Raspberry Pi’s are not as compelling a platform as they once were. For a lot of applications, you’re better off buying a mini PC already including an SSD and case. Reasons you might still want a Pi are projects that use the hardware pins or for lower power consumption for something left on 24/7. Consequently, it’s suggested the AI investment bubble is part of a scheme to drive up memory costs, to limit people running their own opensource AI clients on their own hardware, to drive users of AI to the online platforms. As you need a lot of RAM for the client to load information. That conspiracy might have legs beyond just the memory companies profiting.
This may sound like an April Fool’s joke, but the Raspberry Pi 4 with 3GB RAM is real and now offered for $83.75. Raspberry Pi also announced another round of price increase for Raspberry Pi 4/5/CM4/CM5 due to a “seven-fold increase over the last year in the price of [the] LPDDR4 DRAM“.
As far as I know, 3GB LPDDR4 chips do NOT exist or are very rare, so the new SBC likely relies on the Raspberry Pi 4 dual RAM PCB variant introduced last month, and features two 1.5GB LPDDR4 chips for a total of 3GB of RAM.
Apart from the memory capacity, nothing else changes. If you are still skeptical, you’ll find the Raspberry Pi 4 3GB listed on the product page and on resellers such as Robu (India) and RaspberryPi.dk. It’s also not the first SBC with 3GB of RAM around, since Orange Pi 4 LTS was introduced with 3GB LPDDR4 (2x 1.5GB) or 4GB LPDDR4 (2x 2GB) in 2022.
In addition to the new 3GB RAM SBC, Raspberry Pi announced the third round of price increases for Raspberry Pi 4/5 SBCs, Raspberry Pi 500/500+ keyboard PCs, Compute Modules 4/5, and AI HAT+ 2 as summarized in the table below.
| Product | Density | Price increase | Price |
|---|
| Product | Density | Price increase | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Raspberry Pi 4 and 5 | 4GB | $25 | $100/$110 |
| Raspberry Pi 4 and 5 | 8GB | $50 | $165/$175 |
| Raspberry Pi 5 | 16GB | $100 | $305 |
| Raspberry Pi 500 (unit only and kit) | 8GB | $50 | $180/$200 |
| Raspberry Pi 500+ unit only | 16GB | $150 | $410 |
| Raspberry Pi 500+ kit | 16GB | $150 | $430 |
| Compute Module 4 and 4S | 1GB | $11.25 | Depends on storage and wireless configuration |
| Compute Module 4, 4S, 5 | 2GB | $12.50 | Depends on storage and wireless configuration |
| Compute Module 4, 4S, 5 | 4GB | $25 | Depends on storage and wireless configuration |
| Compute Module 4, 4S, 5 | 8GB | $50 | Depends on storage and wireless configuration |
| Compute Module 5 | 16GB | $100 | Depends on storage and wireless configuration |
| Development Kit for Compute Module 5 | 4GB | $25 | $190 |
| Raspberry Pi AI HAT+ 2 | 8GB | $50 | $180 |
Raspberry Pi only provided the price increases, so I added the actual prices to show the extent of the damage, and that’s before any taxes and shipping. The entry-level Raspberry Pi 4/5 1GB models are still priced at $35 and $45, and the 2GB variants go for $55/$65. Other SBCs from Orange Pi, Radxa, Banana Pi, Hardkernel, and other manufacturers are also impacted, but the impact may differ depending on the type and brand of RAM chips, and it may pay off to shop around. I can also see some resellers haven’t updated their prices, so you can still order Raspberry Pi hardware at the old price for the next few days or hours?.
Going forward, I have absolutely no idea what will happen to the price of RAM. On one end, I’ve just read OpenAI may not buy as much memory as initially anticipated, and on the other end, the war in the Middle East may entail short-term and long-term supply disruptions that are hard to predict. Notably, Helium supply constraints may impact semiconductor manufacturing capacity, while blowing up datacenters in the Middle East may create more demand for RAM chips and GPUs, as they are relocated to calmer shores.