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DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

jeffgeerling.com

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Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#521

Post by MisterTea »

tempest_ wrote: post #39
michaelt wrote: post #26

> The price increases bring the 16GB Pi 5 up to $299.99. Meanwhile, a refurbished corporate laptop with 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD can be yours for $199 [1] I'm sure there will still be people who want the Pi 5 but at these prices, I ain't one of them. [1] https://www.ebay.com/itm/327079631563

Those will dry up soon enough. Corporate laptop refreshes will be drawn out as they try and cost save on the increased price. You also better hope the aliexpress dont figure out a way to get the RAM out of those things because they will start harvesting it for sure if there is money to made.

> Those will dry up soon enough.

And worse, they're shucking surplus for RAM And SSD's now. I am seeing more and more eBay auctions for surplus PC's sans SSD and RAM. So the second hand market is going to be invaded by the reseller parasites leaving us with $50 CPU-in-a-box and $500+ RAM/SSD parts

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#522

Post by ge96 »

freetime2 wrote: post #278

Just checked my Amazon history, and in late 2020 I bought two Raspberry Pi 4s with 4GB memory for ¥6,500 JPY (~$62 USD) each. At the time, they were in somewhat short supply and I payed a little over the $55 list price from a reseller on Amazon. It looks like the current price on Amazon for the Raspberry Pi 4 4GB is ¥18,800 (~$117 at current rates), which is indeed expensive AF. Oddly, the Raspberry Pi 5 4GB is price…

Funny I make cameras around the Pi ecosystem and having 4GB of RAM is pretty overkill, might as well put an LLM on there/vision while you're at it

I did think for more basic cameras I'd use a lower spec Pi like 1GB, I use the full pis now for the high resolution DSI displays

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#523

Post by selimthegrim »

twobitshifter wrote: post #459
nl wrote: post #165

In the Dwarkesh podcast with Semi-Analysis's Dylan Patel they forecast the phone market will shrink by 50% this year because of RAM prices: But that’s the high end of the market, which is only a few hundred million phones a year. Apple sells two or three hundred million phones annually. The bulk of the market is mid-range and low-end. It used to be that 1.4 billion smartphones were sold a year. Now we’re at about 1.1…

When it becomes clear that the insanely expensive AI data center orders are not going to be filled, we can expect a huge reversal in the price of RAM and GPUs. There are 241 GW of orders on the pipeline but only a third of that is under construction and of that third, even less is being quickly finished and brought online, It’s estimated that just 3GW came online last year. https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-ai-industry…

Somebody needs to redub this with Hanoi Hannah from that video game as the voice of the AI industry.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#525

Post by romaniv »

michaelt wrote: post #26

> The price increases bring the 16GB Pi 5 up to $299.99. Meanwhile, a refurbished corporate laptop with 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD can be yours for $199 [1] I'm sure there will still be people who want the Pi 5 but at these prices, I ain't one of them. [1] https://www.ebay.com/itm/327079631563

RPis are used in a lot of embedded devices. From industrial IoT to music keyboards. You can't easily use refurbishes laptops for those[1].

--

[1] Korg Kronos with its crazy Intel Atom based architecture notwithstanding.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#526

Post by zozbot234 »

close04 wrote: post #481
zozbot234 wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're using it as backup for banking apps and the like I totally get not running a custom ROM on it! But you could also set that backup on something even cheaper, any one of the random not-bootloader-unlockable brands, and be left with the OP5 as a Linux phone. You're also right that the Linux support on OP5 is not up to standard yet, this is more of a question for the future if that support improves.

What's cheaper than an already existing phone that would otherwise stay unused or end up in the landfill (recycling center)? It could also be a great experimentation platform, play with Linux on the phone, but the time I have available now leaves little room for this kind of play.

The goal is not "experimentation" but having it eventually as an always up-to-date daily driver once the support for it matures. You're quite right that we're still a bit far from that, though.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#527

Post by Hendrikto »

15155 wrote: post #491
Hendrikto wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not illegal to put gas in your car. That is a finite resource too.

Not really: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_proces...

If that is your argument, we can also produce Helium in nuclear reactors. It is just impractical for the amount that we use.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#528

Post by zozbot234 »

noelsusman wrote: post #508
leptons wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering helium is a finite resource on earth, it should be made illegal to put it in a party balloon.

The helium that goes into balloons is mostly a byproduct of industrial grade helium production that would otherwise just go to waste. It's not pure enough for industrial uses.

You could always purify it, it's just uneconomic to do so at a smaller scale. But if the price rises enough, that will change and no one will be using helium for party balloons.
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