[HN Gopher] DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market
___________________________________________________________________
DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market
Author : ingve
Score : 127 points
Date : 2026-04-01 21:36 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.jeffgeerling.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.jeffgeerling.com)
| wpferrell wrote:
| Totally agree. Just like graphics card prices. Is it worth
| building a pc now?
| fidotron wrote:
| OTOH things which belong on microcontrollers are now being pushed
| back to microcontrollers for cost reasons, so there is a win to
| be found there.
| a1o wrote:
| Holy crap, it is super expensive now. I should have brought an
| extra one in the past.
| jokoon wrote:
| it's probably time to call those old retired programmers to ask
| them how to reduce software memory footprint
|
| or to teach that again
| rat9988 wrote:
| The art is not lost, just not funded. Feel free to fund the
| programmers for your own software projects.
| tempest_ wrote:
| It isnt lost but it also isnt a common skill set in
| programmers any more.
|
| Most programmers are JS web devs writing client side code or
| server side CRUD.
|
| I would guess < 10% of programmers writing code today get
| perf / valgrind out on the regular. I know I dont.
| siruwastaken wrote:
| Most people don't have the chance to do that, but hopefully
| we can see some other languages get first class access on
| the web. At least there is the whole WASM project.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| You can still write JS or TypeScript code that tries its
| best to keep memory use under check. JavaScript was around
| in the late 90s when the memory footprint of software was
| at least an order of magnitude lower, so it's absolutely
| doable.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Just rewrite your biggest memory hogs in Rust, it routinely
| slashes RAM footprint and demand for RAM throughput. The effect
| is even bigger than the typical reduction in CPU use. You can
| even ask AI to help you with the task, it will use a lot less
| RAM for it than the rewrite will save down the road.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Why would we need rust, if the AI can just write really good
| code in C that doesn't exhibit any of the issues that rust
| protects you from?
| msy wrote:
| 'rewrite in C, make sure there are no memory leaks'. You
| first.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Rust's compile-time checks are actually a nice set of
| guardrails for LLMs.
|
| Nobody who works with LLM generated code believes that LLMs
| produce fault-free code.
| post-it wrote:
| It can't, because there is no really good code to train off
| of.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Because it can't?
| maplethorpe wrote:
| Have you tried asking Claude 4.6 Opus?
| jonathantf2 wrote:
| 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.
| dangus wrote:
| That's strange, there aren't wider market supply chain issues
| outside of DRAM. Maybe your vendor is just throwing excuses
| around.
| ls612 wrote:
| SSDs and HDDs are being squeezed as well.
| mhitza wrote:
| Don't forget SDCards
|
| "Memory card prices have TRIPLED in the last few months:
| when will this madness stop?!"
| https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/cameras/memory-
| cards/memo...
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Sony stopped making their cards entirely, which stinks
| because I'd settled on their pro cards for all my camera
| bodies.
| tempest_ wrote:
| We just had a vendor tell us none of the HDDs we were
| looking for were available unless we also committed to a
| full NAS offering.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| uh, prthspd you've heard of the third world war started in
| Iran?
| celsius1414 wrote:
| They're throwing _something_ around.
| OJFord wrote:
| DRAM is up _more_ than that 50% though.
| CTDOCodebases wrote:
| Fuel price rises = logistics price rises.
| michaelt wrote:
| 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.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| This isn't true: NAND flash prices are up too, though not
| nearly as dramatically. But the war means that fuel and
| shipping prices are way up as well.
| zie wrote:
| At work we just got a quote to upgrade a couple servers,
| original price a few years ago was ~ $150k. Essentially the
| same hardware, just newer, is now quoted at ~ $450k.
|
| We decided to just keep our current hardware for now and extend
| a support contract for ~ normal price.
| dangus wrote:
| "Killing" is strong phrasing.
|
| Yes, a $250 mini PC I bought last year is now $350.
|
| Is this pricing bad? Yeah, compared to what it was.
|
| Is this the end of the world? Not really, and we've seen price
| spikes for all kinds of PC components in the past. It's rarely
| permanent.
| SSchick wrote:
| Not everyone earns tech bro salaries and can sustain a thousand
| cuts. Many hobbiests are scraping and saving money to acquire
| hardware. For some it very well msy be the end of their world.
| dangus wrote:
| We are talking about brand new latest gen hardware here.
| People with low budgets are always scraping and saving for
| deals and don't need to buy something brand new from a pricey
| brand name like raspberry pi.
|
| You can still jump on eBay and buy all kinds of dirt cheap
| used pieces of hardware.
|
| My buddy just bought a used ThinkPad T14 with 32GB of RAM and
| 1TB of storage for about $500. You can get by with a whole
| lot less.
|
| In this context, I will also present the idea that Rasperry
| Pi has represented quite poor cost value for many years now.
| ciupicri wrote:
| That cheap stuff from eBay that people talk about all the
| time seems to be available only in North America, or in the
| best case Western Europe.
|
| ThinkPad T14 which generation?
| homebrewer wrote:
| Yes, 90%+ of sellers refuse to ship here (and we're not
| even under any sanctions and/or political pressure of any
| sort). I hear about these magical 100$ Thinkpads all the
| time; I'm yet to see anything cheaper than 300$ (add
| another 100$+ for shipping).
| homebrewer wrote:
| Have you looked at how expensive international shipping is?
| eBay covers just a few countries, the rest of us can't buy
| there because we'll be paying 10 times the cost of hardware
| to get it over here.
|
| I already moaned about this recently, but to briefly
| reiterate: the only hardware that's becoming available for
| most people in my region are Frankenstein desktops built
| from heavily used 10+ year old Xeons running on suspicious
| motherboards made by obscure Chinese manufacturers you've
| never heard of. This is pushing ever more people towards
| smartphones and away from actual computers.
|
| But at least we got the bullshit machine in return, that's
| something, I guess.
| SkyeCA wrote:
| > Have you looked at how expensive international shipping
| is?
|
| It really shocks me how bad shipping has gotten. It's
| nearly unaffordable to buy things on eBay from the US as
| a Canadian due to shipping costs, so I can only imagine
| just how bad it is for people from other countries.
| doubled112 wrote:
| That sounds pretty nice. The same mini PC I paid $195 for in
| 2023 is now $450. Seems to be life in Canada sometimes.
|
| It had caused me to look around though. I have found the Pi
| Zero 2W to be surprisingly capable for Pi sized jobs.
| einpoklum wrote:
| The title should say: "Collusion of large corporations promoting
| LLMs with RAM manufacturers is killing the hobbyist SBC market
| (and bankrupting anybody trying to get a PC or laptop)".
|
| Because we all know that DRAM prices have spiked since production
| is going to those infernal chatbot training data centers. Same as
| a lot of the electricity in some parts of the world, BTW.
| Permit wrote:
| Can you elaborate on the collusion aspect? Is the implication
| that OpenAI and Anthropic are coordinating their purchases in
| such a way that they target the hobbyist market? What's the
| collusion angle here?
| neonstatic wrote:
| > Collusion of large corporations promoting LLMs
|
| > We all know that DRAM prices have spiked since production is
| going to those infernal chatbot training data centers
|
| I know it's very fashionable here to talk about capitalism as
| some hand-washes-hand big corp organized scam, but if you put
| that ideology aside for a moment, you contradicted yourself
| here, I think.
|
| I personally don't like conspiracy-theory-thinking. If I was a
| DRAM manufacturer and had to choose between servicing a single
| customer, who orders hundreds of millions worth of my product,
| or service a very large number of customers who order tiny
| amounts of the product a piece, then of course I would focus on
| the large client, because they are easier to service for the
| expected profit margin. I wouldn't even need to think about
| advertisement, sales, all that jazz. Looking at it from that
| perspective, it seems pretty logical to me that a spike in
| demand from datacenter operators would rise prices
| dramatically. I struggle to see room for collusion / conspiracy
| here.
| ozborn wrote:
| A couple of issues, first there is a history of price
| collusion (see DRAM price fixing scandal on Wikipedia) and
| while it may be "logical" from a seller point of view to
| prefer large orders, this upsets a lot of people and used to
| be illegal in the United States (it may still be illegal, but
| it's not enforced)
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| Yikes. First, home taping killed music. And now this. We are
| doomed.
| elwebmaster wrote:
| It's terrible. Fake money is fueling the exhaustion of real
| resources in search of questionable outcomes ("AGI"). Imagine if
| all of these money were invested in curing cancer.
| mhb wrote:
| Imagine if AI cures cancer.
| squidsoup wrote:
| You can imagine all you want, but my understanding is there
| is no credible evidence that scaling LLMs will result in true
| AGI.
| mhb wrote:
| Obviously there's no "evidence". Why would you even think
| we need AGI? But I'm happy to hear your reasoning if you
| were one of the few/only? people who imagined that software
| that could predict the next word could do what it now is
| doing.
| elwebmaster wrote:
| You don't have to imagine, it will hallucinate you a slop
| with full confidence every time.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Let's also imagine an alternative reality where some
| reasonable percentage of the $2.5T in current year AI
| spending was instead invested in the "general intelligence"
| researchers we already have for the same purpose. I think
| it's a pretty reasonable expectation that 1) they'd probably
| make more progress and 2) that money would help a lot more
| people in the process (through jobs and economic activity).
| michaelt wrote:
| _> The price increases bring the 16GB Pi 5 up to $299.99._
|
| Meanwhile, a refurbished corporate laptop with 16GB RAM and a
| 512GB SSD can be yours for $199 [1]
|
| I'm sure there will still be people who want the Pi 5 but at
| these prices, I ain't one of them.
|
| [1] https://www.ebay.com/itm/327079631563
| tempest_ wrote:
| Those will dry up soon enough. Corporate laptop refreshes will
| be drawn out as they try and cost save on the increased price.
|
| You also better hope the aliexpress dont figure out a way to
| get the RAM out of those things because they will start
| harvesting it for sure if there is money to made.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| For most older laptops it's easy enough, you just open them
| up and take the RAM sticks out. There are SO-DIMM to DIMM
| adaptors to fit a laptop memory stick in a DIMM socket.
| tredre3 wrote:
| > Those will dry up soon enough.
|
| We're talking about a pi replacement. The Pi 5 is slower than
| a 10yo laptop. That's gives us a very vast pool of used
| laptops.
|
| > You also better hope the aliexpress dont figure out a way
| to get the RAM
|
| That is a real worry and I can see used machines being gutted
| because selling DDR3/4/5 sticks is way easier and profitable
| than the whole machine. Adapters for SODIMM to regular DIMM
| are readily available and cheap, too.
| bombcar wrote:
| The EDU Neo is $500, too bad it's not as versatile.
| Venn1 wrote:
| Is there anything (technically) preventing SBC manufacturers
| adding SODIMM slots?
|
| I was expecting the Milk V Titan to avoid this memory nonsense
| since it has two unpopulated DDR4 slots, but it has fallen off
| the radar like several other SBCs.
| tempest_ wrote:
| DDR4 is also crazy expensive right now so this just depends on
| you having some around from a previous build
| zozbot234 wrote:
| It actually seems to be slightly less expensive than DDR5,
| perhaps due to the lower throughput that makes it
| uncompetitive for AI-adjacent workloads.
| murderfs wrote:
| SODIMMs are huge compared to a BGA memory package which is a
| problem if your goal is to minimize your board size (e.g. I
| don't think there's a reasonable way to fit it into a Raspberry
| Pi form factor without something weird and expensive like a
| mezzanine connector). Routing the signals is also somewhat more
| annoying because they all come out of one edge of the connector
| compared to a BGA package which has them fan out in every
| direction, giving more space for length matching traces, etc.
| You'll likely need additional PCB layers compared to a BGA
| chip.
| Lwrless wrote:
| Got my RPi 5 16GB quite a while ago for around $160 and already
| thought that was expensive... It's still powerful enough for
| almost everything I throw at it, honestly a bit overkill in most
| scenarios.
|
| With prices steadily going up, for me it's starting to feel more
| sensible to repurpose the RAM sticks I've collected from old PC
| builds / laptops and just throw together small amd64 boxes
| instead of buying more RPis.
| jorvi wrote:
| I wonder if there are low power Intel or AMD boards that accept
| DDR3. So many sticks of 2 / 4 / 8GB DDR3 inside laptops going
| into recycling or landfills which would do perfectly fine for
| low power purposes. Hell, performance for standard workloads
| scales with access times, not bandwidth, and DDR3 sits nicely
| at CAS8 1600MHz and CAS10 2133MHz..
| w-ll wrote:
| [delayed]
| JollySharp0 wrote:
| There are ups and downs in the prices of components. Often people
| forget that during COVID prices were high for SBCs because of
| supply chain issues. Video cards just were not available in the
| UK and afterwards (every supplier had long lead times) and are
| still relatively expensive (at least there are now lower priced
| options). Raspberry Pis you couldn't get hold of and many people
| (Jeff Included) was using a website checking for availability
| which was non-existent for anything other than low end models.
|
| I remember 15-20 years ago when hard drive prices went up through
| the roof because there was a flood in Thailand and it too years
| for prices to come down.
|
| There is going to be supply chain issues due to the current
| Geopolitical situation (Helium comes out of the Gulf and that is
| need in chip manufacture) is also going to affect the price of
| components.
|
| Eventually in a few years (as the article states) the situation
| will change. It just sucks at the moment.
|
| TBH I am more worried about my ability to fill up the tank on my
| car as both Petrol and Diesel is unavailable locally. I can make
| do with whatever computer equipment I have.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > People are quick to forget that during COVID prices were high
| for SBCs because of supply chain issues.
|
| inb4 AI has the same supply chain effects as a worldwide
| pandemic. I guess those AI doomers that talked about it being
| the end of the world had it right!
| JollySharp0 wrote:
| Doomers IMO are just click baiting.
|
| There is a saying that is often trotted out my economists
| "That the cure for high prices, is high prices".
|
| There is a consumer market and business need for DRAM outside
| of AI. Someone will fulfil the need as there is a high
| incentive to. It just going to take a bit of time for this to
| happen. My equipment is going to be fine for another few
| years. So I am going to just hang tight and make do with what
| I got for now.
| dwattttt wrote:
| > Someone will fulfil the need as there is a high incentive
| to
|
| And those uses which fall short of the new threshold, e.g.
| hobbyist SBCs, slowly fall away.
| contextfree wrote:
| what are the barriers to new DRAM supply coming online?
| bombcar wrote:
| Huge capital outlays and no guarantee the prices stay high.
| esskay wrote:
| The SBC markets been on life support for a long time. Youtubers
| making videos about them don't seem to grasp that and keep
| pumping out reviews and projects like its still 2019. The pi
| specifically has plummeted in popularity and for most use cases
| they just aren't a cost effective option when second hand micro
| pcs are dirt cheap and vastly more capable.
| msgilligan wrote:
| I don't think comparing new Pis to used micro pcs is fair.
| Compare a _used_ Pi with a used micro pc. If you have any geek
| friends, it's probably not hard to find a used Pi for free.
| throwaway85825 wrote:
| PCs don't have GPIO. They're different markets and the desktop
| replacement never materialized.
| Havoc wrote:
| Bought a couple of 32gb SBCs before this all hit the fan. And
| also built a SSD NAS before the wave hit.
|
| So timed that all pretty great. What worries me is my desktop is
| up for a full new buy somewhere around early '28. That could be a
| train wreck depending on how taiwan situation goes
| rtpg wrote:
| am I crazy for thinking that the 16GB Pi 5 is just there to
| absorb money from people who purchase the most expensive version
| of things? Like really nobody needs that much RAM on a Pi?
| Aurornis wrote:
| The extreme DRAM market has had an unexpected side effect of
| triggering a lot of panic buying. I know several people who
| delayed PC upgrades for years but then panic bought new systems
| in this market. The trigger was seeing all of the "It's only
| going to get worse" and "This is the end of personal computing"
| headlines.
|
| They're already regretting spending so much now that prices have
| started to tick downward.
|
| I keep telling everyone: If you don't have a pressing need to buy
| right now, please wait 6 months and check again.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2026-04-01 23:00 UTC)