Desperate times call for desperate measures. Raspberry Pi has decided to introduce a dual RAM variant of the Raspberry Pi 4 to allow DRAM supply chain flexibility along with manufacturing process improvement using intrusive reflow soldering.
As you may remember, Raspberry Pi first increased the price of most Raspberry Pi 4/5 boards last December while launching the Raspberry Pi 5 1GB RAM to offer a $45 option. At the end of last month, we noted broad market price adjustments due to not only RAM prices, but also storage devices, SoCs, and other components. A few days ago, Raspberry Pi had to further increase the price of the Raspberry Pi 4/5 for the 2GB to 16GB RAM models as follows:
- 1GB – unchanged
- 2GB – +$10
- 4GB – +$15
- 8GB – +$30
- 16GB – +$60
It’s not out of the realm of possibility that we may end up in a situation where two 4GB RAM chips are cheaper than one 8GB RAM chip. To mitigate further price increases or availability issues, the Raspberry Pi 4 v1.5 “Dual RAM” variant is born.
If the silkscreen on the top of the board reads “Raspberry Pi 4 Model B (C) Raspberry Pi 2025” then you have a board with the new version of the PCB (Rev 13a). You’ll also find a second LPDDR4 device on the underside of the board, plus a few passive components that are not present in previous revisions of the Raspberry Pi 4.
Software-side, it does not change anything, but you can detect the new board with cat /proc/cpuinfo showing the “Model” as “Raspberry Pi 4 Model B Rev 1.5”. One potentially important detail is that the board is only supported by bootloader versions from 9 Jan 2026 onwards (pieeprom-2026-01-09.bin).
A list of possible RAM chips is listed in PCN 46, but it doesn’t show up in the list of Product Change Notices for the Raspberry Pi 4, at this time, either because it hasn’t been uploaded or it requires a special account. You can access PCN 45 in that link for the full details about the new Raspberry Pi 4 Dual RAM version.
Via Hackster.io
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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