on a SATA3 or NVME interface. Whatever is the "best" SFF that you can buy via huge eBay used equipment dealers on any given month.<p>Despite being many years old, whatever you can buy on ebay for 200 bucks (at least before the recent RAM fiasco) with some recent-ish quad core core i5/i7 or Ryzen in it will run circles around a raspberry pi 5.
4/1/2026, 11:11:28 PM
by: megous
SBCs are not just RPis. Other brands can still be bought cheaper.
4/1/2026, 11:09:05 PM
by: Venn1
Is there anything (technically) preventing SBC manufacturers adding SODIMM slots?<p>I was expecting the Milk V Titan to avoid this memory nonsense since it has two unpopulated DDR4 slots, but it has fallen off the radar like several other SBCs.
4/1/2026, 10:30:06 PM
by: einpoklum
The title should say: "Collusion of large corporations promoting LLMs with RAM manufacturers is killing the hobbyist SBC market (and bankrupting anybody trying to get a PC or laptop)".<p>Because we all know that DRAM prices have spiked since production is going to those infernal chatbot training data centers. Same as a lot of the electricity in some parts of the world, BTW.
4/1/2026, 10:15:41 PM
by: platevoltage
It’s great that everything I love is getting ruined so that the most mediocre people on earth can generate slop on a daily basis.
4/1/2026, 11:07:05 PM
by: a1o
Holy crap, it is super expensive now. I should have brought an extra one in the past.
4/1/2026, 10:07:13 PM
by: dangus
“Killing” is strong phrasing.<p>Yes, a $250 mini PC I bought last year is now $350.<p>Is this pricing bad? Yeah, compared to what it was.<p>Is this the end of the world? Not really, and we’ve seen price spikes for all kinds of PC components in the past. It’s rarely permanent.
4/1/2026, 10:13:58 PM
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4/1/2026, 10:16:16 PM
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4/1/2026, 10:05:17 PM