May as well just buy a used laptop or desktop.
Or a mini pc. 16GB RAM, 500GB NVME ~$300.
Power consumption.
Electricity is green.
Honestly this is a sad point. The SBC trend was going ti remarkly small idle power comsumption.
For a while there, second hand mini desktops like the Lenovo/Optiplex’s could be picked up for about half the price of a new Pi5. Typically had equal RAM, loads of SSD storage and desktop class(ish) CPU perfomance, plus all the other benefits (Secureboot, x86 compatibility so you could run Windows if you wished). Only major thing missing was the GPIO connection.
But looking now the prices are increasing rapidly as they have been discovered. The cheap ones are typically striped of RAM and storage.
Man I remember getting pissed I couldnt get a Pi4 for less than $50, paid $30 for my Pi3
Who’s the complete fucking idiot buying them at that price? Surely no one is that desperate.
Seriously what the fuck. I thought these things were $25. I haven’t followed tech since last the last time I built a PC in 2022; I can’t believe the chip shortage has gotten this bad. (Fucking AI)
They basically still are, it’s just the advanced models with extra RAM. A Pi 5 with 16GB of RAM is a perfectly decent PC, and for the price, in the current market, is good. If you want a Pi to use the way you used to… That’s still in the region you were thinking. I bought a bunch of Pi 3s for a project recently, cost about £30 each.
I hadn’t been keeping a close eye on pricing but was blown away the other day. The Nvidia RTX 5090 launched at $4090 here in Australia, that was already obscene. Nowadays almost 2 years later, you are lucky if you find one under $12,000!
And here I thought I was being stupid paying $1600 for a 4090 back then. Jesus Fucking Christ, $12K for a GPU!? That’s 1980s prices! Guess I won’t be upgrading for a long time… (edit: not that I need to anytime soon, lol. This card is a beast)
To be fair to the 1980’s, a Hercules video card in 1982 adjusted for inflation would only be about $1700. We are way beyond that point.
An original Macintosh 128K would set you back $8100 in today’s money, so I guess in that regard Apple hasn’t changed. ;)
I suspect if anyone is buying these is because of them needing to meet an existing strict spec. Not sure what that would be but it is a possibility.
Too expensive for 16gb ram and sadly I don’t think it’s fully the pi’s fault. It just uses one of the most in demand chips right now
The only reason I’ve ever used Raspberry Pis is because they’re cheap as hell. I think $45 is the most I’ve ever paid for one. Fuck this.
Unfortunate how bad the last 7 or so years have been market wise for the raspberry pi project. It feels like every time the hardware on one end gets cheaper, some other tech fad squeezes another component price up.
At this point we can probably take an efficient full-blown PC in a mini format, and get something sensibly similar for less. It might even be possible to throw some GPIO USB in there if that’s what you need.
You could use and esp32 and connect over serial for gpio
It’s been like that since the Pi was around $150 tbh, at least when looking at used hardware as a comparison.
I don’t understand the hate towards the makers of the Pi. Obviously they didn’t raise the price because they’re greedy.
Fuck Apple, but one thing you need to give them credit for is that over years they didn’t raise their prices once, they even lowered them for the iPhone at one point. And even they needed to raise the prices.
Blame the memory manufacturers for creating a fake shortage because they don’t want to ramp up their production capabilities because they like the high demand.
Apple already sells overpriced devices and other manufacturers are doing the same, this time, in the name of inflation and memory shortages.
It’s not 2011 anymore, Apple absolutely dominates the price/quality range. They sell premium devices, and while others sell their premium devices at times at much higher prices, they still don’t even come remotely close.
For example I am constantly on the lookout for a different laptop that provides the features and performance for that price and I always come to the conclusion that there still isn’t. I’ve got a beefy ThinkPad at work (and it’s a really good laptop to) but in terms of real world performance it doesn’t even come close to my baseline M1 MacBook that is over 6 years old.
Apple products are now again overpriced but that’s because of memory.
I’m not sure that Apple is a good example to use here. They just announced their new MacBook - starting at $3,000. Their new cell phone starts at $2,000.
Yes because they raised their prices after not raising them for years and at times even lowering them. I literally explained this. Just a few months ago when the prices weren’t as high they released an entry level MacBook that is more powerful than a baseline M1 at $500. They also released an M1 Mac Mini for $500 that was so good it was sold out constantly because it was by far the cheapest option for decent AI usage.
Thank god I’m too ignorant and stupid to have learned how to build pcs - sad/s
Ouch. I was hesitant at $160. This is just a no. I’ll buy one if prices ever become sane again.
So much for being cheap and for educational purposes.
I get how parts prices and everything else got more expensive… but that’s just insane. Most I’ve ever paid for a Pi was 40 euros for a model 3. They’ve gotten way too expensive since then. The WHOLE IDEA behind them was cheap and cheerful computing. Did a lot of cool projects with them that just aren’t worth it with expensive hardware.
Jeez, you can get a 10-yo desktop computer for less than that at Re-PC.
Man I’d love a re PC here. That’d be heaven for me. My house basically is a re PC already tho lol. I love useless computers.
Near peak bubble.
It is starting to feel like it. Might not see price decline for a while yet, but the upswing on pricing is nearing breaking point.
I bought my first Pi in (I think) 2014. It’s one of the things that got me into IT. The low price was an important feature, since I was much less reluctant to experiment and take risks with hardware that cost as much as a family meal. But nearly $400 the juice ain’t worth the squeeze.
I guess I’m lucky in that I got a pi 5 back when they were selling at MSRP. I have a couple Pi 4’s, two 3’s (one I can’t find anymore sadly), my original Pi 1 model B, an also lost Pi zero W that I successfully soldered the GPIO pin headers to, and a Pi 400 I bought on a whim.
When people ask me about experimenting with Linux I usually tell them to either emulate it in virtualBox or buy a Raspberry Pi if they want a bare metal experience. It was specifically because the Pi was cheap and thus low risk if something did go wrong.
