DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market
DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC marketApr 1, 2026Today Raspberry Pi announced more price increases for all Pis with LPDDR4 RAM, alongside a ‘right-sized’ 3GB RAM Pi 4 for $83.75.The price increases bring the 16GB Pi 5 up to $299.99.Despite today’s date, this is not a joke.I published a video going over the state of the hobbyist ‘high end SBC’ market (4/8/16 GB models in the current generation), which I’ll embed below:But if you’d like the tl;dr:Unless the DRAM pricing situation changes radically, I think the hobbyist SBC market is dying—or at least on life support. And I don’t just mean Raspberry Pis, but all SBC vendors. LPDDR chips now account for the majority of board cost from the vendors I’ve checked with.Besides causing a radical reduction in new boards launched (Radxa…
