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.
Support CNX Software! Donate via cryptocurrencies, become a Patron on Patreon, or purchase goods on Amazon or Aliexpress. We also use affiliate links in articles to earn commissions if you make a purchase after clicking on those links.
Here comes another chip/SBC hoarding year.
The king is dead! Long life the king!
All courtesy of Trump and his illegal erratic economic policies since office. Pi should be making only Americans pay for these increased costs instead of spreading it over the the rest of the world. And migrate away from US Micron parts to cheaper memory in China.
Strange. The older RK3588(s) seems to be shipped with either LPDDR4 or 5. The even older RK356x seems to only ship with LPDDR4 (which seems fine).
Seeing that the RPI5 is newer than the RK3588 it is weird to have been made LPDDR4-only. Switching to LPDDR5 might have been expected, even though performance-wise no advantage is to be expected.
And Pi and co have tremendously more buying power, so yes something seems odd here.
But the PI devices all use processors built by Broadcom, not Rockchip. The BCM2712 used in the Pi 5 range is exclusive to Raspberry, so it is built to their spec and at a low cost. You can see the difference if you just look at the process node used. The BCM2712 is 16nm, while the RK3588 is 8nm.