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1GB Raspberry Pi 5, and memory-driven price rises

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Re: 1GB Raspberry Pi 5, and memory-driven price rises

#111

Post by bpye »

jack_tripper wrote: post #70
coldtea wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen prices for memory, SSDs, thunderbolt hubs, and thunderbolt/high end USB cables, flatline or get worse over the last 3 or so years.

Most in-demand electronics got worse post-2020 and haven't recovered. That's why I just buy something when I need it or when I think the price is reasonable, because nowadays, if I wait for something to get cheaper like I used to do in the 90s-00s, chances are it's gonna get even more expensive as time passes, not cheaper. The days when you would wait 6-12 months and get the same thing for 50% off or a new thing with…

> 2 GPU vendors

Intel Arc GPUs exist, I have a B580 in my desktop and it works well enough.

Re: 1GB Raspberry Pi 5, and memory-driven price rises

#113

Post by Glemkloksdjf »

wqaatwt wrote: post #107
Glemkloksdjf wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand hating at people like Musk who destroys human lifes but what is Sam Altman doing? Because of (c) of images or just because he bought ram?

Inefficiently (from society’s perspective) allocating massive amounts of resources? Why is he specifically being singled out I’m absolutely that certain..

People should be happy that commercial entities invest that much money into compute, especially on hn.

This will leap frog cancer research, material research etc.

Re: 1GB Raspberry Pi 5, and memory-driven price rises

#114

Post by kvemkon »

crote wrote: post #49
giancarlostoro wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont even get this trend, wouldnt OpenAI be buying ECC RAM only anyway? Who in their right mind runs this much infrastructure on NON ECC RAM??? Makes no sense to me. Same with GPUs they aren't buying your 5090s. Peoples perception is wild to me.

ECC memory is a bit like RAID: A consumer-level RAM stick will (traditionally) have 8 8-bit-wide chips operating basically in RAID-0 to provide 64-bit-wide access, whereas enterprise-level RAM sticks will operate with 9 8-bit-wide chips in something closer to RAID-4 or -5. But they are all exactly the same chips. The ECC magic happens in the memory controller, not the RAM stick. Anyone buying ECC RAM for servers is b…

> enterprise-level RAM sticks will operate with 9 8-bit-wide chips

Since DDR5 has 2 independent subchannels, 2 additional chips are needed.

Re: 1GB Raspberry Pi 5, and memory-driven price rises

#115

Post by kvemkon »

MangoToupe wrote: post #11
giancarlostoro wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont even get this trend, wouldnt OpenAI be buying ECC RAM only anyway? Who in their right mind runs this much infrastructure on NON ECC RAM??? Makes no sense to me. Same with GPUs they aren't buying your 5090s. Peoples perception is wild to me.

On the flipside, LLMs are so inconsistent you might argue ECC is a complete waste of money. But Open Ai wasting money is hardly anything new.

Using digital chips instead of some novel analog approach is even greater waste.

> China's AI Analog Chip Claimed to Be 3000X Faster Than Nvidia's A100 GPU (04.11.2023)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38144619

> Q.ANT’s photonic chips – which compute using light instead of electricity – promise to deliver a 30-fold increase in energy efficiency and a 50-fold boost in computing speed, offering transformative potential for AI-driven data centers and HPC environments. (24.02.2025)

https://qant.com/press-releases/q-ant-and-ims-chips-launch-p...

Re: 1GB Raspberry Pi 5, and memory-driven price rises

#117

Post by dwedge »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #87
aynyc wrote: post #69

I don't really blame them, but my question is, if ram price goes down, will RPI drop its prices? My experience with other companies is no.

Price is an optimization problem, if you raise prices and profits increase, your product was likley too cheap. If you raise prices and profits decrease ("lol I'm not paying $XYZ for an rpi when the clone is $ABC") you are charging too much. There are myriad other factors that go into this, especially just general inflation, which will likely fill the price gap by the time memory costs go down anyway.

In my opinion rpis have been living off their name/first to market for a long time now with exaggerated low-power usage, and there may come a point where your "too high" scenario happens.

I know I'm comparing apples to oranges here (new to used), but I started buying used 1L PCs instead (Lenovo thinkcentres) for about $20 the cost of a RPi 5 - but with the benefit of it actually coming with the cooling and storage it needs to run and is upgradable, plus runs Intel.

The amount of times I've had a Pi just self-destruct on me is ridiculous. They are known for melting SD cards, and just this week I had one blow the power regulator over USB power and still get hot enough in 2 minutes that it burnt me to touch it. They are considered cheap commodity computing and they aren't cheap enough for that any more.

Re: 1GB Raspberry Pi 5, and memory-driven price rises

#118

Post by dwedge »

Mashimo wrote: post #32
pjerem wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably but I fail to see what use case doesn't need more than 1Gb but can't be done already with a Pi 3b or 4.

I have a Pi3b in a 3D printer, and compiling the software, but also simply apt upgrade feels like it takes forever. Most day to day operations work just fine though. At work we have a display with a Pi3 (not B) connected, just showing websites in rotation. Websites even with a simple animation are laggy, startup takes a few minutes. Both of these usecases don't need more than 1 GB of ram, but I want to speed of a 4 o…

The 4 and 5 are pretty laggy too. An improvement, but slow.

Re: 1GB Raspberry Pi 5, and memory-driven price rises

#119

Post by nullsmack »

linguae wrote: post #16

It’s sad to see the one area of life that has long resisted inflation (computing) now succumb to inflationary forces. Other than emergency situations such as COVID-19, I’m used to seeing prices going down over time for computers and their components. It’s one of the rare bright spots when everything else is escalating in price, and now that’s disappearing.

I know one area of computing that has dramatically risen in price in the past 10-15 years or so is GPUs. Cards that fit into midrange today sell for prices that would've been considered ultra-highend just a few gpu generations ago. Today's highend prices for just a graphics card are higher than I've paid for entire computers in the past. It's ridiculous.

Re: 1GB Raspberry Pi 5, and memory-driven price rises

#120

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

nullsmack wrote: post #119
linguae wrote: post #16

It’s sad to see the one area of life that has long resisted inflation (computing) now succumb to inflationary forces. Other than emergency situations such as COVID-19, I’m used to seeing prices going down over time for computers and their components. It’s one of the rare bright spots when everything else is escalating in price, and now that’s disappearing.

I know one area of computing that has dramatically risen in price in the past 10-15 years or so is GPUs. Cards that fit into midrange today sell for prices that would've been considered ultra-highend just a few gpu generations ago. Today's highend prices for just a graphics card are higher than I've paid for entire computers in the past. It's ridiculous.

imo this is wrong. what's changing is how high end having a discrete GPU is. as integrated graphics have become increasingly powerful, the discrete GPU has shifted to being more of a luxury item.
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