Unfortunate how bad the last 7 or so years have been market wise for the raspberry pi project. It feels like every time the hardware on one end gets cheaper, some other tech fad squeezes another component price up.
The only reason I’ve ever used Raspberry Pis is because they’re cheap as hell. I think $45 is the most I’ve ever paid for one. Fuck this.
May as well just buy a used laptop or desktop.
Or a mini pc. 16GB RAM, 500GB NVME ~$300.
Power consumption.
Good luck when that market gets squeezed too.
Good thing there is so much old crap out there
For a while there, second hand mini desktops like the Lenovo/Optiplex’s could be picked up for about half the price of a new Pi5. Typically had equal RAM, loads of SSD storage and desktop class(ish) CPU perfomance, plus all the other benefits (Secureboot, x86 compatibility so you could run Windows if you wished). Only major thing missing was the GPIO connection.
But looking now the prices are increasing rapidly as they have been discovered. The cheap ones are typically striped of RAM and storage.
Who’s the complete fucking idiot buying them at that price? Surely no one is that desperate.
The base model of Pi5 is $45 USD.
The 16 gig Pi 5 us $385 USD.
If you are using 16 gigs, you should probably using different hardware.
Definitely. A used mini PC is way faster than a Pi.
Seriously what the fuck. I thought these things were $25. I haven’t followed tech since last the last time I built a PC in 2022; I can’t believe the chip shortage has gotten this bad. (Fucking AI)
I hadn’t been keeping a close eye on pricing but was blown away the other day. The Nvidia RTX 5090 launched at $4090 here in Australia, that was already obscene. Nowadays almost 2 years later, you are lucky if you find one under $12,000!
And here I thought I was being stupid paying $1600 for a 4090 back then. Jesus Fucking Christ, $12K for a GPU!? That’s 1980s prices! Guess I won’t be upgrading for a long time… (edit: not that I need to anytime soon, lol. This card is a beast)
To be fair to the 1980’s, a Hercules video card in 1982 adjusted for inflation would only be about $1700. We are way beyond that point.
An original Macintosh 128K would set you back $8100 in today’s money, so I guess in that regard Apple hasn’t changed. ;)
I suspect if anyone is buying these is because of them needing to meet an existing strict spec. Not sure what that would be but it is a possibility.
Man I remember getting pissed I couldnt get a Pi4 for less than $50, paid $30 for my Pi3
At this point we can probably take an efficient full-blown PC in a mini format, and get something sensibly similar for less. It might even be possible to throw some GPIO USB in there if that’s what you need.
You could use and esp32 and connect over serial for gpio
It’s been like that since the Pi was around $150 tbh, at least when looking at used hardware as a comparison.
It is now, just a shitty computer. It used to be a learning platform, but that price tag is not a learning price.
It became somewhat inevitable once companies started buying mass amounts of Pis for every purpose because they were so cost-efficient.
It used to be an education nonprofit, but it effectively became an industrial SBC supplier.
By now we’ve learned not to buy RPi again
Near peak bubble.
It is starting to feel like it. Might not see price decline for a while yet, but the upswing on pricing is nearing breaking point.
What the fuck.
Manufacturing for AI has increased demand for material and lithography. The price has followed accordingly.
And as Sam Altman says, “your RAM is wasted and idle anyways, gotta feed my silicon god” (“you’ll own nothing and be a serf”).
Hardware hoarding by corporations who were allowed to accrue so much money they can afford to buy up hardware just to keep it out of the hands of their competitors.*
Nah the Raspberry Pi Foundation has been going down this route since covid, long before AI was being crammed into and consuming everything.
Oh, I know. I’m just flabbergasted that a pi costs nearly $400 bucks. Last one I bought was 29.99 and that felt expensive.
You could get a framework 13 mainboard for this much and use it for the same fucking purpose but it would have way more functionality.
Might as well just pickup a mini pc.
Depending on the use case, this is solid advice. I’d suggest checking on eBay for older, used machines that that are still pretty powerful compared to a Pi and are also quite cheap.
I wanted a mini with low power usage and fanless.
A mini PC and an Arduino is the ticket.
I’ve also had good luck with Orange PIs. Just checked pricing and they’ve gone up but not pushing anywhere near $400. I know Banana PIs and a few others are out there but I am less familiar with those.
Definitely going to check out Orange (and Banana) Pis. Thanks!
Can I run a mini-pc via PoE?
PoE can go up to 70W according to wikipedia. A few years ago, a cheap NUC would draw ~50W with heavy loads. And they would have probably been more capable than a Pi5, GPIO excluded (and you can add this to anything with USB. You might even be able to do something with a low-speed M2 port.)
Sure, just need a PoE adapter for it.
PoE splitters exist
Mini pc costs a grand+
Nah, just a used one off eBay. Just now, I saw some i7 8700s w/32GB for <100$.
It will use more power, but it’s going to be a lot faster for most tasks.
Wanted to suggest solar but added cost won’t make sense without multi use
I bought this one to run my Home Assistant. $329 Canadian.
That has 8GB RAM. The only reason the Pi in the headline is so expensive is the 16GB RAM. As others mentioned, the 1GB or 2GB options are a fraction of the cost.
It also comes with windows. If pick it over a pi every single time.
The 8GB Pi5 is still around $250 though and will be much less capable than that mini PC.
I picked up a mini PC in July for 500 that I think goes for 600 today, 16GB ddr4 ram 1TB drive, 25 watt, integrated video card with 3GB, very quiet. It runs way more retro games than my pi3, also using it for a media PC and some light DAW & development work with no problems.
I bought my first Pi in (I think) 2014. It’s one of the things that got me into IT. The low price was an important feature, since I was much less reluctant to experiment and take risks with hardware that cost as much as a family meal. But nearly $400 the juice ain’t worth the squeeze.
I guess I’m lucky in that I got a pi 5 back when they were selling at MSRP. I have a couple Pi 4’s, two 3’s (one I can’t find anymore sadly), my original Pi 1 model B, an also lost Pi zero W that I successfully soldered the GPIO pin headers to, and a Pi 400 I bought on a whim.
When people ask me about experimenting with Linux I usually tell them to either emulate it in virtualBox or buy a Raspberry Pi if they want a bare metal experience. It was specifically because the Pi was cheap and thus low risk if something did go wrong.
Most of the time bunch of wireless esp32 bundled a mini pc do much better.
They think they’re Apple or something!?
At least the Macbook Neo comes with a lot more flashy stuff.
I’m a big supporter of RPI, purchased many different models over the years to run various services in my homelab. At this price point it doesn’t make any sense at all. Its USP was very low cost hardware to run Linux. I hope this isn’t the beginning of the end for them.
I recently repurposed one of my old Pis to run LibreElec for me. It barely chugs along, and there are many issues. Thought I might buy a new one, not realising just how much they cost now. It’s frankly absurd.
I could buy a much more capable NUC second hand for less.
I could get a used office desktop, and its monitor for less than this, and it’d be more usable.
Raspbery PI done lost its mind.
