One crisis after another, shortage of capacitors, components, rising raw material prices and logistical issues, and now we have a crisis stemming from the shortage of RAM memory. The price of RAM for personal computers has doubled in just a few months. And of course, this affects other products that utilize RAM. For instance, single-board computers like Raspberry Pi. The manufacturer has announced a price increase of up to 20%.
There is enormous demand for RAM, driven both by the resurgence of the consumer electronics market and the ever-increasing demand for AI, as building their data centers requires a significant amount of these memories.
The negative pressure has also been exacerbated by Micron’s decision to stop selling Crucial memory. Micron will focus primarily on RAM for AI data centers. Micron is not alone in this decision; Samsung and Sandisk are not supplying memory chips to Transcend, redirecting their production towards AI (SSD and microSD).
This entire BOOM has negative consequences for consumers, and since this is a blog about tinkering, electronics, and 3D printing, we will focus on single-board computers like Raspberry Pi.
Eben Upton, the director of Raspberry Pi Holdings, published two announcements on the Raspberry Pi blog.
The first announcement concerns the aforementioned price increase of single-board computers by up to 20%, depending on the size of the RAM.
| Product | RAM | Old Price | New Price | Percentage Increase (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Raspberry Pi 4 | 4GB | $55 | $60 | 9.09 |
| Raspberry Pi 4 | 8GB | $75 | $85 | 13.33 |
| Raspberry Pi 5 | 1GB | – | $45 | – |
| Raspberry Pi 5 | 2GB | $50 | $55 | 10.00 |
| Raspberry Pi 5 | 4GB | $60 | $70 | 16.67 |
| Raspberry Pi 5 | 8GB | $80 | $95 | 18.75 |
| Raspberry Pi 5 | 16GB | $120 | $145 | 20.83 |
The second announcement pertains to a new variant of the Raspberry Pi single-board computer – in addition to the versions with 2, 4, 8, and 16 GB of RAM, a 1 GB RAM variant will also be introduced.
Whether this is a good direction will be decided by the customers. However, it can be expected that the Raspberry Pi 5B with larger RAM will sell out quickly, prompting people to opt for at least the lower and cheaper variant.
The price of this weakest variant of Raspberry Pi 5B with 1 GB RAM is $45.
Of course, the price of the compact Compute Module 5 is also increasing.
