When did Raspberry Pi get so expensive?

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/when-did-raspberry-pi-get-so-expensive

by mikece • 2 years ago

28 26 2 years ago

It started to get expensive when they started to not be able to meet demand... I sold my gen 1 for what I paid for it many years ago...

theamk• 2 years ago

Pi has its own niche where it's great... and "Desktop" is not it.

The moment you feel you don't care about power consumption, but you do need NVMe SSD and 8GB of RAM, it's time to look for something else.. NUCs are a great example and if you buy them used on eBay they can be even cheaper.

move-on-by2• 2 years ago

Unfortunately intel has discontinued the NUC product line

c_o_n_v_e_x• 2 years ago

Asus has licensed NUC designs from Intel. NUCs will be still be available but they'll be from Asus.

joezydeco• 2 years ago

If you need a daughterboard and an SSD to get away from SD cards then yeah it's going to get expensive. Maybe find an SBC family that likes to use eMMC?

Gen 1 was also an overstocked orphaned SoC. It was literally a freebie from Broadcom. People got spoiled.

wkat42422• 2 years ago

That doesn't really explain how Intel can do more for cheaper though.

hateful• 2 years ago

Inflation + Demand?

hammyhavoc4• 2 years ago

Change in goals. Adding "more".

MichaelMug• 2 years ago

If you need a computer it’s better to use a mini pc form factor from a major vendor that benefits from economies of scale. NUC’s aren’t great value. You can get used HP and Dell stuff used from IT recyclers for ~$150 that do circles around the Pi in terms of performance.

I never understood the fascination with the Pi. Especially with all the options today.

hammyhavoc4• 2 years ago

Uh, ARM, low power, and GPIO. The fascination is in its applications beyond a desktop computer. It was dirt-cheap for what it did and enabled.

bsder2• 2 years ago

A Beaglebone Black is a FAR better fit for the description of "ARM, low power, and GPIO".

A Beaglebone Black actually runs off of a 5V 500mA USB interface unlike the RPis that require non-standard 5V multi-Amp USB supplies. And it's GPIO system (along with everything else) is well documented and doesn't require NDAs.

And the RPi was only dirt cheap while it was being subsidized by Broadcom. Now that it's not, the RPI is more expensive than low end x86s that run rings around them.

bsder2• 2 years ago

I never understood the fascination with the Pi.

Ecosystem. Everybody was gaga over the RPi so if you wanted to do "Task X" you could find an online tutorial for it.

Of course, almost everything that doesn't involve an RPi Hat also works just fine on standard Linux machines. But not everybody gets that.

I watched this play out in real time. People wanted Octoprint to drive several 3D printers. They wanted one per printer and bought a whole bunch of RPi stuff. I pointed out that a used x86 desktop of any flavor was way cheaper and far more powerful, but shrug. Not my circus; not my monkeys.

washadjeffmad• 2 years ago

True, although Octoprint is typically for making local devices network connectable to receive and manage prints. A traditional PC is better if it's expected to do any processing of models, but a $5 rpi0w powered by the bus is generally plenty.

Our challenge was scalability and portability. Printers in our farms often moved between labs and offices, and toting a whole PC with each one would have been limiting to where they could be set up, as well as create potential conflicts with IT policy. It was also simpler to image SD cards than hard drives (or to work with IT to create and manage deployable configurations).

In the end, $35/printer for raspi3b+s wasn't a big overall expense, unlike the time spent on training and maintenance. Now we pay 10x more for faster, higher quality printers that don't break down AND include network ports, but we only need 1/5th as many to operate at the same capacity.

flounder3• 2 years ago

NUCs are a tremendous value over previous generation surplus hardware in areas where the cost of electricity has skyrocketed (SF Bay Area).

We’re talking more than one order of magnitude less power consumption when you compare to 2-3+ generations ago.

google234123• 2 years ago

Are there cheaper boards that mimic the pi available?

hammyhavoc4• 2 years ago

Sure. Are they good? "It depends."

They're a real mixed bag in terms of community and drivers, especially in the long-term.

photoGrant• 2 years ago

I’ll take and invest in anything manufactured and designed back at the ole Blighty. Worthy investment into a more self reliant future

zarzavat2• 2 years ago

Personally, I’m loving my Pi 5. It is just in the sweet spot, enough performance for what I need it to do, it’s portable, very low energy usage, it runs off an SD card so it’s very easy to re-image or swap images.

The NUC device is a desktop computer. If you want a desktop then buy a desktop, that’s not what a Pi is for (despite some unwise marketing to the contrary).

If the v5 is too expensive then pick up a v4, they are bound to get cheaper as v5 availability increases.

geerlingguy• 2 years ago

This is a good take on it — I also like running mine off microSD cards, which makes it trivially easy to swap OSes when I'm tinkering.

It's a different type of device for a different purpose than standard desktop computing.

I would be interested in a Pi 500 if they decide to make one, but would really like having an M.2 2280 slot built in. Anything else would be a bonus. I have a Pi 400 set up for my kids to use to learn typing and mess around (I put some old Mac/DOS emulators on it and all my ancient apps from my old computers).

wkat42422• 2 years ago

Yes M.2 and an audio port. That was sorely missing for a computer that's really built for use as a desktop.

snypher• 2 years ago

If a Pi is portable so is a NUC, and they're probably both desktops.

zarzavat2• 2 years ago

The NUC is portable in a sense, but the Pi is at the apex of portability. It weighs basically nothing and takes up very little space.

Perhaps most people don’t need to transport their Pi like me. Even so, the footprint definitely matters. The size and weight of the Pi means that it can be installed in many odd places. I have mine on a bookshelf.

nickaflip• 2 years ago

We all lived through the same chip shortage during/after COVID right or did I miss something? Was this even a question of why prices went up?

When did Raspberry Pi get so expensive?

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