The price of DDR4 memory has increased dramatically in recent months due to limited supply and increased demand for AI workloads. The Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 and 5 (CM4/CM5) are based on LPDDR4 memory, and Raspberry Pi reports that memory costs are roughly 120% higher than they were just a year ago.
So they have no choice but to increase the price by $5 to $10 for the CM4 and CM5, as well as the Raspberry Pi 500 keyboard PC. I assume the $200 price tag for the Raspberry Pi 500+ mechanical keyboard PC released last week already includes this new reality.
Product affected:
- 4GB Compute Module 4 and Compute Module 5 variants increase by $5
- 8GB Compute Module 4 and Compute Module 5 variants increase by $10
- Raspberry Pi 500 unit-only increases by $10 to $100
- Raspberry Pi Development Kit for Compute Module 5 increases by $5 to $135
Somehow, they have not changed the price of the Raspberry Pi 4/5 SBCs with 4GB, 8GB, or 16GB LPDDR4(X) RAM. They ate some of the price increases for the Raspberry Pi 500 kits by lowering their margins.
For different reasons, the Raspberry Pi 3B+ got a price increase to $40 (from $35), and they could reduce the price of the Compute Module (1) by $5 to $25. For those two products, the price updates are not memory-related, but due to the overall cost structure of those two products. No other products are impacted, and they plan to revert to lower prices if the DDR4 memory situation improves.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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