Raspberry Pi 4 3GB launched for $83.75, further price increases announced across the board for 4GB+ RAM hardware
Posted by sr_local@reddit | hardware | View on Reddit | 106 comments
Shrimps_Prawnson@reddit
So what can I get in the SBC market that's more powerful than a Pi zero 2, less money than a pi 4 and can run a Linux desktop environment?
snollygoster1@reddit
Why have the SBC limitation? That is what boxes you into a Pi.
More powerful and cheaper both can be found in the used mini-pc market for about $50, and often use low power Intel chips that consume 3-5W at idle. Plus there's real PCIe slots on board, no adapter needed.
Shrimps_Prawnson@reddit
Because I want to build small form factor cyberdecks out of them.
olivier_tvselect@reddit
I’d suggest a Libre Computer “Le Potato” (2GB RAM).
It supports Armbian with standard images, and I’ve been running it without issues for a few years.
It’s usually cheaper than a Pi 4 with similar RAM.
Could be a good fit for a small form factor build like a cyberdeck.
That said, if your use case can run on 1GB RAM, I’m not sure it’s worth choosing it over a Pi 4 1GB.
Narishma@reddit
A Pi 3.
ElvisDumbledore@reddit
Am I the only person who gets the ick from RAM/drive capacities that aren't multiples of 2?
tnoy@reddit
You would have hated the LGA1366 Intel systems.
simo402@reddit
X58 with Triple channel ram?
190n@reddit
You must have loved the base M3 Pro MBP with 11 cores and 18 GB RAM.
djent_in_my_tent@reddit
$80 for just 3GB of RAM? They’ve completely lost the plot on their own product.
I can go on Amazon right now and buy an N95 SBC with 8GB RAM and a real (albeit shitty) SSD for $220.
So if this SBC is too expensive for a throwaway project and too slow for anything mildly intensive… who’s the buyer?
ProfessionalPrincipa@reddit
This happened more than half a decade ago.
1731799517@reddit
Yeah, lol. I remember during covid when you had to pay like $200 to get one.
Kashinoda@reddit
I don't understand either of your comments, neither the price of this model or the price during COVID was because the manufacturers 'lost the plot'.
1731799517@reddit
Well, then think a bit more about it (for example, why the price reached that level during covid) and try to extrapolate usage cases vs original idea.
the__storm@reddit
You buy it for the GPIO, MIPI CSI/DSI, low power consumption, and software support ("winning team" effect). I agree that buying it as purely a cheap computer/server does not make sense.
snollygoster1@reddit
What runs on a Pi that won't run on other hardware?
the__storm@reddit
A couple of examples that were useful to me in projects:
It's not that there's anything magical about the Pi, just that lots of smart people have gone before you and done hard things and you can re-use their software.
MumrikDK@reddit
Isn't that actually 90% on its own?
The competitors have the other stuff too, but the Pi world grew big.
pfak@reddit
The corporate market. They abandoned their original base years ago during covid.
pwreit2042@reddit
"They" , you are referring to Eben Upton, and no he never abandoned anything, it was always his intention to profit from this, he intentionally set up two organisations, a none profit and a profit business in the Pi ecosystem. Check out his business ventures before he made the Pi. His creation wasn't even all that impressive, most of the work was done by users and it started gaining traction. But he's always wanted to make money of this and he's made a bucket load with it going public. It was obvious from day one when they wanted to convince people it's a computer when it was just the board. and telling everyone it's $35 , when you couldn't buy it for that amount anywhere. He's a very intelligent person who got what he wanted and played the long game
Beefmytaco@reddit
Man could you say this about so many companies too. Beloved gaming companies even went this route.
WJMazepas@reddit
There is a lot of projects that need to use a Pi or another SBC on them because a x86 PC is just too large or uses too much power compared to it
Also, RPi do offer support for Raspberry Pies and they will make any of their boards for years, so companies like that they dont have to update their solution in a couple of years
And I could only find mini PCs with the N95. Does it have a SBC with the N95?
upvotesthenrages@reddit
There are plenty of Pi alternatives that run Linux, ARM, and have a tiny form factor - they're also cheaper.
Plank_With_A_Nail_In@reddit
They also do not run the thousands of pi projects that are the entire point of buying a Pi for.
wpm@reddit
Do they have anywhere near the software support you get from the Pi Foundation though? Or are you running community builds of Armbian with your finger's crossed?
True-Cauliflower5631@reddit
You can get for around 200, 16 gb and an old Ryzen as well
wehooper4@reddit
They are very common when you need niche hardware interfaces, but also full Linux. We use them to make mesh radio nodes for instance.
Granted we also came up with a way to interface with the radios over USB using a CH341. Which does open them up for use with X86.
LegoGuy23@reddit
It's such a shame that the Raspberry Pi has basically been priced out of its own market.
You can get surplus mini PCs all day with 8GB of RAM for the same price. I have an 8GB Pi5 and I would certainly never pay $175 asking price. I'd sooner get a used laptop or something; a laptop which would include storage and a case.
EndlessZone123@reddit
Where do I find surplus 8gb minipcs?
I've seen some older 6th gen ones but they eat power compared <10w of a pi 5 or any arm sbc.
ProfessionalPrincipa@reddit
Have to be careful with the minipcs. Sketch components can eat up power. My Alder Lake-N model idles at 2W from the wall which is good for what it is but the Realtek ethernet screws that up and doubles idle power. At load that goes up to like 10W but I'm not sure how that benches against a Pi 5.
Due-Cupcake-255@reddit
the 'essential' nuc's are godly in that regard. My whole nuc idles at 3W.
snollygoster1@reddit
Ive purchased a few HP Mini PC's with i5-8500t's on eBay for about $60. They consume 2W at idle and have real mini-PCIe slots. I don't have to buy an adapter to plug in my ssd.
qtx@reddit
Any minipc with an N100 uses around 6w.
I use one as my Plex server.
cubic_thought@reddit
A dell wyse 5070 with 8gb can be had for $50-60 on ebay.
That's ~3w idle to ~15w under full load, with about 70% the performance of a pi 5 drawing ~12w under full load.
algaefied_creek@reddit
There are these mini Ryzen machines with 16GB RAM, some like laptop CPU 5000-series, and GPU integrated for $125-200 locally on FB Marketplace.
HellsPerfectSpawn@reddit
If you want to go the used route, you can find old xeons where shipping is more expensive that the system.
snollygoster1@reddit
Xeon systems often aren't power efficient, but they are fun to have.
HCharlesB@reddit
I recently upgraded my first gen Xeon server motherboard (with 16GB DDR3 ECC RAM) to a 4th gen Xeon motherboard with 32GB DDR3 ECC RAM for $80US. It uses a little less power than the first gen at just under 100W.
snollygoster1@reddit
My 8th gen core i7 machine idles at 12W, which is why 100W sounds crazy to me. Plus its the main reason people will tell you arm is better - power efficiency.
HCharlesB@reddit
Intel has definitely made a lot of progress WRT power usage. I would have liked to get something newer but anything that used DDR4 RAM was more than double the cost and did not include RAM (Supermicro motherboards.)
I do have a Pi 4B with two 8TB enterprise HDDs that uses 25W.
S_A_N_D_@reddit
Especially since much of their original use case can be covered by ESP32's which can be had for a few dollars.
admalledd@reddit
I mean, the main thing they were for was more "sorta-microcontroller with HDMI, USB device, and networking", even ESPs don't really have display-out and USB device capability. What most people kinda incorrectly used them for was headless server things (PiHole) or "better Arduino" which both sides got replaced/outmoded. Headless-server things have always been competing with used PCs, back when a Pi was $35 that was a lot more an argument, plus the CPU being ARM which was its own desirable target for some. "Better Arduino" got its lunch eaten by all the microcontroller revolution going on/around, notably ESPs, where wildly better than atmega328p chips exist that have wifi (or hardware eth), more IO, more CPU speed, etc. To be fair, rPi foundation tried to make the r2040 and other MCUs, but most of that felt too little too late.
IMO, a lot of people were using Pis for things that they never should have been used for. SBCs vs used tiny-mini-micro systems is a thing people keep forgetting for some reason. Though I do wish entry-level SBC prices were back down to their $35-ish zone they once were promised to be. Reminder, I consider a key difference between SBC and microprocessor being "modern display output AND can boot Linux", so many so called cheap SBCs aren't in my opinion.
Plank_With_A_Nail_In@reddit
You can still buy Pi Zeros for £15 and they can do all of those headless things. You don't have to buy a pi5 they never stopped selling Pi3's for £39.90.
admalledd@reddit
Ah, somehow I missed a memo that the Zero's had HDMI/display-out at all. Though personally I've moved to mostly RISC-V based MCUs connected via USB to a used mini-pc or such for my newer tinkering, with still able to use my older pi 3/4s for my ARM itching needs. Most of my recent needs haven't needed the display-out and thus going pure MCU (be it ESP or RISC-V) has been fine outside my larger environ-status/control project.
Tired8281@reddit
What RISC-V boards do you use?
admalledd@reddit
about 50/50 between the ox64 and the MilkVDuo really, with sprinkling of various ESPs (either RISC-V or XTENSA). There are some "better" boards now, but I've got a groove going with the ox64 since it has built-in ethernet, which I prefer/use instead of wifi, if I am not using the USB protocol.
droptableadventures@reddit
That's not even true any more, the ESP32 has come a long way.
ESP32-S2 and ESP32-S3 among others have USB host / device. No ESP seems to support host and device simultaneously, but RP2040 or Teensy can do this.
ESP32-P4 has MIPI DSI and can drive a 1280x800 panel (look up CrowPanel Advanced for one example) - but if you wanted to drive a small LCD, you've been able to do that over SPI.
They're not a direct substitute for the RasPi, but the microcontrollers like ESP32 are certainly marching into that "no man's land" between an Arduino-esque board with 2K of memory and a very slow CPU - and full on SBC boards running Linux like the Raspberry Pi.
There's a lot of things people were using Pis for that were overkill.
Everyone thought it was crazy that someone would run MicroPython on an ESP8266 - but it runs faster than C on an AVR due to the massive performance difference.
S_A_N_D_@reddit
The key here thoough is they've lost much of their use case, since if you were using them more as a computer there are now better and cheaper options, and if you were using them as a microcontroller, again there are now better and cheaper options.
They were amazing back in the day because they were a cheap but powerful microcontroller, but also could do more computer type things, but now they've lost both of those because microcontrollers are a lot more powerful than they once were (with better features like network connectivity that didn't used to be standard) and super cheap, and on the "more of a computer side" you can get better computers for equivalent or less money.
Basically, they don't have much of a use case anymore at their current prices because inevitably there are better options. They've lost their niche.
Even_Caterpillar3292@reddit
"lost much of their use case" not sure what that means. There is "use" which means a user has a "use" for a device. That has not gone away.
admalledd@reddit
yea, previously they were cheap enough that the "niche" was rather wide, and while they weren't great choices for what they were, being commonly used enough was great for having community/etc. But as you say both their niche got eaten by other newer MCUs on low-side and actual computers on high-side.
StickiStickman@reddit
A few dollars? Try a few for a dollar on Aliexpress
S_A_N_D_@reddit
Yes? That qualifies as a few dollars. I buy my Esp32 boards for from AliExpress for about $3-$6 CAD (depending on the variant) inclusive of shipping.
StickiStickman@reddit
I can't send the link, but I actually bought 2x 32-C3 for 1€ recently, but you can probably go cheaper.
They were called
But I am ordering form Germany, which usually is a lot more expensive, but maybe not anymore because of the trade war fiasco.
S_A_N_D_@reddit
That's a pretty good deal. Nice one.
I'm guessing I pay more in Canada due to shipping or logistics, but I can't really complain since we're only talking a difference of about $1-1.50.
The_Cream_Man@reddit
They weren't actually disagreeing with you, they were just emphasizing how cheap they are
S_A_N_D_@reddit
Yeah I misread their comment and have since edited my response to reflect that. My bad.
diabetic_debate@reddit
Yes and no. Yes for simple things like reading from sensors etc. but no for moderately complex functionality.
For reference, I have extensive experience with both the Pi and ESP32 including the ESP32P4. While the P4 is a beast of a microcontroller, it is not comparable to a Pi5. Not just in terms of raw speed but also in terms of ARM support that exists across various software that has no equivalent on the ESP side.
If you need to make something with the ESP32 that is not covered by preexisting projects like ESPHome or similar, you have to dive into ESP-IDF or Arduino and the former has a steeper learning curve than making something for Linux.
A good example of this are programs like PiHole or AllSky cameras that the Pi is perfect for as a mini PC is overkill due to space/power restrictions but the ESP32 either is severely under powered or software support just doesn't exist.
Plank_With_A_Nail_In@reddit
They still sell pi zero's for £15, they will do most raspberry pi projects just fine. They still sell every product they made after the pi2 you don't have to buy the newest model.
512165381@reddit
I bought a minipc & my old desktop has become my server. There are few cases for Raspberry Pi given cheap minipcs.
JesusIsMyLord666@reddit
A pi is still more energy efficient than a NUC. Which matters a lot in many scenarios. There aren’t many mini PCs that can be powered by POE for example.
Techmoji@reddit
It’s also a shame they abandoned the consumer market for like 5 years and pretty much exclusively reserved stock for business’ commercial and industrial use. Their consumer ship sailed a while ago imo.
M4rshmall0wMan@reddit
To anyone doubting how bad the RAM shortage is for 3GB to cost $80…
…it really is that bad.
PlsDntPMme@reddit
I just sold 64GB of spare DDR5 sodimm for $480 on eBay and someone purchased it within a few hours. I was floored to see someone actually pay that much.
headshot_to_liver@reddit
Even more than a decade old DDR3 is up in prices. Nearly 2x in prices
algaefied_creek@reddit
Yup.
Gamer buddy has an AMD FX-9590 4C/8T CPU with a GTX 1080.
He built it as a clearance build PC when Ryzen was coming out, CPU was like $50 at Fry’s Electronics. 16GB of DDR3-1866Mhz RAM.
It’s his 10-year upgrade mark timeline, sitting out crypto and COVID PC part shortages.
He upgraded this year to find “deals” like a 64GB DDR3-2400 for $80, a 2TB Samsung SSD for $180 mSATA in his motherboard’s ASUS m.2-PCIe AIB kit, and a 2080 ti super (11gb - $180) this year.
For being this year’s prices I guess it’s good.
He had his eyes on the Ryzen 7800X3D CPU and a 4-series GPU… but the upgrade cycle is postponed a bit longer yet again.
I’m sure he’s not the only one.
And on CachyOS, he can keep gaming without windows 10, woot.
Beefmytaco@reddit
We did rituals to bring ace combat 8 into existence. Maybe we can start doing them en masse to crash the AI market and get ram prices down.
plantsandramen@reddit
I got an 8gb Pi5 for $100 on Ebay and it came with a heatsink that has active cooling. I was thinking about getting another but can't justify it. I have mine running BirdNet-Pi which is a bird sound analyzer for seeing what birds are coming to my feeder and when.
hollow_bridge@reddit
That will work on a $15 1gb ram sbc, you don't need to pay the premiums you're looking at. just get something cheap and free up your rpi for the heavy projects. Imo there's a real problem with people recommending the high ram sbcs when 95% projects people use them for would be fine with 2gb or on an optomized 1gb system.
plantsandramen@reddit
The GitHub for the project says 4gb min.
_Gingy@reddit
I bought a couple mini PCs a few months back as prices started to climb (Oct/Nov). My buddy questioned why I was buying them over some Pis. I told them they were priced similar. He thought the mini PCs would have been like 130+ at the time. Once I showed him what I was getting he was shocked.
I also got incredibly lucky one seller was like, sorry I thought I had the correct boot drive in stock (256GB). No additional cost are you ok with a 500GB SSD. I was very happy with a free upgrade. I do regret not picking up more soDIMM sticks though. I only grabbed one at the time.
GoreMeister982@reddit
The PiPico2 is the product that is true to what the core Pi line used to be, which is a low cost, low barrier entry to electronics hobby projects. The core Pi line is now a mid level small form Factor PC that happens to have GPIO and serial interface support.
gunkanreddit@reddit
They only needed to stay under the $32 range. Give the best you can under that price.
KeyboardGunner@reddit
Fortunately the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W is still $15. IMO that's their best value offering.
wpm@reddit
It feels like there should be something beefier in the range between a Zero 2 and a Pi 4, for like $25 or $30. Stay in the passive, low-power range but maybe with some better, more modern IO: no goddamn micro-HDMI or micro-USB for one, maybe let one PCIe lane hang off the side, full-size ethernet (even 100M would be awesome). Zero 2's are low power until you account for all the dongle BS you need to do to connect to them.
Plank_With_A_Nail_In@reddit
You can still buy Pi3's.
wpm@reddit
So...nothing as small as the Zero then
Hockeygoalie35@reddit
So a Pi 3C, with USB-C and a better Ethernet / usb bus?
Tman1677@reddit
No ethernet makes it a tough sell personally
Hockeygoalie35@reddit
The hats are relatively inexpensive, no?
windowpuncher@reddit
You can also get micro usb ethernet adapters. They also just already have wifi. Or a usb hub and use an adapter with that.
wpm@reddit
Hats typically cover all of the GPIO, and don't need all of the pins.
Hockeygoalie35@reddit
True, though I’ve soldered on passthrough headers to expose the pins on the other side. Becomes tedious though.
hollow_bridge@reddit
varies, normally Its much cheaper to just buy usb dongles with extra usb ports and ethernet.
Hockeygoalie35@reddit
Ah that’s true!
the__storm@reddit
Yep, and the 3B/3B+ at $35/40 are decent. Apparently both use DDR2 and therefore are less affected by the memory shortage.
Yearlaren@reddit
Then people would complain that they are releasing garbage
WJMazepas@reddit
The Pi3, Zero 2W arent affected by the price increase and you can still do a lot of things with them
LBGW_experiment@reddit
My Pi 3B+ doesn't support CEC in raspbian, so I have to manually turn it and my projector off and on together to get it to behave properly :(
Plank_With_A_Nail_In@reddit
This seems like a really stupid use case for a raspberry pi.
LBGW_experiment@reddit
You can see what I'm using it for here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Golfsimulator/comments/1irx0wf/after_6_months_planning_and_2_months_building_ive/
I already have a powerful gaming PC in my office and it made no sense financially to build another one to leave in my garage when I'll never play on both, and I sure as hell wasn't going to unplug my computer and bring it 30 feet into the garage when I could just use a pi to remotely connect on my network.
hollow_bridge@reddit
I'm not sure if this is new, or how it works, but i was curious and did a search supposedly it does support cec with the cec-client package
LBGW_experiment@reddit
I'll have to dig up the old search of all the threads I had found when digging into why CEC wouldn't work. Iirc, I installed the minimal 64bit raspbian image as I didn't need most of the packages in it and had followed a guide on adding the right libs for audio and video support.
I have my pi run some scripts on startup to wake my PC and initiate a Moonlight game stream session via cli from my host PC so that I could have Moonlight automated.
Orolol@reddit
With atleast 50% inflation since it initially lauchned, you would have a worse product.
jdmb0y@reddit
The RPi has been a bad deal for the last 5 years at least.
snollygoster1@reddit
They did add PCIe on the Pi5 however you need an adapter board for NVME.
Of course people will also tell you that there's high endurance microSD cards, and while that is true they're also 3x-4x as much.
snollygoster1@reddit
I think the Pi 5 just lost the plot overall. Limiting themselves to 5V input rather than having USB-PD made the cost soar, because now it wasn't "oh just use a cell phone charger to power it, everyone has a few extra in a drawer" to "you need a charger that has 5V5A" which means that suddenly the pricing was automatically increased by $25.
Ecsta@reddit
IMO still way overpriced when Mini PC's are so cheap, I'll never understand why people continue to buy these.
127-0-0-1_1@reddit
The biggest benefit is the hardware and software ecosystem. If you're using it as part of a larger project, there's just much better support and technical resources for the pi because it's been the most popular historically.
Could you do the same with a 3rd party board? Of course, they're all turing complete. But in the end, $40 extra isn't worth multiple hours of my time.
Ecsta@reddit
Better support than ESP32 or Linux?
froop@reddit
Pis aren't competing with Linux, they run mainline Linux, and benefit from the entire open source ecosystem.
They are competing with other SBCs, which don't usually run mainline Linux, and may not even boot without a ton of effort.
They're just too expensive for what they are, unfortunately.
Plank_With_A_Nail_In@reddit
Yes.
You haven't used either of these products have you?
Even_Caterpillar3292@reddit
Apparently they have a place for GPIO pins, size, power (2-3 watts). Some people like to tinker regardless. They Pie keyboard is nice, yes you can get a Chromebook cheaper or old laptop, but you can make your own little laptop tinkered screen and do what you want.
Plank_With_A_Nail_In@reddit
The comments here clearly show this sub has zero understanding of non gaming hardware, its tiresome really.
gvx64@reddit
Are there any upgrades with the 3GB unit apart from just the RAM sizing? It would be nice to at least get a CPU with more thermally efficient stepping like we got back when the 8GB module was first introduced given the amount of money we are now having to pay. I might actually pay this if I could have a Pi4 that I could overclock to 2.5GHz with air cooling.
Orange2Reasonable@reddit
Raspi pi 5 with 16gb was listed today for 324 euro. Let that sink in
Proglamer@reddit
'Launched'... 3GB? Ugh. This is the 'decay of the Empire' stage from The Foundation when the new shit becomes worse than the old shit :(