The RAM pricing crisis continues to attack affordable computing with more (and significant) hikes on Raspberry Pi, making a mini PC look even more attractive

The RAM crisis has been claiming victims left, right, and center, and the Raspberry Pi is, once again, taking a massive hit.

Previous price rises were unavoidable, and today, Raspberry Pi has announced another raft of equally unavoidable increases. They're significant, too, bringing into question whether or not the little single-board computer (SBC) is worth it anymore in some use cases.

So, what's it cost now? That depends on your location, but the table below plots the dollar increases across the current range.

Generally speaking, the more RAM you want, the bigger the increase. Makes sense. Not every model is affected, with some of the lower RAM variants of recent Raspberry Pis being kept at their current rates for now.

"As painful as these price rises are, there are some brighter spots in the picture. We’ve been able to hold the price of Raspberry Pi 400 with 4GB of memory at $60, and the 1GB and 2GB variants of Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi 5 at between $35 and $65. These are capable and versatile modern Raspberry Pi computers at affordable price points."

In addition, older models, including the Pi Zero, are unaffected as they use older LPDDR2 which Raspberry Pi says it holds significant stocks of. There's also a new 3GB version of the Raspberry Pi 5 being introduced today to provide another option to help customers get the most they can from their budget.

The Raspberry Pi has an almost limitless number of applications, but at its heart, it's a cheap computer. But unless you're actually building something, these unfortunate price rises may no longer make it as attractive as it once was.

The 16GB Raspberry Pi 5 now costs $305 in the U.S., and remember, that's just for the board. You don't get anything else with it. No storage, no case, no operating system.

If it's a cheap computer you want rather than a tool to make something with or tinker around on, a cheap mini PC suddenly looks like a better buy. It'll probably come with Windows 11, but you can still use Linux instead if you prefer.

A mini PC can still be efficient when it comes to power, albeit perhaps not quite as good as the Raspberry Pi, and in almost every case, will have a more powerful CPU.

If you want a cheap home server, for example, or to build your own NAS, run Plex or Jellyfin, or even just learn a little about self-hosting or a number of software tools, a mini PC will be as effective as a Raspberry Pi. A mini PC will also likely be upgradeable, with most having user-accessible RAM and storage.

At least if you were eying up one of the higher-spec models. Unless you absolutely need all that RAM, the cheaper ones still exist (even if they're not quite as cheap anymore), and they'll still serve you well.

But thanks to the RAMpocalypse, the higher-tier Raspberry Pis don't necessarily make the sense they once did. Which is sad. I love the Raspberry Pi, I've got a bunch of various models in my stash that I've tinkered with on a number of projects over the years.

What I hope most of all is that the prices settle and we can go back to some sense of normality. It's a glaring example, though, of how affordable computing is being attacked just as much as those wanting a beastly gaming rig.

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