A new 3GB Raspberry Pi 4 for $83.75, and more memory-driven price increases
As many of you are aware, the price of memory continues to rise, with a seven-fold increase over the last year in the price of the LPDDR4 DRAM used on Raspberry Pi 4 and 5. Providing low-cost general-purpose computing remains a non-negotiable priority for us at Raspberry Pi, so while we can’t avoid passing on a portion of these increased costs, we’re also doing engineering work to expand the range of memory-density options available to our customers: we want to make sure you don’t pay for more memory than you need.
Today we are implementing further price increases across parts of our product range, and are also introducing a new 3GB Raspberry Pi 4, priced at $83.75. Notwithstanding today’s date, our new computer is as real as the rest of our products, and you can order it now from Raspberry Pi Approved Resellers around the world.
The products affected by today’s price rises are Raspberry Pi 4 and 5 variants with 4GB or more of memory; Raspberry Pi 500 and 500+; all variants of Compute Module 4, Compute Module 4S, and Compute Module 5; the Development Kit for Compute Module 5; and Raspberry Pi AI HAT+ 2.
| Product | Density | Price increase |
| Raspberry Pi 4 and 5 | 4GB | $25 |
| Raspberry Pi 4 and 5 | 8GB | $50 |
| Raspberry Pi 5 | 16GB | $100 |
| Raspberry Pi 500 (unit only and kit) | $50 | |
| Raspberry Pi 500+ unit only | $150 | |
| Raspberry Pi 500+ kit | $150 | |
| Compute Module 4 and 4S | 1GB | $11.25 |
| Compute Module 4, 4S, 5 | 2GB | $12.50 |
| Compute Module 4, 4S, 5 | 4GB | $25 |
| Compute Module 4, 4S, 5 | 8GB | $50 |
| Compute Module 5 | 16GB | $100 |
| Development Kit for Compute Module 5 | $25 | |
| Raspberry Pi AI HAT+ 2 | $50 |
Right-size your memory
As painful as these price rises are, there are some brighter spots in the picture. We’ve been able to hold the price of Raspberry Pi 400 with 4GB of memory at $60, and the 1GB and 2GB variants of Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi 5 at between $35 and $65. These are capable and versatile modern Raspberry Pi computers at affordable price points.
And, as we’ve said before, we don’t anticipate any price rises for our classic products, including Raspberry Pi Zero, Zero W and Zero 2 W; Raspberry Pi 1, 3, 3B+, and 3A+; and Compute Module 1 and 3+. These products use older LPDDR2 DRAM, of which we currently hold substantial inventory. Our commitment to long product manufacturing lifetimes means that these products are still in production, still supported by software updates, and still used by customers all over the world.
In this environment, it’s well worth right-sizing both your memory and your overall compute, rather than going for something with more headroom than your application actually needs. Consider whether these models, or lower-density variants of newer models, will get the job done.
A challenging but temporary situation
We’ve said a number of times now that memory prices won’t remain at their current very high level indefinitely; the circumstances in which we find ourselves are challenging, but in the future they will abate. When they do, we will reverse our price increases, and until they do, we will continue to work hard to limit their impact in every way we can.
38 comments
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mrlinux2U
While I know why the prices have to go up again (thanks to stupid AI and the greedy Companies cashing in on said stupid AI) I’m really glad that I don’t need to buy any more (especially any model with more than 2GB of RAM) Pi’s at the moment as I can’t justify the extra cost (especially the Pi 500+ which is nearly £200.00 more than I paid for mine when they 1st came out last year).
Although it’s nice to see the Pi 400 is still selling for around £54.00 and it still makes a really nice 1st (or 2nd) computer.
Here’s hoping the Stupid AI bubble explodes in a supernovar and vanishes without a trace.
Robert
Could not agree more. The bubble looks at least like its springing a leak. The Market is finally putting scrutiny on the bigger players running up billions in new debt to pay for this crazy level of data center spending.
Felipe
Well, it seems open AI just got another round of investments of 120b to push the new wave of AI
Fernando
I know it says it’s not a joke, but… is it a joke?
Raspberry Pi Staff Helen Lynn
All the news in today’s post is real.
Michael Horne
If it’s NOT an April Fool’s, you might want to check your reseller page as it’s not showing any sellers and Pi Hut is sold out, alledgedly, and Pim’s not showing it for sale at all.
Raspberry Pi Staff Helen Lynn
Not an April Fool’s. We’ll talk to the colleagues who populate that side of things.
mrlinux2U
If I’d been eating cornflakes this morning when I read the new prices I would have had a very messy keyboard as a result – the only joke here is that certain (mainly USA based) Corporations believe that the current dross producing AI systems are actually useful to anyone apart from their shareholders (and the Companies that produce the component parts for them).
The question is that if no-one can afford to buy a computer anymore who’s going to use these (not) AI systems?
Anders
So: has the PCB been relaid so that there is now a 3GB link on it? If not, which one(s) is/are linked on the 3GB version?
3GB is an odd kind of size architecture wise. Are these using larger RAM packages that have failed in fab but are still OK to use at smaller size?
Gordon77
Does your pi4 have those links ?
Anders
I don’t have a Pi 4.
bensimmo
I would guess this is the double sided RAM board they brought out last price bump to allow using smaller chips to get the larger sizes. Probably using 1GB and a 2GB chip.
Not seen them, but they could easily mark the 1GB and 2GB RAM size indicators so we can see it is 3GB?
Olydnad_SWE
It’s getting ridiculously high prices :/
I wonder where everything will go in the next few years? As it looks now, you have to stop some purchases and think a little before.
It is also storage that is high priced. I don’t blame the Raspberry Pi, but AI that buys everything up with its made-up money.
CooliPi
going to 640kB. Who needs more, anyway?
Andrew Beasley
Time for a new hobby (already use esp32s and not interested in M/Cs going forward).
Thanks for the fun but I am out of here.
totoguile
How long do you think you’ll be able to sustain 2GB version before shortage ?
James Hughes
There are no shortages at this stage; this is just a price thing.
crumble
There is a shortage as long as the hyperscaler buy a huge amount of the production capacity. On top of this the Iran war will have a huge part. Less energy and resources.
In most modern wars we blow up a lot of CPU, NPUs and RAM.
A good year to start with recycling. There are a lot of broken phones with LPDDR [34]
W. H. Heydt
More critically… Blocking traffic through the Straight of Hormuz is impacting the supplies of helium, which is used in chip manufacturing. About 30% of the normal wolrld supply is shipped through there.
totoguile
There is shortage on specific 2GB LPDDR4x module.
I saw that RPI 4 has dual RAM ic footprint, I guess RPI 5 will also support in the future dual footprint ? At least for a 2x 1GB LPDDR4x version …
bensimmo
…though that is the Pi5 not the Pi4 that has the markings,
Pi4 just has dual ram slots.
..dual RAM slot info is here https://pip.raspberrypi.com/categories/560-pcn PCN45
solar3000
hhmmm today is April 1.
Sadly prices have gone up everywhere.
Keep up the good work, sir.
Beanpi
Man I wish investors realize that nobody except for a small minority cares about ai and that the people that people that are using it mostly are just kids trying to cheat on schoolwork. This ai endeavour is fruitless and will reap no rewards for society as a whole.
CooliPi
Do investors care about rewards for society as a whole? I guess they just care about inflating their bubbles and running away when they deflate. This AI craze has one goal – to eliminate people from the economy. In other words, kill customers. It’s a good business plan, as long as the don’t run out of customers. But they don’t care. Would customers survive without jobs? They think yes.
Harry Hardjono
I keep thinking that I don’t need that much computing power, so a RPi Zero 2W 1GB RAM would be nice. About the only thing is that windowing system is absolute snail-like. Any lightweight window system that I can use instead of Wayland whatever?
Berte
Please do note: all the times that your blog and magazine articles have promoted your, and your users’, use of ChatGPT, and likely other LLMs too with their own RAM and hardware requirements, have played their part in contributing to these price increases. By pushing the position of ChatGPT and other LLMs being a valid addition to peoples’ own projects, you’ve likely encouraged even more people to use them, which increased their userbase, which put OpenAI in the financial position to be able to screw everyone else over, your company included, with their contractual reservation of RAM.
For all the statements that it’s only temporary — and I really do hope they are, and that OpenAI and other LLM creators and investors find that they’re no longer able to continue as going concerns —
what if OpenAI continues being propped up by even more investment capital, and then reserves even the greater quantity of RAM that other manufacturers have scaled up to offer the market? How much more expensive will the higher-end Raspberry Pi boards become, at that point?
I acknowledge, it could very well be that your Pico and Zero products help you stay afloat — and I do appreciate that they’re able to maintain the price points that they have, especially for the kind power and usability that they deliver, and at relatively low power consumption —
but even so, I really, really hope your company reconsiders its stance toward, and relation with, LLM companies and products, especially given how they have bitten so hard into your higher-end product line.
Anders
Raspberry Pi cannot be a complete learning and education platform if it ignores certain technologies.
Berte
If the machine-learning aspect were focused on *specifically and directly hand-optimizing the code* for best pattern matching results, like for finding proteins, I would agree. But such machine learning can be done on a MUCH smaller scale than what LLM data centers are requiring.
“Prompt-engineering” an LLM is fact be a step backwards in learning, since you’re instead offloading the learning process to the machine — often with wildly varying results, which as we’re seeing from the major companies who are intoxicating themselves with their own product, can often be quite unstable and can even introduce serious vulnerabilities.
And then there’s the whole issue about the code having been lifted from so many other sources, non-consensually and often violating the licenses of said code — so, teaching children and adults to use these LLMs would be teaching them to sidestep these ethical concerns.
Not to mention, the resource cost of training these huge systems — not only with the usage of RAM which is most relevant to the price increases of the Pi 4 and 5, but also particularly with the data centers invoking a huge environmental cost, most felt by the communities closest to them. Normalizing the use these LLMs is to claim acceptability in negatively impacting these communities.
So, I must disagree firmly about including LLM usage in an educational curriculum.
[PS: In my previous post, I should have included more instances of “played its own part in,” instead of implying RPi Ltd. to be singularly responsible for the increase in LLM usage. Still, it’s not good to encourage its use.]
Anders
It’s not just about coding.
Some people are rabidly opposed to anything AI beyond objectivity.
But it’s here to stay and so is LLM use.
Berte
Indeed, it’s about much more than coding; a lot of creative industries are seeing their output also fed non-consensually to the machine, to derive output that executives seem all too happy to use try to cut out labor costs, to increase shareholder value and swell their already-massive bonuses — without in most cases any compensation to those who had their works fed to these generation algorithms. That’s in addition to all the other aforementioned issues in previous posts.
Eventually, you have to acknowledge that the opposition isn’t senseless: there are legitimate huge concerns about how this sort of generation technology is costing our communities far more than any benefits derived — and, most of the benefits are seen by the already-richest in our society while these systems continue to be propped up, by those at the lower end of income-earning are once again having to bear even greater burdens as a result of this technology, with data center pollution and the massive cost increase for computer parts.
Granted, lemme emphasize “while these systems continue to be propped up”, by investors and government subsidies, because these systems appear to be costing the LLM/machine-generation companies far more than they earn back in revenue. As such, I wouldn’t even count on such remote systems being “here to stay” — especially with how much slower that local models are.
[Also, corrections to previous post: beginning of second paragraph, “an LLM is fact be” should be “an LLM is in fact”. Apologies for the error there.]
Anders
Some people are opposed to it. Others are learning about it.
There’s room for both and it’s not all about you and what you want. If you don’t like the AI content then move on and leave it to the people who do.
ylda
unless you know when memory prices will decline, the state of very high memory prices is definitely indefinite :)
Ray Allen
Wished now I got a Pi 500+ at launch, its now hit $574 CAD plus TAX…. I need to wait for the bubble to burst and hopefully prices come down. That’s now out of reach for me.
stan423321
Would you be willing to share why 500+ got bumped further than CM5 and “normal” RPi5 with equivalent RAM?
bsimmo
stan423321
500+ contains an NVME SSD, they are rapidly increasing in price, the ones (just standard none Pi ones) we bought before Christmas have now doubled in price!
So they have a double hit RAM and SSD increases.
Just go look at the price of the Pi SSDs now.
Jack
Took me a little while to check the date of the posting.
horace
wow! my reseller lists the 500+ for almost 500€. the mac mini M4 still is available for 600€. :/ :)
rclark
Glad I bought a few RPI-5s over the time they have been available. Looks like I have seven just waiting for a (non AI) project, and five running 24×7 in projects. Also glad I got my 500 and 500+ before the shenanigans. Should last me through the RAM and SSD price problem… I hope.
Sorry to hear of the SBC price increases. I know building a new PC on a whim is now put on hold. Only if something breaks, will I bite the bullet and build a PC… And I bet I am not the only one moving to the sidelines of system upgrades.