DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

# DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market Source: [https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/dram-pricing-is-killing-the-hobbyist-sbc-market/](https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/dram-pricing-is-killing-the-hobbyist-sbc-market/) Today Raspberry Pi announced[more price increases for all Pis with LPDDR4 RAM](https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/a-new-3gb-raspberry-pi-4-for-83-75-and-more-memory-driven-price-increases/), alongside a 'right\-sized' 3GB RAM Pi 4 for $83\.75\. The price increases bring the 16GB Pi 5 up to*$299\.99*\. Despite today's date, this is not a joke\. I published a video going over the state of the hobbyist 'high end SBC' market \(4/8/16 GB models in the current generation\), which I'll embed below: But if you'd like the**tl;dr**: Unless the DRAM pricing situation changes*radically*, I think the hobbyist SBC market is dying—or at least on life support\. And I don't just mean Raspberry Pis, but all SBC vendors\. LPDDR chips now account for the majority of board cost from the vendors I've checked with\. Besides causing a radical reduction in new boards launched \(Radxa seems to be the only vendor that had some cadence last year\), the price increases for boards with greater than 4 GB of RAM have put those boards out of the reach of most hobbyists\. Even mini PCs, which for a time were a*great*deal, have risen to $250\+ for 8 GB models\.*Used*PC are also more expensive, especially with more than 4 GB of RAM\. I design most of my projects so they can be replicated for less than $100\. Learning is easier on cheaper parts you won't fret over too much when you break them\. With prices going up, this limits the types of projects I take on\. I'm working more with older SBCs and microcontrollers now, and I think that's the direction many in the hobbyist space are going\. Maybe, as Eben Upton says in Raspberry Pi's post, > memory prices won’t remain at their current very high level indefinitely; the circumstances in which we find ourselves are challenging, but in the future they will abate\. But I'm not sure how long we'll have to wait, or if a hobbyist SBC market will exist by the time the bubble bursts\. Lucky for Raspberry Pi, they have a thriving microcontroller ecosystem and industrial base to keep them going\. I fear smaller vendors won't be able to go on like this forever\.