ingve5d ago

DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/dram-pricing-is-killing-the-hobbyist-sbc-market/

DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

Today Raspberry Pi announced more price increases for all Pis with LPDDR4 RAM, alongside a 'right-sized' 3GB RAM Pi 4 for $83.75. The price increases bring the 16GB Pi 5 up to $299.99. Despite today's date, this is not a joke. I published a video going over the state of the hobbyist 'high end SBC' market (4/8/16 GB models in the current generation), which I'll embed below: But if you'd like the tl;dr:

Jeff Geerling
Show threadjonathantf25d ago

DRAM pricing is killing the everything market.

We just had a vendor uplift our quote 50% per unit for some machines because of a mix of memory + supply chain issues.

Show threaddangus
That’s strange, there aren’t wider market supply chain issues outside of DRAM. Maybe your vendor is just throwing excuses around.
Apr 1 at 10:14pmWeb
Show threadOJFord5d ago
DRAM is up more than that 50% though.
Show threadCTDOCodebases5d ago
Fuel price rises = logistics price rises.
Show threadmichaelt5d ago

You're right that fuel prices have risen. But usually the impact of fuel prices is mostly felt on bulkier, lower cost items first.

After all, a truck can carry a 10kg sack of rice, or a 10kg nvidia gpu. If shipping costs for 10kg rise by $15 the sack of rice has doubled in price, but the GPU is only 0.5% more expensive.

Show threadnostrademons5d ago
This is driven by AI datacenter demand, not fuel prices. RAM prices have actually dropped significantly in the last couple days as the Iran war hit and the possibility that interest rates might go up and pop the AI bubble sunk in. (Though let’s see where they go after the last couple days of whipsawing.)
Show threadnoosphr5d ago

>That’s strange, there aren’t wider market supply chain issues outside of DRAM.

GPUs, ram, ssds, hdds, hell even CPUs are starting to climb in price. It's an everything shortage and it's only getting worse.

A workstation that two years ago cost $3,000 was $10,000 last month and $10,500 this month. There are parts which aren't available at any price.

Show threadphil215d ago

Yeah. Not true. Or send me the name of your server vendor. I’m buying.

Having issues with both price and availability on NVMe, SATA flash, starting to see some CPUs, and for a personal project high density spinning rust (24TB+).