This is no joke: the SBC hobby is dying

It's no joke, even though Raspberry Pi posted this on April 1st: there's a new 3GB Raspberry Pi 4 that cost $83.75. And they've also increased the price of other Pis, like this 16GB Pi 5 is now $299.99. That is an increase of 150% over its already pretty high price when it

was launched. And the problem is that all the RAM, all the DRAM that goes into these things,

was launched. And the problem is that all the RAM, all the DRAM that goes into these things, has been skyrocketing in price. Eben Upton in his blog post said there's been a seven-fold increase in DRAM pricing and everybody is wanting this LPDDR4 DRAM and you know whatever the problems are that are causing this shortage, whether it's AI obligations that aren't actually

materializing, people lying about the amount of DRAM that they need and reserve from foundries, whether it's collusion or whatever, from the DRAM companies that supply these things.

I don't know.

The one thing that I do know is that all these things kind of are conspiring together to, I think, kind of kill off a lot of things that people used to love to do, like buying SBCs and doing fun projects with them.

If the company that you buy your SBC from is not already affected, they will be.

And I guarantee they are already, but some people have passed on the price increases already.

Other ones have yet to and have some old stock that they're still trying to move out.

But in talking with other companies that make SBCs besides Raspberry Pi, there have been SBC projects that have been completely canceled because they can't get memory.

Like this 16-gig Pi 5, there's not many people that are going to pay $300 for one of these.

I only have one, and that's because it was already a dubious value at $120 when I bought it.

At $300, there's no reason to buy this unless you have a product that has to have just this, and you're selling it for a profit, and even your profit would get cut into quite deeply by having a price go up 150% of a component in it.

But it's just crazy.

I put together a few charts here.

So this first chart is showing the price increase since launch of the Pi 5 2GB and 4GB and 16GB, and now they have a 1GB and, of course, that 3GB, and you're wondering, like, Why three gigabytes? That's a weird memory amount. Well, they're using two 1.5 gig chips.

That saves costs because the 1.5 gig chips can be had in greater supply than the 1 gig, 2 gig, 4 gig, those kind of things for various reasons, but that's why Raspberry Pi is doing it. They

actually redesigned the PCB of the Pi 4 to allow for two chips instead of one, which is crazy. Like

they haven't done that on any Pi yet. And now they're doing it on the Pi 4 because of this unprecedented rise in prices. Anyway, that's kind of depressing on its own, but then if you look at SBCs overall, right now there are some, like, there are some that are a very good value if you can pick them up. The Radxa Dragon Q6A, which I haven't done a full video on, I've done a full set of

testing on it, and I like the thing, and I want to recommend it, but I just haven't had time to make a full video on it. That is probably the best value SBC you can get right now. It uses a Qualcomm chip on it. The Rock 5C is also a good value, but I've seen it going out of stock a lot. Other than that,

on it. The Rock 5C is also a good value, but I've seen it going out of stock a lot. Other than that, I've tested the Orange Pi 5 and Pi 5 Pro. Those are both very good boards, but those are going up in price even more than the Pi. So it's like those were great values, but now it's 2026, and that's

just not a thing. If I look at the 8GB RAM models, again, the Q6A right now, if you can get it, that is the best value SBC you can get right now. It's, again, it's a Qualcomm chip, so things, there's some caveats there but Radxa currently has enough stock I guess of their memory that they're able to put these things out at prices that aren't sky high. But they're going up and

they're going to continue rising. The other thing in all of these slides that you'll notice is that the mini PCs which used to be a great value, are now just a good value. They're still a better value, like if you buy one of these mini PCs, it comes with an SSD, it comes with a case, all that kind of stuff, you don't have to buy anything extra... But it used to be like a scorchingly-good value

compared to most SBCs. But now they're just on par, basically. But again like the 16 gig Pi 5 that is just... I don't know who will buy one of these things, it's a crazy amount of of money to pay

just... I don't know who will buy one of these things, it's a crazy amount of of money to pay for an SBC with the performance that it has and the features that it has. And you know there's been backlash against Raspberry Pi for this stuff, and it's like, yeah, they are a public company now, so they're trying to turn a profit.

And I think the biggest takeaway from this is for the hobbyist, for people who are doing these things for fun or open source or little hardware projects, move to the Pi 3, move to the Zero 2W.

Those are the two models that are still a great value.

And apparently Raspberry Pi has tons of supply of LPDDR2 RAM, the older, slower RAM that's used in those boards.

So the prices on those probably won't go up so much.

The other thing I've noticed is like for myself included, I've been starting to do more projects with microcontrollers, which you can still get without paying a bazillion dollars. And it's kind of fun and interesting to get into something entirely new there. And some of them are powerful enough to do things that are that I would firmly do on SBC. So

there. And some of them are powerful enough to do things that are that I would firmly do on SBC. So

timing projects and certain control projects where I used to need a full Linux install. Now you can do in MicroPython almost just as easy or building smart home things with ESPHome. It's great. And

the sad thing is that there is still a lot of great things that you can do when you have full Linux running on an SBC with, you know, low end desktop class performance that we're just not going to be able to do. And, you know, even if we're talking about buying used hardware, that the prices on that stuff is going up, especially if it has a lot of RAM. So certain hobbies are just

kind of impacted and dying off right now. And I don't see a rosy future for it unless we can find a way to get these prices back down at some point, because my income from YouTube hasn't gone up. In fact, it's gone down a little bit the past year and a half because YouTube's viewership for

up. In fact, it's gone down a little bit the past year and a half because YouTube's viewership for long form videos like these has gone down. And yeah, it's not a great situation that we're in for this. But maybe I'll just become a retro YouTuber and do all my fun Mac projects until

for this. But maybe I'll just become a retro YouTuber and do all my fun Mac projects until we get back to having reasonable pricing for these things. Anyway, until next time, I'm Jeff Geerling.