Mastodawn

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

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jonathantf2 5d 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.

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dangus 5d ago

That’s strange, there aren’t wider market supply chain issues outside of DRAM. Maybe your vendor is just throwing excuses around.

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CTDOCodebases 5d ago

Fuel price rises = logistics price rises.

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nostrademons

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.)