16GB on a pi doesn't even make sense. It's super inefficient. That ramm would be much better off in a datacenter \s
this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2026
450 points (99.6% liked)
Technology
89532 readers
2831 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Think of poor Sam Altman before you buy a 16GB Pi!
Counterpoint:
Why are you so negative towards somebody who is not at all an ultra-greedy lying slimy sleazy sociopath and super-entitled cunt???
he stole my bike drawing
BananaPI board I used to use for some projects has gone from about 120-150 to almost 400. It’s not just raspberry with this issue.
The aim of those buying up all the RAM is to prevent people owning devices capable of serious computing, so we have to rent what we used to have back from them, with added censorship and surveillance. Sam Altman has been explicit about how he wants no one to own RAM except companies running data centres. The Raspberry Pi becoming unfeasibly expensive is just an example of that forced transition from owning to renting playing out. When it was introduced the Pi cost ~~$15~~ $35. We're in a different world now.
When it was introduced the Pi cost $15
It was a 700MHz single core board with 512mb of ram...and it was $35, not $15
And if tech had been proceeding since then as it did for the previous 30 years, you'd expect a whole lot more power for your ~~$15~~ $35 now.
An ESP32-P4 is about the same ram, better IO options, but half the CPU of the original Pi for about $20 right now. So the tech has been progressing a little bit.
ESP32-P4
Theres a ton of ebook readers that are using the esp32 as a baseline. and meshtastic. Its a fantastic set of chips and setup.
load more comments
(4 replies)
It was also $35 at release, not $15
You're roughly getting 150x the power for 10x the cost with the current price hike.
You're roughly getting 150x the power for 10x the cost with the current price hike.
Maybe in a vacuum, but in a world with millions or even billions of 'legacy' devices sitting around collecting dust that have equal or better compute power for less cost, these devices don't really make sense.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(3 replies)
Exactly this ^^^. Pretty soon people will only own clients/terminals, we will rent CPU/RAM/GPU/Storage remotely: cloud computing for everyone. The most terrifying part of this is no one seems to care.
I expect us the tech literate / enthusiasts / professionals, advocating about this feel similarly to climate scientists. Screaming into the void as it all goes to shit.
load more comments
(3 replies)
Also when Raspberry Pi started, it was a not-for-profit. In a way, they went through the same transformation as OpenAI (which started not-for-profit too) but slightly earlier.
I thought 64GB was overkill when I got it in my Framework laptop in 2024, but now I'm so glad that I did.
They're going to run into speed bumps soon enough. Capital problems are starting to appear in the AI market over the past month, that's going to get a LOT worse. And no matter what, production in 5 years won't look like it does today. Between competition, newer production tech, and political upheaval, it's going to be a hell of a ride.
load more comments
(12 replies)
$385 for a 16 GB Pi seems crazy.
Cheapest 16GB DDR5 stick I could go buy from the local computer parts store here in Finland is currently 363€, or $406.
I thought you were joking but even in Turkey the cheapest one is 300 dollars. I bought 2x16 for less than 100 couple years ago. Holy shit.
Arduino has a 16GB DDR5 board designed to run local LLMs for $299. And it has 64GB of storage on board. Granted it’s not as flexible as a Pi, but it has DDR5 RAM, and a good bit of storage on board for cheaper.
A 16GB Raspberry pi with DDR4 for $385 is just robbery.
load more comments
(1 replies)
16GB pie is like buying disposable silk toilet paper.
This is reminding me of hikes in property prices. Soon, older people are gonna say shit like
- I paid that much for 32 megabytes 25 years ago
- Why do you need so much RAM? Just use fewer programs
- If you didn’t spend so much money on Steam and Netflix you’d be able to afford it
I started with computers in the cassette tape/5,25 floppy diskette era. RAM was measured in K's, not Megas, not Gigas. A flight simulator (white pixels on green background, yeah) fit in a diskette, 360 KB.
Code was ultra efficient, as RAM was tiny.
With time, and as RAM got proportionally cheaper, code got sloppy, because, hey, we got space.
It's true that programs today are several orders of magnitude more capable, but it is also true that code now is hideously RAM inefficient and bloated.
I'm not saying that the RAMcopalypse isn't real, I run a Ryzen 9 with 64Gb in my desktop, bought before the bubble, but as the Microsoft backpedal to 8 Gigs for W11, and the 8 Gig Macbook show, software should be rethought.
AND RAM prices should go back to normal. That's the win-win
Going back to the 8-bit era muddies the water. Those computers and programs really were so limited. However, comparing what we were doing 20 years ago on 2 or 4GB of ram vs now and you see the sloppness of the software.
load more comments
(3 replies)
Just cut down on the avacado toast.
They currently are. Just take a look into gaming forums discussing graphic carts and RAM prices and there will be so many people writing that they are happy that they have bought their stuff a few years ago. Which really is not helping
Folks these days don’t know how to cut down on their startup programs
load more comments
(2 replies)
Ummm can't you just buy a full size all-in-one motherboard for that? I mean, if you need small size sure, but I originally bought Pi's because they were cheap and small. Now they're just small.
Yep, and unless you really need the pi form factor just get a small n100 mini PC at this point. They are pretty much better in every way and are x86 so there's practically no limit to what you can run on them. I've seen n100 16gb mini PCs for as low as $60 on auction sites because some business will buy tons of them then sell them off for cheap when they upgrade.
Want something faster? Look into business small PCs they are about the size of the small ps2 and will have Intel i3s to i7s. I'd just recommend looking for one that is at least the 8th gen Intel if you care about power efficiency. If using eBay search for used auctions and use a bid sniper that uses the official api
load more comments
(5 replies)
Yeah, and a modern x86 setup will be faster and likely even more efficient under load, with better software support too.
This RPi has more ram than my gaming pc lol
The 16GB was Usless, now it even more useless cause of the software it can run and its raw performance, Even the 8GB one went from reasonable for the performance to too expensive.
A raspi with 16gb of ram WTF!? why not just get a SFF PC instead at that point? Unless you specifically need portability or pin IO, I don't see the appeal of raspi anymore, especially at those prices (almost $400!!!)
last time i bought one was pre-pandemic, not sure exactly how much i paid, but was under $50 new, to hear they are $400 now... i guess i go back under my rock
In 23 I bought my 5 with 8GB for €93, just checked the receipt. I could buy one now for double that. Anyone remembers tech getting cheaper and faster over the years? Pepperidge farm remembers…
I bought several of them when they were 120. But yea at current rate, not really worth it. I will say it's nice running them off of PoE. Keeps my energy bill lower.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(3 replies)
The price increase itself is more than I paid for a new Pi4B a few years back. Amazing.
load more comments
(1 replies)
I feel like RPI lost the plot at some point. Like the entire point of them was a small minimal headless system that runs low end programs and scripts like a dns server or home automation system. I don't really see why something like that needs 16 gb of ram(or a nearly 400$ price point). At the new pricing, why would anyone want to go for a Pi vs just getting a low end pc which contains actual hardware meant for higher end systems.
I guess form factor? I feel like you are just artificially restricting yourself going with the higher end pi's vs just biting the bullet and going with a normal system.
Also I feel I should mention that this was also the same company that decided to link the ram to the firmware meaning you no longer can buy a pi and then solder a new ram on it. They claimed it was to prevent counterfeit sellers putting bad ram in it but, it still puts a bad taste in my mouth. The only way to bypass it is to go back to the 2024-9-23 firmware.
Raspberry pi started as a weird educational side project of a Broadcom engineer, and that enabled them to work with a dirt cheap mass produced SoC for the first iterations. Without broadcom, there would be no raspberry pi. The problem is, it got wildly successful, and moved from side project to actual project that makes money, and education for poor kids wasn't as much of a priority anymore.
The entire point of them was to be a cheap, open, educational computer for kids. Even the hobbyist/homelab use-case lost the plot, let alone the commercial bullshit they're targeting these days!
load more comments
(2 replies)
Honest question, what are people using their 16GB RPis for? What are you running that needs that much RAM?
I got a rock-5-itx in the before times with a decadent 32GB of RAM. It's my home server, and it's currently using 19/31GB:
The headroom is nice, I guess. Sometimes I spin up whole desktop dev environments I can access remotely.
load more comments
(9 replies)
view more: next ›