The 16GB was Usless, now it even more useless cause of the software it can run and its raw performance, Even the 8GB one went from reasonable for the performance to too expensive.
this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2026
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BananaPI board I used to use for some projects has gone from about 120-150 to almost 400. It’s not just raspberry with this issue.
16GB pie is like buying disposable silk toilet paper.
This RPi has more ram than my gaming pc lol
16GB on a pi doesn't even make sense. It's super inefficient. That ramm would be much better off in a datacenter \s
Think of poor Sam Altman before you buy a 16GB Pi!
Counterpoint:
Why are you so negative towards somebody who is not at all an ultra-greedy lying slimy sleazy sociopath and super-entitled cunt???
he stole my bike drawing
This is reminding me of hikes in property prices. Soon, older people are gonna say shit like
- I paid that much for 32 megabytes 25 years ago
- Why do you need so much RAM? Just use fewer programs
- If you didn’t spend so much money on Steam and Netflix you’d be able to afford it
Just cut down on the avacado toast.
They currently are. Just take a look into gaming forums discussing graphic carts and RAM prices and there will be so many people writing that they are happy that they have bought their stuff a few years ago. Which really is not helping
I started with computers in the cassette tape/5,25 floppy diskette era. RAM was measured in K's, not Megas, not Gigas. A flight simulator (white pixels on green background, yeah) fit in a diskette, 360 KB.
Code was ultra efficient, as RAM was tiny.
With time, and as RAM got proportionally cheaper, code got sloppy, because, hey, we got space.
It's true that programs today are several orders of magnitude more capable, but it is also true that code now is hideously RAM inefficient and bloated.
I'm not saying that the RAMcopalypse isn't real, I run a Ryzen 9 with 64Gb in my desktop, bought before the bubble, but as the Microsoft backpedal to 8 Gigs for W11, and the 8 Gig Macbook show, software should be rethought.
AND RAM prices should go back to normal. That's the win-win
Going back to the 8-bit era muddies the water. Those computers and programs really were so limited. However, comparing what we were doing 20 years ago on 2 or 4GB of ram vs now and you see the sloppness of the software.
You are expressing an illusion. The reason programs and operating systems use more ram is that they are doing more. If somebody stopped caring about resources it is web devs and Microsoft. Real-time and high end apps, like all games, have optimized frame time and the floppy era games is what looks sloppy in comparison. Except for sawyers insane games. Those are still somehow the cutting edge and a marvel of engineering to learn from 30 years later.
It's true that programs today are several orders of magnitude more capable, but it is also true that code now is hideously RAM inefficient and bloated.
The entire codebase of software in production, yes. But one thing that people might not realize is that some of our software algorithms themselves, at least for certain algorithm families, are also much more efficient than before.
I thought this was an interesting overview:
https://futuretech.mit.edu/publication/how-fast-do-algorithms-improve
The focus isn't on memory usage, but the same general trend applies there: when someone discovered a new algorithm that improves on old ones, it can change the amount of memory used to accomplish a specific result.
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Folks these days don’t know how to cut down on their startup programs
Also I'm gonna sell my 32GB DDR5 for 5 times the price I bought it and then tell everyone "just work for a few years and buy RAM I did it myself back in the day"
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The aim of those buying up all the RAM is to prevent people owning devices capable of serious computing, so we have to rent what we used to have back from them, with added censorship and surveillance. Sam Altman has been explicit about how he wants no one to own RAM except companies running data centres. The Raspberry Pi becoming unfeasibly expensive is just an example of that forced transition from owning to renting playing out. When it was introduced the Pi cost ~~$15~~ $35. We're in a different world now.
Sam Altman has been explicit about
Sam lies as easily as he breathes. Nothing he says is proof of anything.
I thought 64GB was overkill when I got it in my Framework laptop in 2024, but now I'm so glad that I did.
When it was introduced the Pi cost $15
It was a 700MHz single core board with 512mb of ram...and it was $35, not $15
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Also when Raspberry Pi started, it was a not-for-profit. In a way, they went through the same transformation as OpenAI (which started not-for-profit too) but slightly earlier.
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$385 for a 16 GB Pi seems crazy.
Arduino has a 16GB DDR5 board designed to run local LLMs for $299. And it has 64GB of storage on board. Granted it’s not as flexible as a Pi, but it has DDR5 RAM, and a good bit of storage on board for cheaper.
A 16GB Raspberry pi with DDR4 for $385 is just robbery.
I think 299 was just preorder 399 is current.
Cheapest 16GB DDR5 stick I could go buy from the local computer parts store here in Finland is currently 363€, or $406.
I thought you were joking but even in Turkey the cheapest one is 300 dollars. I bought 2x16 for less than 100 couple years ago. Holy shit.
Ummm can't you just buy a full size all-in-one motherboard for that? I mean, if you need small size sure, but I originally bought Pi's because they were cheap and small. Now they're just small.
Yeah, and a modern x86 setup will be faster and likely even more efficient under load, with better software support too.
Yep, and unless you really need the pi form factor just get a small n100 mini PC at this point. They are pretty much better in every way and are x86 so there's practically no limit to what you can run on them. I've seen n100 16gb mini PCs for as low as $60 on auction sites because some business will buy tons of them then sell them off for cheap when they upgrade.
Want something faster? Look into business small PCs they are about the size of the small ps2 and will have Intel i3s to i7s. I'd just recommend looking for one that is at least the 8th gen Intel if you care about power efficiency. If using eBay search for used auctions and use a bid sniper that uses the official api
better in every way
are x86
Pick one.
How is arm better than x86
Want something faster? Look into business small PCs they are about the size of the small ps2 and will have Intel i3s to i7s. I'd just recommend looking for one that is at least the 8th gen Intel if you care about power efficiency. If using eBay search for used auctions and use a bid sniper that uses the official api
Are they still available? When I looked recently, most of it was Haswell/4th gen, and/or the seller had taken nearly all the parts out, like the memory, drives, and CPU.
Yes there will still be big sell offs I recently got a 16GB n100 from someone selling a batch of around 100. You can set up eBay notifications for saved searches it is getting more competitive getting one for $60 is the absolute best case expect closer to $80+shipping.
You can also check alibaba if you can spend bit more and have some older ddr4 laying around. They have n100 mini PCs with expendable storage and ram and multiple Ethernet ports. you can normally find them if you get the versions that don't come with any ddr4
Edit: make sure it's listed as compatible with ddr4 not ddr5 there are a lot of ddr5 versions now
N100 maybe not. N150 is what it going around lately. Price would be similar to rpi5 but is much more capable x86 machine.
A raspi with 16gb of ram WTF!? why not just get a SFF PC instead at that point? Unless you specifically need portability or pin IO, I don't see the appeal of raspi anymore, especially at those prices (almost $400!!!)
last time i bought one was pre-pandemic, not sure exactly how much i paid, but was under $50 new, to hear they are $400 now... i guess i go back under my rock
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