DRAM pricing is killing every single market. That's what happens when we have a fully digitized, centralized market.
this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2026
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It’s killing everything that relies on having a computer inside or in-use. Say goodbye to ‘smart’ products, expanding any kind of business, cars, etc. Everything relies on some kind of DRAM these days.
Say goodbye to ‘smart’ products
Silver linings?
Nah. The vendors will kill their ecosystems earlier and all the established internet-of-trash will be e-waste quicker. We're still using a portal-TV unit and loving it, for example, but so many other products brought out during the sudden rush will be killed while still on umbilical .
Pretty of "smart" things could work with a few MCs with only builtin memory.
It's just that 10 years ago people were complaining how nobody pays for making optimized nice things, using a computer few thousand times more powerful than needed for a job.
Well, now this may change, it's again profitable to optimize. Or perhaps not yet.
Economic reality always changes. Tools, means, environments, markets, populations, politics, knowledge, and even goals.
So I don't think it's killing anything. Some producers will start optimizing. Some will cut on "smart" features nobody needs. Some will raise prices. As it always happens. Then some solutions will work and some not.
The Small Block Chevy market just can't survive this.
Yeah, the timing supply chain might get stretched.
Glad it doesn’t have a timing belt. I heard those get expensive around 100-120 klicks.
lucky for me I have a pile of SBCs from uncompleted projects. and no, do not climb in my window looking for them
Please tell us where your window is - how can we avoid climbing through your window, if we don't know which window we are not supposed to climb through.
my window(s) can be found at my residence: 1060 W Addison St, Chicago, IL 60613
The thing that these complaints about RPi pricing always seems to miss is that most Pi models are still manufactured and supported. Most projects don't need a Pi 5 with 16GB of RAM, even a Pi Zero 2 (under $20) is overkill for a lot of projects.
The thing that these complaints about RPi pricing complaints always seems to miss is that that was talked about in the blog.
Which blog? If you mean the OP, could you quote the section you're talking about? I don't see any mention of Pi models besides the 4 and 5.
In the embedded video he talks about it from 4:40-5, then talks about microcontrollers and mentions used hardware (though says it's also affected by price hike).
"Buried in the video" isn't the same as "talked about in the blog."
Well, normally I'd agree but in this case I'd guess that more people have watched the video than read the blog. That's the order in which I stumbled on it too.
Edit: Also:
I'm working more with older SBCs and microcontrollers now, and I think that's the direction many in the hobbyist space are going.
I didn't watch the video, and I only found out about the blog post through Lemmy.
IMO the blog and video seem a little click-baity. Yes, he technically does acknowledge (in the video, not the blog) that older Pi models are still being produced, but saying the SBC market is dying is crazy. How many projects really need the specs of a Pi 5 in that form factor? If you need that performance, you probably have space for something a little bigger.
Here's the author's own tl;dr:
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.
Raspberry Pi would have been fine if they stopped at the Pi 3. I'm not saying they shouldn't have made the 4, or even 5... but the Pi 3 and Zero 2 are (IMO) their best products in terms of price-to-value. The SBC market is fine.
Yeah I see a lot of projects where people are trying to use Pi's for things better served by an x86 box with a low power CPU or similar.
at this rate, im not going to be able to run doom on my new coffee maker