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Comment by Aurornis | Hacker News Reader

Unless you have a true, irreplaceable need for a 16GB model, everyone should just pretend they don't exist.

Most hobby use cases would be fine with the 1GB, 4GB, or even 8GB versions.

I thought we all established long ago that trying to use a Raspberry Pi like a computer or laptop replacement was not a good idea, because every past Rapsberry Pi thread has been inundated with comments encouraging everyone to get a NUC or a used computer instead.

The Raspberry Pi is great if you need what it offers, but at some point the mainstream Raspberry Pi community lost the plot and started treating them like laptop, desktop, or server replacements, which they were never great at. Now that the people who need a desktop or server have re-discovered that they're better off using an actual desktop or an actual server for their purposes, we should get back to treating these like embedded systems boards.

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I ended up buying a used Lenovo Mini PC for $200 from a local seller, found on Facebook. It's an i7 something or other with 32GB RAM, I think I got pretty lucky with the find. Much cheaper than a Raspberry Pi considering I didn't need the pins anyway.

If you do need something like a raspberry pi I think the Arduino Uno Q is a solid choice. The 4 GB RAM variant is iirc $80 or so.

I get it that it's not necessary but the ram upgrade from 8 to 16 used to be a $40 splurge, and that was with healthy profits for everyone involved.

And now you pay the old 16GB price for 4GB.

Yes. RAM got expensive, because demand went up a lot.

> RAM got expensive, because demand went up a lot.

Somewhat, but not all of that demand was real; some of it was promised and not followed through on.

Also, supply isn't growing to match, in part because some companies exited the business.

Is there a lot of new demand for the kind of RAM on a RPi?

This is not the same stuff an H100 uses, and it’s not even made in the same facilities, is it?

I think it’s more likely that the volume is not large enough to make up for the previously crappy margins on cheap RAM products.

It was great while it lasted.

A price increase in one market can displace demand to other markets.

A workstation user or gamer might want a desktop PC loaded with DDR5. But they'll also consider a desktop with DDR4 or even a laptop with LPDDR4X if they get more for their money.

So a rise in demand/prices for DDR5 can trigger a lesser rise in demand/prices for LPDDR4X

When one guy (or three) buy (or pinky promise to buy) your whole stock, and the rest of prospective buyers (a lot of them) cannot afford it, it's not "demand" as such.

This applies to all RAM.

The cost of 16GB Raspberry Pi is driven by the RAM. Everything else is a small addition to the BOM cost.

The 16GB was introduced when it was affordable. Now it's just becoming a mental obstacle for buyers who think they should only purchase something if they can get the top model. That's why I suggest everyone pretend it doesn't exist. Unless you really need it for something, the 4GB or 8GB can do most things.

The RPI was really good because it was a powerful SOC that ran Linux with lots of GPIO and easy to operate. Now there are a dime a dozen ESP32 based projects that give you the same flexibility. You should almost never buy a RPI for projects these days, its completely overkill

Do you have any references to ESP32 running Linux?

Sup. They just dropped some new hotness that does in fact run Linux. https://www.i-programmer.info/news/91-hardware/19197-the-esp...

I was confused the other day when I was browsing ESP32 on Aliexpress and found models with a price tag of 30~60 euros instead of a couple of bucks. So those models have enough silicon to run a general full fledged OS. Picture me impressed!

Well, in many use cases it acts as a single use device & does not run Linux or any OS at all.

It controls whatevwhatever hardware, reads some sensors, etc.

Then when needed gets oders from a normal computer over network or BLE via some simple protocol.

As the sibling comment shows, the very latest ESP32 model (S31, not S3) can run Linux. But they can only access maybe 64MB of RAM, and most boards for sale will have significantly less.

In reality, though, the use cases where you need Linux and GPIO are very slim. It's overkill, an ESP32 is realistically more than powerful enough, and Linux isn't even good for GPIO.

On ESP32, its also quite fine to run FreeRTOS, and you can quite reasonably write cross-platform code which runs on both FreeRTOS and Linux, if that's important.

Unless you designed a product around the RPI as your compute module, and now you're stuck. I was recently at the contract manufacturer that's building my company's product - they have a number of clients in this situation.

You could respin, but you can't get that Broadcom part because Fuck You, We're Broadcom™. So now you're looking at a whole new platform if you want to proceed. It's still cheaper to pay loanshark prices for RPIs... for now.

I just got a Minisforum UM870 Slim with AMD Ryzen™ 7 8745H for €304 (taxes included + €30 shipping), and sourced locally used SODIMM DDR5 RAM at ~120 EUR for 16GB: I'd certainly take a full-fledged mini PC at 450 EUR than a Pi at 385 USD + VAT + customs fee (pretty much the same price most likely).

Yes, I'm missing an NVMe SSD in there too, but I've got a bunch of older 512GB drives around from upgraded computers.

Power usage is probably lower on the Pi5, but likely not by much anymore in the idle state.

It's $327 on their web store.

> sourced locally used SODIMM DDR5 RAM at ~120 EUR for 16GB

So how much was it new?

More than double on Amazon, around 280~300 euro for a single stick of 16GB DDR5, sigh...

I have a Raspberry Pi 500 I regularly use as personal admin computer, it is great and just works for all the things you can do with a personal computer.

That's not to say I don't have much beefier work computers - I do - but for the rPi 500 is a perfectly cromulent home computer. It's a computer. I just plug it in, it works.

> Most hobby use cases would be fine with the 1GB, 4GB, or even 8GB versions.

Not only that, I bet most hobby use cases can be served fine by the older and cheaper Raspberry Pi 2, 3 or 4 models, which are still being sold.

I'm honestly not even sure what a good use case is for a Raspberry Pi proper at this point. It sits somewhat awkwardly between things that microcontrollers can handle(*) and things that, as you mentioned, NUCs or old computers or used laptops (or even used phones!) with removed batteries can handle.

*: I am so glad we're finally out of the phase where people were using Pis for hobbyist tasks where an Arduino would have worked just fine. Especially now that there are so many cheap, accessible microcontrollers. ESP32s obviously, but Raspberry's own RP2040/RP2350 have been more useful to me than the Pis themselves ever were.

Yeah basically take lowest ram RPi if you need GPIO for the sensors/actuators whatever hook it up via network to NUC or Minisforum.

If you don’t need GPIO just go with NUC/Minisforum.

This. If you need NAS, get a fanless mini PC, and you get a zero maintenance device with zero noise as cheap as AliExpress can make it.

Right. Most people don't need a 16GB Pi, but lower-RAM PIs are also blowing up in price now too. It's a huge bummer.

> Unless you have a true, irreplaceable need for a 16GB model

I need to `npm install strip`

They hated Jesus because He told the truth

A Pi 4 is my son's primary computer, GCompris, Tux Racer, my vibe coded apps for him are the primary use cases.

And at $400 it doesn't make sense for it to be. You could buy a much better computer for the same price.

Yep, the small form factor market is amazing now. A cheap N100 blows any RPi away and will be similar in cost and power consumption. You also get nifty things like a semi-usable iGPU and QuickSync which is perfect for transcoding.

> And at $400 it doesn't make sense for it to be.

Why are so many people angry at a situation that doesn't exist?

The use cases above don't need a $385 16GB Raspberry Pi 5.

Did you notice they weren't even using a Raspberry Pi 5?

A 1GB Raspberry Pi 4, which would run those applications, is $35 and in stock: https://www.pishop.us/product/raspberry-pi-4-model-b-1gb/

The 1GB RPI4 can definitely not be used as a main desktop. I make my son use a Raspberry Pi 5 with 4GB of RAM to code simple stuff for school, and it's barely usable because the UI is extremely laggy.

You are the one making up a situation here.

Please read the comment thread you're responding to.

I'll quote it for you:

> A Pi 4 is my son's primary computer

So, no, I am not making up a situation.

Maybe you could get a bit more perf out of it using a lighter environment. Sway and a terminal text editor (if vim is too much for your son, maybe micro would be better for its CUA binds) would probably run well. Avoid the web browser, or maybe try a lighter one like w3m.

Are they using the gpio/i2c/spi at all? Otherwise literally anything else is better.

Even if using those, if it's not in a robot or a weatherproof box on a pole or something, then a usb gpio dongle on a pc or mac makes 900x more sense.

The fact that something is done does not serve as an example that something makes any sense to do.

Using a pi for a computer is like when women knit sweaters for things that don't benefit from sweaters.

GCompris and Tux Racer were launched over 20 years ago.

They would be fine with the low RAM models.

This is my point above: Most people should ignore the 16GB model.

People are irrationally obsessed with the idea of a very small cheap computer that could replace their laptop or desktop, for no reason.

If you created a little cube the size of an Apple Watch with built in WiFi and Bluetooth, and maybe put a little LED screen on it, and it could run Linux and could be powered with POE and USB-C or something, people would feel an urge to just buy one, with no real use case for it.

Cube? Make it an icosahedron and I'm listening

Wat would you even 'mount it on?

If I had a d20 computer, i would probably roll it, not mount it.

> Most hobby use cases would be fine with the 1GB, 4GB, or even 8GB versions.

Oh yup... I'm running unbound (DNS resolver) at home 24/7 on a Pi 3 from 2015 since years and years. Zero issue. I run that on a Pi because that one really needs to be on 24/7 and hardly consumes any resources (I mean: it's just DNS queries). But a Pi simply ain't good for much more than that.

> I thought we all established long ago that trying to use a Raspberry Pi like a computer or laptop replacement was not a good idea, because every past Rapsberry Pi thread has been inundated with comments encouraging everyone to get a NUC or a used computer instead.

I fully agree. For the proper stuff I encourage anyone to buy used enterprise gear with proper RAM (i.e. ECC RAM) and a proper CPU (like a Xeon).

I've got four NUCs too but the real workhorse is a used Xeon with ECC RAM.

> The Raspberry Pi is great if you need what it offers, but at some point the mainstream Raspberry Pi community lost the plot and started treating them like laptop, desktop, or server replacements, which they were never great at.

I agree. I've got like seven Pi (I was an early adopter of those) but don't ever plan to buy another.

It's like you said: they lost the plot (not just the community: those who make them too).

The person who pays the electric bill takes issue with your recommendation to use old enterprise gear.

> because every past Rapsberry Pi thread has been inundated with comments encouraging everyone to get a NUC or a used computer instead.

The thing is, they are all x86. The currently available ways to get an ARM general purpose computer are... Raspberry, Raspberry clones of various degrees of shittyness, Apple's lineup and a few Chromebooks plus even rarer Windows systems that no one wants because nothing runs on them.

> Windows systems that no one wants because nothing runs on them

You might want to give Windows on Arm another spin if you haven't touched it lately, because you're either operating on very outdated information or you work in a very narrow field. Everything I tried throwing at it runs on mine. Exceptions are some drivers and kernel mode anticheat in games.

They got 3% of market share [1]. That's laughable, no one tests for that, and I personally won't touch Qualcomm crap with a ten foot pole if I can avoid it.

[1] https://itdaily.com/blogs/workplace/qualcomm-snapdragon-x-pc...

They didn't dispute market share, they were just suggesting that the software deficiencies you were pointing out are outdated.

2027 is the year of the Linux.. er. ARM Windows desktop!

What about a $500 Mac Mini?

x86 is generally better, because it's a standardized platform that is universally supported. With ARM you inevitably run into headaches if you expect to run an OS that isn't provided by the manufacturer.

x86, so what? What's the problem you are trying to solve? Does arm or x86 matter for them?

“640K ought to be enough for anybody.”

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