This is no joke: the SBC hobby is dying

It's no joke. Even though Raspberry Pi

posted this on April 1st, there's a new

3 GB Raspberry Pi 4 that cost $83.75.

And uh they've also increased the price

of other pies. Like this 16 GB Pi 5 is

now $299.99.

That is an increase of 150% over its

already pretty high price when it was

launched. And the problem is that all

the RAM, all the DRAM that goes into

these things has been skyrocketing in

price. Eban Upton in his blog post said

there's been a seven-fold increase in

DRM pricing and everybody is wanting

this LPDDR4 DRM and uh you know whatever

the problems are that are causing this

shortage whether it's AI uh obligations

that aren't actually materializing uh

people lying about the amount of uh DRM

that they need and reserve from

foundaries whether it's uh collusion or

whatever uh from the the DRM companies

that supply these things I don't know

the one thing that I do know is that all

these things kind of are conspiring

together to I think kind of kill off a

lot of things that people used to love

to do like buying SBC's and doing fun

projects with them. If the company that

you buy your SBC from is uh not already

affected, they will be and I guarantee

they are already, but some people have

passed on the price increases already.

Other ones have yet to and have some old

stock that they're still trying to move

out. Uh, but in talking with other

companies that make SBC's besides

Raspberry Pi, there have been SBC

projects that have been completely

cancelled because they can't get memory.

Like this 16 gig Pi5, there's not many

people that are going to pay 300 bucks

for one of these. I only have one and

that's because it was already a dubious

value at 120 bucks when I bought it. At

300 bucks, there's no reason to buy this

unless you have like a product that has

to have just this and you're selling it

for a profit. And even your profit would

get uh cut into quite deeply by having a

a a price go up 150% of a component in

it. But it's just crazy. I I put

together a few charts here. So this

first chart is showing showing the price

increase since launch of the Pi 5 2 gig

and 4 gig and 16 gig. And now they have

a 1 gig and of course that 3 GB. And

you're you're wondering like why 3 GB?

That's a weird memory amount. Well,

they're using two 1.5 gig chips. That

saves cost because the 1.5 gig chips can

be had in greater supply than the 1 gig,

2 gig, 4 gig, those kind of things. Uh

for various reasons, but that's why

Raspberry Pi is doing it. They actually

redesigned the PCB of the Pi 4 to allow

for two chips instead of one, which is

crazy. Like they haven't done that on

any Pi yet, and now they're doing it on

the Pi 4 because of this unprecedented

rise in prices. Anyway, that's uh kind

of depressing on its own. But then if

you look at SBC's overall uh right now

there are some like uh there are some

that are a very good value if you can

pick them up. The Rad Dragon Q6A, which

I haven't done a full video on. I've

done a full set of testing on it and I I

like the thing and I want to recommend

it, but I just haven't had time to make

a full video on it. Uh that is probably

the best value SPC you can get right

now. It uses a Qualcomm chip on it. Uh,

the Rock 5C is also a good value, but

I've seen it going out of stock a lot.

Um, other than that, I've I've tested

the Orange Pi 5 and Pi 5 Pro. Those are

both very good boards. Uh, but those are

going up in price even more than the Pi.

So, it's like those were great values,

but now it's 2026 and that's just not a

thing. If I look at the 8 gig RAM

models, again, the Q6A right now, if you

can get it, that is the best value SPC

you can get right now. It's again, it's

a Qualcomm chip, so things there's some

caveats there, but Radza currently has

enough stock, I guess, of their memory

that they're able to put these things

out at prices that aren't sky-high, but

they're going up and they're going to

continue rising. The other thing in all

of these uh slides that you'll notice is

that the mini PCs, which used to be a

great value, are now just a good value.

They're still a better value. Like, if

you buy one of these mini PCs, it comes

with an SSD, it comes with a case, all

that kind of stuff. you don't have to

buy anything extra. Uh, but it used to

be like a scorchingly good value

compared to most SBC's, but now they're

just on par basically. But again, like

the 16 gig Pi5 that is just I don't I

don't know who will buy one of these

things. It's it's a crazy amount of of

money to pay for an SBC with the

performance that it has and the features

that it has. And, you know, there's been

backlash against Raspberry Pi for this

stuff. And it's like, yeah, they are a

public company now, so they're trying to

turn a profit. And um I I think the

biggest takeaway from this is for the

hobbyist, for people who are doing these

things for fun or open source or little

hardware projects, move to the Pi 3,

move to the the 02W. Those are the two

models that are still a great value. And

apparently Raspberry Pi has tons of

supply of LPDDR2 RAM, the older, slower

RAM that's used in those boards. So the

prices on those probably won't go up so

much. Um, the other thing I've noticed

is like for myself included, I've been

starting to do more projects with

microcontrollers, which you can still

get without paying a bazillion dollars.

And uh, it's kind of fun and and

interesting to get into something

entirely new there. And uh, some of them

are powerful enough to do things that

are that I would formally do on uh, SPC.

So, timing projects and uh certain

control projects where I used to need a

full Linux install, now you can do it in

micro Python almost just as easy or uh

building smart home things with ESP

home. It's great. And uh the the sad

thing is that there is still a lot of

great things that you can do when you

have full Linux running on an SBC with,

you know, low-end desktop class

performance that we're just not going to

be able to do. And uh you know even if

we're talking about buying used hardware

that the prices on that stuff is going

up especially if it has a lot of RAM. So

certain hobbies are just kind of

impacted and and dying off right now.

And I don't see a rosy future for it

unless we can find a way to uh get these

prices back down at some point because

my my income from YouTube hasn't gone

up. In fact, it's gone down a little bit

the past year and a half because

YouTube's viewership for long- form

videos like these has gone down. And uh

yeah, it's it's not not a great

situation that we're in for this. But uh

maybe maybe I'll just become a retro

YouTuber and do all my fun Mac projects

uh until we get back to having

reasonable pricing for these things.

Anyway, uh until next time, I'm Jeff

Kurling.