April 1, 2026
The Pi is too damn high
DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market
Raspberry Pi prices soar to $299; makers flip, flee to microcontrollers, and ask if PCs are worth it
TLDR: Raspberry Pi raised prices—16GB Pi 5 now $299.99 and a 3GB Pi 4 at $83.75—blaming pricey memory chips. Commenters split between outrage and adaptation: some question building PCs at all, others pivot to microcontrollers or old‑school lean coding, worried the hobbyist scene is being priced out.
The maker world is clutching its soldering irons after Raspberry Pi hiked prices again—yes, not a joke—with a new “right‑sized” 3GB Pi 4 at $83.75 and the 16GB Pi 5 shooting up to $299.99. The culprit? Memory chips (the tiny brain-helpers) are so pricey they now dominate the cost of each board. The post’s grim thesis—“high‑end” single-board computers are on life support—hit a nerve, and the comments turned into a group therapy session.
The loudest chorus: sticker shock and déjà vu. One user sighed, “Is it worth building a pc now?”, comparing the Pi’s new price to the GPU madness of yesteryear. Another claimed it’s not just hobbyists—industry quotes are jumping 50% per unit, proving “DRAM is killing the everything market.” Regret posts poured in too: “I should have brought an extra one in the past,” became the new “should’ve bought Bitcoin.”
But it’s not all doom. A pragmatic faction insists this is a forced reset: projects that never needed full computers are getting pushed back to microcontrollers (tiny, cheaper chips), and that’s a win for costs and creativity. The spicy nostalgia crew chimed in with, “time to call those old retired programmers” to teach memory‑efficient code again. Meanwhile, Raspberry Pi’s Eben Upton urged patience—prices won’t stay sky‑high forever—while skeptics wonder if the hobby scene will still exist when they finally fall. Until then, many are dusting off Arduinos, hunting older boards, and trimming projects to stay under $100.
Key Points
- •Raspberry Pi increased prices for all LPDDR4-based models and introduced a 3GB Raspberry Pi 4 at $83.75.
- •The 16GB Raspberry Pi 5 price rose to $299.99; the article states these are not April Fools’ jokes.
- •The author reports DRAM costs now make up the majority of SBC board costs for vendors checked, constraining new high-end SBC launches.
- •Boards with more than 4 GB of RAM have become too expensive for many hobbyists; mini PCs and used PCs have also become pricier.
- •The author is pivoting to older SBCs and microcontrollers; Eben Upton expects memory prices to abate over time.