Raspberry Pi and Mini PC Home Lab Prices Hit Parity as Dram Costs Skyrocket

AI is an impressive technology, but because its turned into a Space Race we're getting into some wild territory. Sam Altman who has been notorious for being quite the con artist is at the helm of this. I heard a friend suggest that the real AI bubble starts with Sam Altman, and I'm inclined to agree. If you're unaware, Sam Altman has quite a crazy history, including selling a company with questionable MAU's for millions of dollars, which was then shut down because the actual MAU's was much lower than suggested. He also claimed to be chairman of YC with the SEC for years, despite never being chairman of YC. I wouldn't trust Sam Altman alone with my wife or kids, why should I trust him with AI?

Funnily enough, Elon Musk calls him Scam Altman, have to wonder what Elon and others know beyond what we know about Sam Altman.

Indirectly related but it's a little surprising that we haven't heard about price adjustments from Valve for the Steam Deck yet to account for the DRAM price increases.

Higher DRAM prices are also bound to also affect their unreleased devices and make them a tougher sell to buyers.

Price parity but not feature parity. I still struggle to find good use-cases for the full sized Pi that both require direct GPIO and the increased CPU capabilities/storage speeds. For anything that needs GPIO, I find it much easier to just run it on a Zero 2W.

For anything else, where I just need "small computer running Linux to do a thing over USB or the network", the Intel mini-PCs are still a better deal.

1. They are usually upgradable, either in storage, and/or RAM, WiFi, etc depending on which one you buy.

2. They usually have actual M.2 storage without the need for an add-on board.

3. More sensible board and port layouts. I despise the Pi B form factor. Easily the worst thing about my Radxa X4 is the slavish "lets make it Pi B" form factor, which they didn't even manage to do, so any time I use it it's a port squid mess instead of having everything be neatly managable and I don't get to use any of the Pi B form-factor accessories I have anyways.

4. Can run any x86 operating system, and get installed off of a USB. I dual boot my Radxa X4 between Windows and Linux.

5. Typically have faster networking and definitely better video/NPU hardware. Intel QSV is excellent.

6. Power usage stats that are a rounding error up or down from what a Pi 5 could do.

At this point, I'd rather the Pi Foundation really focus on the Pico stuff, I find it far more interesting. The compute modules are also pretty useful when you really want to customize the I/O. As the landscape changed, the full-size Pi B's just seem...left out. Weird boot process, weird form factor, weird Broadcom stuff, weird price/performance ratio, downright hostile power supply choices (5V5A is supported by like two special snowflake supplies, and guess what, the Pi Foundation sells one!), few upsides. Maybe if the mini-PCs prices still increase, and the Pi Foundation can still get away with selling 8GB Pi 5s at $100 or whatever, it'll make more sense.

I have a lot of trouble trusting pre-built mini computers from random manufacturers. Way too easy to slap some malware on a chip on the board somewhere. Maybe I just have trust issues but I don't really want to give anything I buy on Aliexpress network access.

I wish these form factors were more popular with more reputable brands.

Learn to live with 1GB of RAM. Either CLI/TUI tools, or software like Dillo or Sxiv. Mainline dillo from their Git and not the outdated one from the repos. The new "dilloc" it's amazing, you need Dillo compiled with socket control support. Then you will be able to use dilloc as a client to spawn commands con scripts. For instance, to rewrite URL's from a list. Hint: the ones from https://farside.link . Youtube to Invidious, X.com to Nitter and so on.

Connect to https://farside.link, https://lite.cnn.com, https://text.npr.org or gopher://magical.fish as a services portal or news source.

Use mpv+yt-dlp if you are under Unix to watch online videos. Complex? Just a little bit first. Incredibily rewarding later. No JS will be needed to play videos on most websites. Also with yt-dlp you are able to save them for later usage.

Try programming with small languages from https://t3x.org and doing Math/Intro to Statistics book with Klong and its manual. s9fes can be a good enough Scheme Lisp to complete the exircies Concrete Abstractions and maybe SICP if you know how to reimplement (frame) and the missing functions. An easy task after CACS.

Consider SQLite+Python+TkInter or TCK+Tk as the DDBB UI on top.

Golang can be great too with 1GB of RAM and a simple n270 netbook, I run Yggdrasil on that, and NNCP too among other tools. Everything with nvi as the editor (basically vi+UTF-8+some status line for help), simple Makefiles git://bitreich.org/english_knight and entr(1) as a tool to watch a directory and spawn 'make' on file changes.

To write this article without mentioning the 3588, is like writing about Venezuela without mentioning oil.

Pi 5 and N150 are completely meaningless since before they came into existence.

    "(4GB was $70 now $110, next batch probably ~$150 by now if nothing improves)"

Well hopefully this will help to keep the "x86 guy" from barging into EVERY arm sbc related conversation regardless of the subject. They will ignore every argument about what the conversation is about and point out their recycled trash Lenovo uses 6W on idle while conflating idle power usage with efficiency per watt.

"Yeah dude we know but I need a Pi for this project. So sit down."

... for the worst possible imaginable reason, a massive price rise for both Raspberry Pi and mini pcs.

I would still go with the Raspberry Pi, because it is designed from the ground up for Linux, while most mini PC home labs are the usual hit-and-miss with Linux distros.