8 ms·

Who would buy a Raspberry Pi for $120?

77 points by schappim 2y ago

ggm 2y ago
With 16gb you can run virtuals to segment CPU time with memory commits. With 16gb you can have a massive file buffer cache and avoid disk io delay.
- WithinReason 2y ago
  But why use a rpi 5 at that cost? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40209801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40209801
  - geerlingguy 2y ago
    It's a niche use case, and other Arm SBCs do better, but Pi 5 still holds an edge for efficiency, if you're power-constrained.
  - mindcrime 2y ago
    One reason: your project is already designed around the RPi form factor, and/or you already take advantage of things like GPIO that are more specific to a Pi than a "mini PC" or whatever. And it would cost enough (in actual dollars, or just in time/energy/attention/etc) to redesign the project to where it makes more sense to just upgrade to the slightly more expensive Pi.
- ksaj 2y ago
  Also tabbed web browsing. I tend to line up the YouTube vids I want to watch while coffee brews, then watch with coffee in hand. Sometimes they get left there for the entire day, minimized while I do something more productive. At least with chromium, that takes a lot of memory (even though it does a few things to conserve). I also have a few other applications running all the time. It gets pretty close sometimes. Anyway, now that they're available, I'm getting one. I sure have a lot of Pis nowadays.
matt-p 2y ago
The bigger question to my mind is why does 14GB of RAM cost $70? 2GB Pi5 - $50 16GB Pi5 - $120 I can see the uses of having more RAM, but surely it's cheap enough to make 4GB standard, with options for 8/16GB that are sensibly priced - removing one SKU.
- bogantech 2y ago
  Greed
  - matt-p 2y ago
    I guess so. I don't begrudge them money, but I wish they could find a better way to make it than resorting to the old apple business model.
  - audunw 2y ago
    Not necessarily. They can have a target margin of X% which is completely reasonable. Then they lower X for the lower RAM options and increase X for the higher RAM options. That way more people can buy your product, as many will be fine with less RAM. And the ones that really need that much RAM will contribute more to the margins needed for R&D and marketing. I can't believe that people are still surprised about this kind of pricing, because it's completely normal pricing strategy in almost every market. If this is greed, then I guess greed is simply wanting to be able to run a viable business, and wanting as many customers as possible to be able to afford your products. It's basic price discrimination, and personally I think it's a good thing. I suspect when you're selling at the quantities that Apple are doing, they'll have to consider the impact their RAM pricing will have on RAM shortages. If they price the highest RAM option much cheaper, everyone will just buy that option, even if they don't need it. At those volumes, that could trigger the need to build new RAM factories, which will drive up RAM prices a lot in the short term, which is rather self-defeating.
  - GuB-42 2y ago
    Greed, aka. running a business. They have to make money somehow, it means selling things for more than they pay for. They chose to make higher margins on the 16GB model than on the 8GB or less models, which is not particularly shocking.
Hackbraten 2y ago
> But I distilled my thoughts into a list of 5 reasons the 16 GB Pi 5 ought to exist: Another reason why one might want to buy one is as a build server for arm64 packages.
- bertothunder 2y ago
  I totally concur. This is actually our main usage on a set of 4 rpi4 and rpi5, building up ARM docker images from our products and run all testing from CI. Yes, I could use ARM-based VPS, but we wanted our own in-house CI running. Before that, we were testing Rancher with these ones for ARM testing, too. No miniPC right now offers that, but I think they will be coming soon.
mytailorisrich 2y ago
For PC-like applications I would tend to agree. A quick look at prices here in the UK: * Rpi5 16GB - £114.90 (Pi Hut) * Mini PC N150, 16GB (upgradable), 512GB M.2 SSD (upgradable), Win 11 Pro - £169.95 (Amazon)
- nsteel 2y ago
  The mini PC also comes with a PSU (I assume). But I think paying 50% more for the option of upgrading a low-power machine is daft. Or paying 50% more for an OS I don't want.
- geerlingguy 2y ago
  On US Amazon, the GMKtec G3 Plus is an even better deal, right now it's $140, though that's with 8GB of RAM instead of 16 (16 GB model is $210). There's even a $10 coupon bringing it down to $130/$200 currently.
h4ch1 2y ago
Second hand NUCs cost 70 bucks, sometimes even lower and offer way more bang for buck than a RPi. Use an adafruit breakout for usb -> GPIO and you're good.
- nsteel 2y ago
  Yeh, just load the RPI software image on and follow all the guides and.. oh.. yeh it's slightly different in small ways that could trip you up. Great, I love making myself more work.
  - GlacierFox 2y ago
    Why would you bother complicating things for yourself by installing Raspberry PI OS on a NUC or small pc? Great job making yourself more work...
    - nsteel 2y ago
      Now I can't follow the thousands of guides and examples tailored exactly to Pi software and hardware. Maybe now you can see why "and you're good." isn't actually true?
      - stavros 2y ago
        I installed Debian on mine and that was literally it, job done.
      - alias_neo 2y ago
        For tinkering and GPIO stuff I still think the Pi is unmatched, but with the specs of these newer models and the prices, they seem to be entering more of the homelab/desktop/server segment, at which point these mini PCs we're talking about are a far better value proposition. If you want to connect breakouts and do some electronics work etc, a Pi 4 or a lower-RAM/lower-cost Pi 5 is an excellent choice, for those who were using them to host software like I've been doing mini-PCs destroy Pis these days at the price/feature and price/performance level. If the Pis weren't looking more like these mini PCs in features and cost, they wouldn't be coming up as comparisons.
tuananh 2y ago
a closer comparison would be the sbc with n100 chip. they are roughly same price but n100 sbc offer much better performance, and power consumption as well > I managed to get my N100 mini pc to 1.3-1.5W idle power consumption at wall with active wifi connection (screen turned off), so for headless server idling most of the time the N100 is better option. https://www.cnx-software.com/2024/04/29/raspberry-pi-5-intel-n100-mini-pc-comparison-features-benchmarks-price/ https://www.cnx-software.com/2024/04/29/raspberry-pi-5-intel...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- alias_neo 2y ago
  We had this discussion with the 8GB Pi 5, at which time I argued that a mini PC (I got a Minisforum UM480[0] with a mobile Ryzen 7 8C/16T with 32GB RAM and 1TB NVMe for a ~£260 on sale) is in another league performance and feature wise while not costing as much more than a Pi as you'd think once you factor in the cost of the Pi + cooler + uSD + PSU + case + NVMe base/HAT + NVMe SSD. I've been a fan of the Pi since the beginning, and in the SBC world, their support is unmatched, but with these improvements, they're speccing themselves more into homelab/server/desktop use than straight tinkering/GPIO stuff, all while the prices are pricing them out of that market. If you don't want to annihilate the performance of a Pi 5 like the Minisforum mini-PC does, you can buy a complete N100 mini-PC for ~£100 with all of the RAM, storage, case, IO and PSU included that will still destroy a Pi 5 and actually cost you less up-and-running and still get better performance. [0]https://store.minisforum.com/pages/product https://store.minisforum.com/pages/product (Click UM480, their website design doesn't let me link to it directly)
- chronogram 2y ago
  It always struck me as odd that people use default config Windows power consumption figures for the N100 boxes. My 14 year old Sandy Bridge laptop can pull 1-2W idle on Linux with a modern desktop; a more modern SoC with fewer parts would be broken if it can't do that. (I often bring out that old ThinkPad X220 to test software on older hardware, and it's so satisfying how fast that thing still is until you open the browser.)
begueradj 2y ago
With half that price (even less), I saw used but decent laptops.
louwrentius 2y ago
I really don’t know. A second-hand tiniminimicro or a nuc-like seems so much more value for money Jeffs reasons why you’d need 16G in a Pi feel convoluted.
- geerlingguy 2y ago
  Indeed - used vs. new of course, but if you're using it for raw compute, and you don't have like a 10W upper limit to your power budget (e.g. not remote solar/battery powered), a used mini PC is going to get you a lot more performance, IO, and compatibility, for a lower price (not to mention a case, power supply, and likely included SSD).
- albertzeyer 2y ago
  Can you give some example? I mostly also care about energy efficiency. How much energy would the alternatives consume?
  - izacus 2y ago
    Probably less - RPis these days run very hot (60C+) even when idling due to rather poor power management.
    - geerlingguy 2y ago
      Definitely not less; used mini PCs typically idle at 10-20W on the low end (and some, especially older AMD, at 30-40W which seems insane!). Even the better low-end N100's usually idle at 5-6W, which is double the Pi 5. SoC idle temperature depends on environment and cooling solution; the N100 would quickly thermal throttle if you don't have a comparatively large heatsink attached. The Pi 5 will actually give you full performance for a minute or two before throttling (assuming no heatsink). Other Arm chips are much better, efficiency-wise, but the Pi 5 is still more efficient than any low-end x86 build, especially used.
      - louwrentius 2y ago
        Hi Jeff, I feel that for just a few watts idle extra you get a much more capable, and much more complete, easy-to-handle computer, at this time the Raspberry Pi starts to feel like, why do we still even care? let the industry customers have them. I’m sure you have many more topics and a ton of other gear to explore to explore and many pi-related videos are fun entertainment (which is fine for it’s own sake) but it always practical. That 4-SSD nas looks fragile as hell and I think it’s definitely worth exploring alternatives.
t43562 2y ago
You develop your application on an 8GB model and find out that 16GB is much better. You can choose to port it to some other OS with some other hardware if you like or buy a 16GB Pi 5 and save the effort. The choice is now there. What's so great is that it's all up to you. There are "smaller" or older Pis still being made. More for more is fairly reasonable. If you have a sort of inbuilt bias against "buying second best" that you might consider this a price increase. I have that feeling often. I don't want the second best camera .... and that ends up leading me into stratospheric prices as I finds better and better things. Fortunately I know this and realise that when I am doing it it's because I don't have a clear use in mind for the item - hence I can't decide what's "enough" so the answer is not to buy it at all.
- Archelaos 2y ago
  In addition, the second-best product is then perceived as cheaper as it would be if it were assessed in isolation.
- etrautmann 2y ago
  This sounds like I could have written it. Fighting gear acquisition syndrome in photography is a real challenge.
  - t43562 2y ago
    "Gear Acquisition Syndrome" (GAS) is an awesome term for it :-)
gunalx 2y ago
Arm nixpkgs build server is one reason i can think of. (But then 16gb is still almost to little)
- Netcob 2y ago
  I always wondered - why do we usually need to build software for a target architecture/system on the same architecture/system? Unless the build includes tests, it doesn't need to be run? I get that Apple has its own BS reasons for that, but Linux?
  - phinnaeus 2y ago
    Generally you will always have some system dependencies that you have to manage at the host level. It’s easier to manage those dependencies in the same way the consumers would, in my experience. Containers make this a ton easier of course but then you’re building in a container and you probably wanna make that container match your target environment, soooo…
  - bpye 2y ago
    At least for Nix you _can_ cross compile, but cross compiled and native compiled derivations are not identical - so if you go the cross compiled route you will end up building everything. Another option is to use Qemu and binfmt_misc - that way you do get the result of "native" compilation, but it's slow.
  - fer 2y ago
    > why do we usually need to build software for a target architecture/system on the same architecture/system? Because that's the path of least resistance in terms of development, at least unless you need to industrially build for many architectures. If the compiler runs on $ARCH, the output runs on $ARCH, I guess there's some exception but it's that, an exception. > Unless the build includes tests Build should indeed include tests, unless you want to ship software that potentially fails in architectures you claim to support. Cross compiling isn't a first class citizen in many languages, and when it is, cross testing usually isn't, but you can have a toolchain that includes qemu (as a vm or as a dynamic binary translator) to cover those cases.
ayhanfuat 2y ago
> And for stats nerds, the pricing model for Pi 5 follows this polynomial curve almost perfectly If you actually use the memory as the input instead of 1, 2, 3, 4 then a line would fit it perfectly (40 + 5x).
- WithinReason 2y ago
  That was bothering me as well, the RAM simply costs $5 per GB. BTW, market price for LPDDR4 is around $0.66 per GB: https://www.elinfor.com/pricecenter/lpddr-c-23 https://www.elinfor.com/pricecenter/lpddr-c-23
  - croemer 2y ago
    A great illustration of price discrimination at work: https://upfront.com/thoughts/all-customers-are-not-created-equal https://upfront.com/thoughts/all-customers-are-not-created-e...
  - reitzensteinm 2y ago
    Those listings are measured in gigabits, not gigabytes. So it's $1.50-$5 per GB depending on size.
    - WithinReason 2y ago
      I reversed the division :(
- croemer 2y ago
  “With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make it wiggle its trunk.” Impressive that he fitted against 1,2,3,4 and not the memory as input. That's a total blunder. I should probably stop reading the article at that point, being aware of the the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.
jml7c5 2y ago
The Raspberry Pi has been a bad deal for a long time now. Persistent shortages drove the real-world price up (no one was selling them for MSRP) and for some reason they never came back down. Cheap tiny PCs are better at the high end, and increasingly-capable microcontrollers are better for tinkering. The Pi sits in a weird niche, and its popularity these days is largely based on inertia and network effects. It's been a slow, strange shift away from a $25 computer meant for kids to learn programming and electronics.
- throwaway48476 2y ago
  All of this is true but many of the competitors don't support their products after launch. If you want a product that will be supported by software into the future there aren't so many alternatives.
- schappim 2y ago
  I own a company that sells BeagleBones, Jestsons, LattePandas, in the past Bananna Pi and other cheap and cheerful Chinese embedded boards. What sets the Raspberry Pi apart from its peers is the software stability. None of the others come close to it (okay, maybe the latte panda does)… > for some reason they never came back down That simply is not true if you buy from an authorised distributor. Authorised distributors are required to sell at MSRP.
  - xmodem 2y ago
    The MSRP has gone up, though - the 1GB Pi 4 was introduced at $35. The cheapest Pi 5 is $50 (albeit with 2x the RAM). Secondarily, mini-PCs are much more readily available at better prices now, which makes the Pi look more expensive in comparison.
    - schappim 2y ago
      > albeit with 2x the RAM - multiple cores - all sorts of IP on the silicon - usb 3 - gigabit Ethernet - wifi - Bluetooth - camera connector - dsi - hell, even a power button … etc etc. They’re not comparable.
littlecranky67 2y ago
When my Macbook Pro suddenly died while I was travelling, I was surprised I could productively use my Rpi4+ that I had with me as a temporary replacement. I set up VSCode to use Remote-SSH, and was doing all compilation/development on a cheap Vserver (<15€/mo). VSCode ran quite well locally on the RPI. This was a good temp. replacement for a couple of weeks, now I keep my RPI as an emergency device with me in case my main laptop dies again.
- mrayycombi 2y ago
  As someone once said "the network is the computer".
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    They still say it today, as someone made me aware, Cloudflare bought the trademark.
- echoangle 2y ago
  What do you use as a monitor? Hotel TV?
  - jalk 2y ago
    and keyboard!
    - echoangle 2y ago
      If I needed to use a RasPi as a computer for a few weeks, I would just go to some electronics store and get a USB keyboard for 5$. But if you're buying a monitor (while travelling!), you could just buy some cheap Laptop to use.
      - xmodem 2y ago
        There is a whole market now of portable monitors that are intended to be used as a secondary laptop monitor when travelling, or as a bigger monitor for a switch or steam deck. I've been toying the idea of replacing my aging macbook with one + an M4 mac mini - the situations where I need to use the computer on battery are relatively rare, and it'd be substantially cheaper.
liendolucas 2y ago
The lesson I've learned over the years of purchasing several Raspberry Pi's is this: Unless you're in the need to integrate a project through the GPIO's interface I would be better off spending on one of those (second hand) mini-pcs by lenovo, dell, etc. Even if you want to use it for a low budget mini server, performance for the buck is way better off with a mini pc.
- invaliduser 2y ago
  I totally concur. I migrated most of my self-hosted services from multiple rpi (I've been using several of them for years) to a single cheap Intel N100 NUC that I purchased last year: 16GB RAM/512Gb SSD for 156€, and I've been very pleased with it.
  - daymanstep 2y ago
    You lose some resilience when you do that - if the NUC fails then you lose everything. Whereas if you distribute your services across multiple rpis then a failure of one rpi is not catastrophic.
    - LargoLasskhyfv 2y ago
      Which also applies if you use two NUCs and setup failover between them.
- matt-p 2y ago
  Or need low power, ARM, small form factor, GPIO, or ability to load your software to a compute module.
  - liendolucas 2y ago
    Yes, those are of course valid points as well. However you also need to consider that you have to spend money on other things as well: the power adapter & the SD card to at least have a bare minimum (and a case maybe if you are not a careful person with electronic stuff). Two things that actually annoy me is that SD cards are way way slower than other storage options and are very prone to corruption, I've lost not critical data, but data that was still useful to me due to SD cards (even I believe if you purchase them from a known manufacturer). So this implies that you will likely want to have another more reliable storage option to keep critical data backed up (more spending). And the other one is the missing power button. I don't know if that has changed but all the models that I own lack of a power switch button.
beardyw 2y ago
Just finally putting my model B version 1 into action. Cost £10. * It is doing everything I want: running https, http, websockets, and monitoring a USB device using python. No GUI. I tried on an esp device but it proved to be too hard to keep those plates spinning. It's the right device for the right job. That's the rule. * I am willing to corrected about the price!
- beardyw 2y ago
  ... oh, and of course I am using those exposed GPIO pins.
haunter 2y ago
I'm in Hungary and for the equivalent of $120 you can get an enterprise refurbished mini PC (Dell, HP, Lenovo) with a much better CPU (i3-8100T, i5-8500T, i3-10100T for example) and storage options here. I'm running Dell Optiplex Micros with triple SSDs (1x 2.5", 2x NVMe). And it's x86 so you can prety much run whatever OS you want without any problems. The power consumption is perfectly fine too. Mines usually idle around 4-5W. Good article about the same topic https://louwrentius.com/the-raspberry-pi-5-is-no-match-for-a-tini-mini-micro-pc.html https://louwrentius.com/the-raspberry-pi-5-is-no-match-for-a... Even a 10 years old i5-6500 is outperforming the RPI5!
- sys_64738 2y ago
  You generally don't want RPi for general purpose computing. It's power is the simplicity of all the embedded devices to hook to the GPIO pinout port.
import 2y ago
Unless you need a small form factor and GPIO, I don’t think the Raspberry Pi is a good deal anymore. A Raspberry Pi, SSD, case, and power adapter would be much more expensive than well-known N100 mini PC brands like Beelink and Minis Forum. However, they still have low power consumption. So my answer is no. (Was a happy RPI4 user but now much more happy with mini pc's)
- bjoli 2y ago
  I think that the deal for a pi zero is still pretty unbeatable. I run one as a backup DNS at home if my primary goes down. With a poe splitter and a sensor unit (co2) it draws about 1w. That means about $2 a year where I live. My second best computer - a hp mini computer - draws 11w at idle. Meaning $22/year. At a service time of 5 years a pi does make sense.
linker3000 2y ago
IMHO The 5 should have been a separately-branded product line because it's not the best fit, cost-wise for someone just doing blinky, sensory, roboty stuff that would work fine with a 3 or 4.
eknkc 2y ago
I recently needed some tiny server to bridge a printer to airprint / network scanner etc. Immediately thought about rpi as I could simply plug it in and probably tape it to the back of said printer indefinitely. Seeing the ridiculous pricing on new PIs, went ahead and grabbed a NUC like mini PC. I mean it was the same price as an rpi + memory card, had a nice case with a fan, power management etc. Has shit specs but what do I care for this use case. If I don't need GPIO, PI does not seem to make much sense anymore.
masteruvpuppetz 2y ago
An oldish laptop would be better. Might get 4 in this price :S
croemer 2y ago
Is there a similarly priced, more powerful ARM based computer available (for power efficiency I would like ARM only)? A year ago I decided to go for a mac mini for around $500 as it's way more powerful (except for RAM, there it's constrained but that's ok if you don't attach a display).
kopirgan 2y ago
These tiny PC with 4" boards have changed the game. Pi is sort of in-between the Arduino and these. As article points out the price difference is not much. I bought 4B and found it slow, hot. Thanks to COVID I could resell it for a tidy profit lol. Of course there are use cases I can imagine.
slyfox125 2y ago
My response on the other article: Outside of a real use-case, RPi products are well-polished and fun to play with. There are few other products with an overall presentation - from design to marketing - that are as clean and well done. Personally, I enjoy supporting that.
Havoc 2y ago
There is definitely a market for it - though a small one. I had a 3x pi cluster and found the 8GB limiting. So made those the controlling nodes and bought orange pis 32gb for the worker nodes. And those were well north of 120. But that kind of usage case is quite niche. For most people minipcs are probably a better fit in that price class. I'm unconvinced by the LLM argument...even if the model fits...it's already slow for 8GB class models.
mft_ 2y ago
A masochist. I've ranted about this before on HN so won't too much now, but suffice to say over the years I've tried to use a Pi for multiple different projects, and it's very rare that anything ever just works, even following apparently clear tutorials. I always run into issues somewhere installing packages from the linux and/or python ecosystems. If all you need is a base Raspbian install, fair enough; but anything more complicated and you're likely heading for a world of hurt, trying random 'solutions' from years-old Ubuntu forum and StackOverflow posts.
- larme 2y ago
  I use rpi zero 2 as a coding server (paired with my iphone and a splitted keyboard) when I have slow or no internet. It's quite usable if you just mosh/ssh into it and use emacs/vim to code.
pjmlp 2y ago
What everyone is missing with NUC suggestions is that none of them are ARM based, which is a selling point to get a Pi and port software to ARM in what is a convenient desktop experience.
- jxnsend 2y ago
  Bingo Many of these comments seem to ignore all the advantages of the the rpi ecosystem like footprint, direct IO integration and arm and simply focus on CPU through put O_o
- LargoLasskhyfv 2y ago
  Oh! Really? What's considered 'convenient desktop experience' may vary and could be very subjective. OTOH https://www.qemu.org/docs/master/system/target-arm.html https://www.qemu.org/docs/master/system/target-arm.html can be very convenient from whichever contemporary X/AMD64-setup.
squarefoot 2y ago
I wouldn't. I bought all RasPi boards from 1 to 4, which served me for tinkering and as media player, then realized I could do the same for cheap on a much faster mini PC or unlocked Chromebox, and when I need GPios there's a good choice of cheaper/faster and more open boards from other vendors.
glimshe 2y ago
I've been saying this for almost 2 years now. The raspberry pi was awesome when it first appeared. But given the competition today, especially the Intel mini PCs from one million vendors on Amazon, it became a relic of the past for all but a handful of applications - and these wouldn't need the 16gb model. What makes me sad is the relative failure of the 400/500 concept. I miss the portable all-in-ones from the 80s. But the difficulty in putting a SSD inside and the infuriating mini HDMI were the nail in the coffin.
nurettin 2y ago
I love the idea of low power computing, but I have seen rpi 2 and 3 fail so many times (microsd technology is unreliable, cpu fries at room temperature, gpio randomly stops producing voltage) over the years, no idea why this brand still exists and sells products. Maybe it is just me.
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
Related: New 16GB Raspberry Pi 5 on sale now at $120 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42642873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42642873
1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago
RK3588S has been available for several years and supports 32GB RAM. OrangePi 5 and NanoPi M6 each use it. The later sells with 32GB RAM for $192. I'm still using a BCM2835 RPi with 512MB RAM. Boots to RAM-based root filesystem; .profile automatically chroots to a large external drive.

77 points by schappim 2y ago

ggm 2y ago

With 16gb you can run virtuals to segment CPU time with memory commits. With 16gb you can have a massive file buffer cache and avoid disk io delay.

WithinReason 2y ago
But why use a rpi 5 at that cost? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40209801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40209801
- geerlingguy 2y ago
  It's a niche use case, and other Arm SBCs do better, but Pi 5 still holds an edge for efficiency, if you're power-constrained.
- mindcrime 2y ago
  One reason: your project is already designed around the RPi form factor, and/or you already take advantage of things like GPIO that are more specific to a Pi than a "mini PC" or whatever. And it would cost enough (in actual dollars, or just in time/energy/attention/etc) to redesign the project to where it makes more sense to just upgrade to the slightly more expensive Pi.
ksaj 2y ago
Also tabbed web browsing. I tend to line up the YouTube vids I want to watch while coffee brews, then watch with coffee in hand. Sometimes they get left there for the entire day, minimized while I do something more productive. At least with chromium, that takes a lot of memory (even though it does a few things to conserve). I also have a few other applications running all the time. It gets pretty close sometimes. Anyway, now that they're available, I'm getting one. I sure have a lot of Pis nowadays.

matt-p 2y ago

The bigger question to my mind is why does 14GB of RAM cost $70? 2GB Pi5 - $50 16GB Pi5 - $120 I can see the uses of having more RAM, but surely it's cheap enough to make 4GB standard, with options for 8/16GB that are sensibly priced - removing one SKU.

bogantech 2y ago
Greed
- matt-p 2y ago
  I guess so. I don't begrudge them money, but I wish they could find a better way to make it than resorting to the old apple business model.
- audunw 2y ago
  Not necessarily. They can have a target margin of X% which is completely reasonable. Then they lower X for the lower RAM options and increase X for the higher RAM options. That way more people can buy your product, as many will be fine with less RAM. And the ones that really need that much RAM will contribute more to the margins needed for R&D and marketing. I can't believe that people are still surprised about this kind of pricing, because it's completely normal pricing strategy in almost every market. If this is greed, then I guess greed is simply wanting to be able to run a viable business, and wanting as many customers as possible to be able to afford your products. It's basic price discrimination, and personally I think it's a good thing. I suspect when you're selling at the quantities that Apple are doing, they'll have to consider the impact their RAM pricing will have on RAM shortages. If they price the highest RAM option much cheaper, everyone will just buy that option, even if they don't need it. At those volumes, that could trigger the need to build new RAM factories, which will drive up RAM prices a lot in the short term, which is rather self-defeating.
- GuB-42 2y ago
  Greed, aka. running a business. They have to make money somehow, it means selling things for more than they pay for. They chose to make higher margins on the 16GB model than on the 8GB or less models, which is not particularly shocking.

Hackbraten 2y ago

> But I distilled my thoughts into a list of 5 reasons the 16 GB Pi 5 ought to exist: Another reason why one might want to buy one is as a build server for arm64 packages.

bertothunder 2y ago
I totally concur. This is actually our main usage on a set of 4 rpi4 and rpi5, building up ARM docker images from our products and run all testing from CI. Yes, I could use ARM-based VPS, but we wanted our own in-house CI running. Before that, we were testing Rancher with these ones for ARM testing, too. No miniPC right now offers that, but I think they will be coming soon.

mytailorisrich 2y ago

For PC-like applications I would tend to agree. A quick look at prices here in the UK: * Rpi5 16GB - £114.90 (Pi Hut) * Mini PC N150, 16GB (upgradable), 512GB M.2 SSD (upgradable), Win 11 Pro - £169.95 (Amazon)

nsteel 2y ago
The mini PC also comes with a PSU (I assume). But I think paying 50% more for the option of upgrading a low-power machine is daft. Or paying 50% more for an OS I don't want.
geerlingguy 2y ago
On US Amazon, the GMKtec G3 Plus is an even better deal, right now it's $140, though that's with 8GB of RAM instead of 16 (16 GB model is $210). There's even a $10 coupon bringing it down to $130/$200 currently.

h4ch1 2y ago

Second hand NUCs cost 70 bucks, sometimes even lower and offer way more bang for buck than a RPi. Use an adafruit breakout for usb -> GPIO and you're good.

nsteel 2y ago
Yeh, just load the RPI software image on and follow all the guides and.. oh.. yeh it's slightly different in small ways that could trip you up. Great, I love making myself more work.
- GlacierFox 2y ago
  Why would you bother complicating things for yourself by installing Raspberry PI OS on a NUC or small pc? Great job making yourself more work...
  - nsteel 2y ago
    Now I can't follow the thousands of guides and examples tailored exactly to Pi software and hardware. Maybe now you can see why "and you're good." isn't actually true?
    - stavros 2y ago
      I installed Debian on mine and that was literally it, job done.
    - alias_neo 2y ago
      For tinkering and GPIO stuff I still think the Pi is unmatched, but with the specs of these newer models and the prices, they seem to be entering more of the homelab/desktop/server segment, at which point these mini PCs we're talking about are a far better value proposition. If you want to connect breakouts and do some electronics work etc, a Pi 4 or a lower-RAM/lower-cost Pi 5 is an excellent choice, for those who were using them to host software like I've been doing mini-PCs destroy Pis these days at the price/feature and price/performance level. If the Pis weren't looking more like these mini PCs in features and cost, they wouldn't be coming up as comparisons.

tuananh 2y ago

a closer comparison would be the sbc with n100 chip. they are roughly same price but n100 sbc offer much better performance, and power consumption as well > I managed to get my N100 mini pc to 1.3-1.5W idle power consumption at wall with active wifi connection (screen turned off), so for headless server idling most of the time the N100 is better option. https://www.cnx-software.com/2024/04/29/raspberry-pi-5-intel-n100-mini-pc-comparison-features-benchmarks-price/ https://www.cnx-software.com/2024/04/29/raspberry-pi-5-intel...

deleted 2y ago
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alias_neo 2y ago
We had this discussion with the 8GB Pi 5, at which time I argued that a mini PC (I got a Minisforum UM480[0] with a mobile Ryzen 7 8C/16T with 32GB RAM and 1TB NVMe for a ~£260 on sale) is in another league performance and feature wise while not costing as much more than a Pi as you'd think once you factor in the cost of the Pi + cooler + uSD + PSU + case + NVMe base/HAT + NVMe SSD. I've been a fan of the Pi since the beginning, and in the SBC world, their support is unmatched, but with these improvements, they're speccing themselves more into homelab/server/desktop use than straight tinkering/GPIO stuff, all while the prices are pricing them out of that market. If you don't want to annihilate the performance of a Pi 5 like the Minisforum mini-PC does, you can buy a complete N100 mini-PC for ~£100 with all of the RAM, storage, case, IO and PSU included that will still destroy a Pi 5 and actually cost you less up-and-running and still get better performance. [0]https://store.minisforum.com/pages/product https://store.minisforum.com/pages/product (Click UM480, their website design doesn't let me link to it directly)
chronogram 2y ago
It always struck me as odd that people use default config Windows power consumption figures for the N100 boxes. My 14 year old Sandy Bridge laptop can pull 1-2W idle on Linux with a modern desktop; a more modern SoC with fewer parts would be broken if it can't do that. (I often bring out that old ThinkPad X220 to test software on older hardware, and it's so satisfying how fast that thing still is until you open the browser.)

begueradj 2y ago

With half that price (even less), I saw used but decent laptops.

louwrentius 2y ago

I really don’t know. A second-hand tiniminimicro or a nuc-like seems so much more value for money Jeffs reasons why you’d need 16G in a Pi feel convoluted.

geerlingguy 2y ago
Indeed - used vs. new of course, but if you're using it for raw compute, and you don't have like a 10W upper limit to your power budget (e.g. not remote solar/battery powered), a used mini PC is going to get you a lot more performance, IO, and compatibility, for a lower price (not to mention a case, power supply, and likely included SSD).
albertzeyer 2y ago
Can you give some example? I mostly also care about energy efficiency. How much energy would the alternatives consume?
- izacus 2y ago
  Probably less - RPis these days run very hot (60C+) even when idling due to rather poor power management.
  - geerlingguy 2y ago
    Definitely not less; used mini PCs typically idle at 10-20W on the low end (and some, especially older AMD, at 30-40W which seems insane!). Even the better low-end N100's usually idle at 5-6W, which is double the Pi 5. SoC idle temperature depends on environment and cooling solution; the N100 would quickly thermal throttle if you don't have a comparatively large heatsink attached. The Pi 5 will actually give you full performance for a minute or two before throttling (assuming no heatsink). Other Arm chips are much better, efficiency-wise, but the Pi 5 is still more efficient than any low-end x86 build, especially used.
    - louwrentius 2y ago
      Hi Jeff, I feel that for just a few watts idle extra you get a much more capable, and much more complete, easy-to-handle computer, at this time the Raspberry Pi starts to feel like, why do we still even care? let the industry customers have them. I’m sure you have many more topics and a ton of other gear to explore to explore and many pi-related videos are fun entertainment (which is fine for it’s own sake) but it always practical. That 4-SSD nas looks fragile as hell and I think it’s definitely worth exploring alternatives.

t43562 2y ago

You develop your application on an 8GB model and find out that 16GB is much better. You can choose to port it to some other OS with some other hardware if you like or buy a 16GB Pi 5 and save the effort. The choice is now there. What's so great is that it's all up to you. There are "smaller" or older Pis still being made. More for more is fairly reasonable. If you have a sort of inbuilt bias against "buying second best" that you might consider this a price increase. I have that feeling often. I don't want the second best camera .... and that ends up leading me into stratospheric prices as I finds better and better things. Fortunately I know this and realise that when I am doing it it's because I don't have a clear use in mind for the item - hence I can't decide what's "enough" so the answer is not to buy it at all.

Archelaos 2y ago
In addition, the second-best product is then perceived as cheaper as it would be if it were assessed in isolation.
etrautmann 2y ago
This sounds like I could have written it. Fighting gear acquisition syndrome in photography is a real challenge.
- t43562 2y ago
  "Gear Acquisition Syndrome" (GAS) is an awesome term for it :-)

gunalx 2y ago

Arm nixpkgs build server is one reason i can think of. (But then 16gb is still almost to little)

Netcob 2y ago
I always wondered - why do we usually need to build software for a target architecture/system on the same architecture/system? Unless the build includes tests, it doesn't need to be run? I get that Apple has its own BS reasons for that, but Linux?
- phinnaeus 2y ago
  Generally you will always have some system dependencies that you have to manage at the host level. It’s easier to manage those dependencies in the same way the consumers would, in my experience. Containers make this a ton easier of course but then you’re building in a container and you probably wanna make that container match your target environment, soooo…
- bpye 2y ago
  At least for Nix you _can_ cross compile, but cross compiled and native compiled derivations are not identical - so if you go the cross compiled route you will end up building everything. Another option is to use Qemu and binfmt_misc - that way you do get the result of "native" compilation, but it's slow.
- fer 2y ago
  > why do we usually need to build software for a target architecture/system on the same architecture/system? Because that's the path of least resistance in terms of development, at least unless you need to industrially build for many architectures. If the compiler runs on $ARCH, the output runs on $ARCH, I guess there's some exception but it's that, an exception. > Unless the build includes tests Build should indeed include tests, unless you want to ship software that potentially fails in architectures you claim to support. Cross compiling isn't a first class citizen in many languages, and when it is, cross testing usually isn't, but you can have a toolchain that includes qemu (as a vm or as a dynamic binary translator) to cover those cases.

ayhanfuat 2y ago

> And for stats nerds, the pricing model for Pi 5 follows this polynomial curve almost perfectly If you actually use the memory as the input instead of 1, 2, 3, 4 then a line would fit it perfectly (40 + 5x).

WithinReason 2y ago
That was bothering me as well, the RAM simply costs $5 per GB. BTW, market price for LPDDR4 is around $0.66 per GB: https://www.elinfor.com/pricecenter/lpddr-c-23 https://www.elinfor.com/pricecenter/lpddr-c-23
- croemer 2y ago
  A great illustration of price discrimination at work: https://upfront.com/thoughts/all-customers-are-not-created-equal https://upfront.com/thoughts/all-customers-are-not-created-e...
- reitzensteinm 2y ago
  Those listings are measured in gigabits, not gigabytes. So it's $1.50-$5 per GB depending on size.
  - WithinReason 2y ago
    I reversed the division :(
croemer 2y ago
“With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make it wiggle its trunk.” Impressive that he fitted against 1,2,3,4 and not the memory as input. That's a total blunder. I should probably stop reading the article at that point, being aware of the the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.

jml7c5 2y ago

The Raspberry Pi has been a bad deal for a long time now. Persistent shortages drove the real-world price up (no one was selling them for MSRP) and for some reason they never came back down. Cheap tiny PCs are better at the high end, and increasingly-capable microcontrollers are better for tinkering. The Pi sits in a weird niche, and its popularity these days is largely based on inertia and network effects. It's been a slow, strange shift away from a $25 computer meant for kids to learn programming and electronics.

throwaway48476 2y ago
All of this is true but many of the competitors don't support their products after launch. If you want a product that will be supported by software into the future there aren't so many alternatives.
schappim 2y ago
I own a company that sells BeagleBones, Jestsons, LattePandas, in the past Bananna Pi and other cheap and cheerful Chinese embedded boards. What sets the Raspberry Pi apart from its peers is the software stability. None of the others come close to it (okay, maybe the latte panda does)… > for some reason they never came back down That simply is not true if you buy from an authorised distributor. Authorised distributors are required to sell at MSRP.
- xmodem 2y ago
  The MSRP has gone up, though - the 1GB Pi 4 was introduced at $35. The cheapest Pi 5 is $50 (albeit with 2x the RAM). Secondarily, mini-PCs are much more readily available at better prices now, which makes the Pi look more expensive in comparison.
  - schappim 2y ago
    > albeit with 2x the RAM - multiple cores - all sorts of IP on the silicon - usb 3 - gigabit Ethernet - wifi - Bluetooth - camera connector - dsi - hell, even a power button … etc etc. They’re not comparable.

littlecranky67 2y ago

When my Macbook Pro suddenly died while I was travelling, I was surprised I could productively use my Rpi4+ that I had with me as a temporary replacement. I set up VSCode to use Remote-SSH, and was doing all compilation/development on a cheap Vserver (<15€/mo). VSCode ran quite well locally on the RPI. This was a good temp. replacement for a couple of weeks, now I keep my RPI as an emergency device with me in case my main laptop dies again.

mrayycombi 2y ago
As someone once said "the network is the computer".
- pjmlp 2y ago
  They still say it today, as someone made me aware, Cloudflare bought the trademark.
echoangle 2y ago
What do you use as a monitor? Hotel TV?
- jalk 2y ago
  and keyboard!
  - echoangle 2y ago
    If I needed to use a RasPi as a computer for a few weeks, I would just go to some electronics store and get a USB keyboard for 5$. But if you're buying a monitor (while travelling!), you could just buy some cheap Laptop to use.
    - xmodem 2y ago
      There is a whole market now of portable monitors that are intended to be used as a secondary laptop monitor when travelling, or as a bigger monitor for a switch or steam deck. I've been toying the idea of replacing my aging macbook with one + an M4 mac mini - the situations where I need to use the computer on battery are relatively rare, and it'd be substantially cheaper.

liendolucas 2y ago

The lesson I've learned over the years of purchasing several Raspberry Pi's is this: Unless you're in the need to integrate a project through the GPIO's interface I would be better off spending on one of those (second hand) mini-pcs by lenovo, dell, etc. Even if you want to use it for a low budget mini server, performance for the buck is way better off with a mini pc.

invaliduser 2y ago
I totally concur. I migrated most of my self-hosted services from multiple rpi (I've been using several of them for years) to a single cheap Intel N100 NUC that I purchased last year: 16GB RAM/512Gb SSD for 156€, and I've been very pleased with it.
- daymanstep 2y ago
  You lose some resilience when you do that - if the NUC fails then you lose everything. Whereas if you distribute your services across multiple rpis then a failure of one rpi is not catastrophic.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 2y ago
    Which also applies if you use two NUCs and setup failover between them.
matt-p 2y ago
Or need low power, ARM, small form factor, GPIO, or ability to load your software to a compute module.
- liendolucas 2y ago
  Yes, those are of course valid points as well. However you also need to consider that you have to spend money on other things as well: the power adapter & the SD card to at least have a bare minimum (and a case maybe if you are not a careful person with electronic stuff). Two things that actually annoy me is that SD cards are way way slower than other storage options and are very prone to corruption, I've lost not critical data, but data that was still useful to me due to SD cards (even I believe if you purchase them from a known manufacturer). So this implies that you will likely want to have another more reliable storage option to keep critical data backed up (more spending). And the other one is the missing power button. I don't know if that has changed but all the models that I own lack of a power switch button.

beardyw 2y ago

Just finally putting my model B version 1 into action. Cost £10. * It is doing everything I want: running https, http, websockets, and monitoring a USB device using python. No GUI. I tried on an esp device but it proved to be too hard to keep those plates spinning. It's the right device for the right job. That's the rule. * I am willing to corrected about the price!

beardyw 2y ago
... oh, and of course I am using those exposed GPIO pins.

haunter 2y ago

I'm in Hungary and for the equivalent of $120 you can get an enterprise refurbished mini PC (Dell, HP, Lenovo) with a much better CPU (i3-8100T, i5-8500T, i3-10100T for example) and storage options here. I'm running Dell Optiplex Micros with triple SSDs (1x 2.5", 2x NVMe). And it's x86 so you can prety much run whatever OS you want without any problems. The power consumption is perfectly fine too. Mines usually idle around 4-5W. Good article about the same topic https://louwrentius.com/the-raspberry-pi-5-is-no-match-for-a-tini-mini-micro-pc.html https://louwrentius.com/the-raspberry-pi-5-is-no-match-for-a... Even a 10 years old i5-6500 is outperforming the RPI5!

sys_64738 2y ago
You generally don't want RPi for general purpose computing. It's power is the simplicity of all the embedded devices to hook to the GPIO pinout port.

import 2y ago

Unless you need a small form factor and GPIO, I don’t think the Raspberry Pi is a good deal anymore. A Raspberry Pi, SSD, case, and power adapter would be much more expensive than well-known N100 mini PC brands like Beelink and Minis Forum. However, they still have low power consumption. So my answer is no. (Was a happy RPI4 user but now much more happy with mini pc's)

bjoli 2y ago
I think that the deal for a pi zero is still pretty unbeatable. I run one as a backup DNS at home if my primary goes down. With a poe splitter and a sensor unit (co2) it draws about 1w. That means about $2 a year where I live. My second best computer - a hp mini computer - draws 11w at idle. Meaning $22/year. At a service time of 5 years a pi does make sense.

linker3000 2y ago

IMHO The 5 should have been a separately-branded product line because it's not the best fit, cost-wise for someone just doing blinky, sensory, roboty stuff that would work fine with a 3 or 4.

eknkc 2y ago

I recently needed some tiny server to bridge a printer to airprint / network scanner etc. Immediately thought about rpi as I could simply plug it in and probably tape it to the back of said printer indefinitely. Seeing the ridiculous pricing on new PIs, went ahead and grabbed a NUC like mini PC. I mean it was the same price as an rpi + memory card, had a nice case with a fan, power management etc. Has shit specs but what do I care for this use case. If I don't need GPIO, PI does not seem to make much sense anymore.

masteruvpuppetz 2y ago

An oldish laptop would be better. Might get 4 in this price :S

croemer 2y ago

Is there a similarly priced, more powerful ARM based computer available (for power efficiency I would like ARM only)? A year ago I decided to go for a mac mini for around $500 as it's way more powerful (except for RAM, there it's constrained but that's ok if you don't attach a display).

kopirgan 2y ago

These tiny PC with 4" boards have changed the game. Pi is sort of in-between the Arduino and these. As article points out the price difference is not much. I bought 4B and found it slow, hot. Thanks to COVID I could resell it for a tidy profit lol. Of course there are use cases I can imagine.

slyfox125 2y ago

My response on the other article: Outside of a real use-case, RPi products are well-polished and fun to play with. There are few other products with an overall presentation - from design to marketing - that are as clean and well done. Personally, I enjoy supporting that.

Havoc 2y ago

There is definitely a market for it - though a small one. I had a 3x pi cluster and found the 8GB limiting. So made those the controlling nodes and bought orange pis 32gb for the worker nodes. And those were well north of 120. But that kind of usage case is quite niche. For most people minipcs are probably a better fit in that price class. I'm unconvinced by the LLM argument...even if the model fits...it's already slow for 8GB class models.

mft_ 2y ago

A masochist. I've ranted about this before on HN so won't too much now, but suffice to say over the years I've tried to use a Pi for multiple different projects, and it's very rare that anything ever just works, even following apparently clear tutorials. I always run into issues somewhere installing packages from the linux and/or python ecosystems. If all you need is a base Raspbian install, fair enough; but anything more complicated and you're likely heading for a world of hurt, trying random 'solutions' from years-old Ubuntu forum and StackOverflow posts.

larme 2y ago
I use rpi zero 2 as a coding server (paired with my iphone and a splitted keyboard) when I have slow or no internet. It's quite usable if you just mosh/ssh into it and use emacs/vim to code.

pjmlp 2y ago

What everyone is missing with NUC suggestions is that none of them are ARM based, which is a selling point to get a Pi and port software to ARM in what is a convenient desktop experience.

jxnsend 2y ago
Bingo Many of these comments seem to ignore all the advantages of the the rpi ecosystem like footprint, direct IO integration and arm and simply focus on CPU through put O_o
LargoLasskhyfv 2y ago
Oh! Really? What's considered 'convenient desktop experience' may vary and could be very subjective. OTOH https://www.qemu.org/docs/master/system/target-arm.html https://www.qemu.org/docs/master/system/target-arm.html can be very convenient from whichever contemporary X/AMD64-setup.

squarefoot 2y ago

I wouldn't. I bought all RasPi boards from 1 to 4, which served me for tinkering and as media player, then realized I could do the same for cheap on a much faster mini PC or unlocked Chromebox, and when I need GPios there's a good choice of cheaper/faster and more open boards from other vendors.

glimshe 2y ago

I've been saying this for almost 2 years now. The raspberry pi was awesome when it first appeared. But given the competition today, especially the Intel mini PCs from one million vendors on Amazon, it became a relic of the past for all but a handful of applications - and these wouldn't need the 16gb model. What makes me sad is the relative failure of the 400/500 concept. I miss the portable all-in-ones from the 80s. But the difficulty in putting a SSD inside and the infuriating mini HDMI were the nail in the coffin.

nurettin 2y ago

I love the idea of low power computing, but I have seen rpi 2 and 3 fail so many times (microsd technology is unreliable, cpu fries at room temperature, gpio randomly stops producing voltage) over the years, no idea why this brand still exists and sells products. Maybe it is just me.

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

Related: New 16GB Raspberry Pi 5 on sale now at $120 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42642873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42642873

1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago

RK3588S has been available for several years and supports 32GB RAM. OrangePi 5 and NanoPi M6 each use it. The later sells with 32GB RAM for $192. I'm still using a BCM2835 RPi with 512MB RAM. Boots to RAM-based root filesystem; .profile automatically chroots to a large external drive.