The Pi Shortage Pricing Changes the Equation:
If the Raspberry Pi was consistently in stock and selling for the MSRP, the pricing for the Raspberry Pi 4 boards would range from $35 for the base 1GB model up to $75 for the 8GB model.
That sweet $35 price point is one of the best things about the Raspberry Pi and exactly why the Pi has become the foundation of so many projects. We love the Pi, and over the years, we've written lots of tutorials about it. I've used Pi boards for media centers, home servers, hobby projects, you name it. So it's safe to say we're big fans.
But shortages that started in 2020 and remain ongoing have changed the landscape. You can't get your hands on a Pi board for $35 right now (and you won't be able to for the foreseeable future). Now your best bet to get a Pi is to shop on auction sites like eBay—but instead of paying $35-70, you're paying $125 to $175. In many instances, that's just for the bare board with no case, storage, or power supply.
And at those price points, the "Wow, I'm getting a lot of microcomputer for $35!" excitement goes right out the window, and you should consider spending the money on something else instead. Enter the Intel NUC. Let's take a closer look.
The author makes the case that a used NUC is more capable, and upgradable, and costs what you'd pay for a new Pi. Are there any options out there near the original $35 price point, or are we looking at +$100 for the foreseeable future?
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Sunday October 09 2022, @04:33AM (11 children)
Even some of the older Intel chips you see on eBay (e.g. Skylake i5-6500T) will handle video better than the Pi.
The Pi Model B form factor (85.6 mm × 56.5 mm) is becoming too small as more I/O is demanded. Pi-like devices (RK3588) should move up to ~49% larger Pico-ITX (100 mm × 72 mm), and we should see more Mini-ITX (170 mm × 170 mm) systems with x86 APUs.
Intel could be about to launch 8-core Atom chips, the i3-N300 and i3-N305 [techpowerup.com]. Those will stomp every previous Atom chip and even some of the older "big" quad-cores in these used NUCs/mini-PCs.
Supply will meet demand eventually, just like we saw in the GPU market. A Pi5 probably isn't that far away either. They can do a minor refresh, 4x Cortex-A75 on 28nm, or something more impressive if they can afford a node shrink.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Booga1 on Sunday October 09 2022, @04:44AM (10 children)
I have a few RPi 3s, and a RPi 4. The RPi 4 is good enough for a desktop replacement for casual livingroom usage, but I wouldn't pay scalper's prices for one. At this point I'd go for either a Zero2W or just wait for the Rpi 5 to be announced.
Though, I am a little shocked demand is still high enough to outstrip production. I would have expected the hobby market to be saturated by now.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by canopic jug on Sunday October 09 2022, @04:48AM (4 children)
They left the hobby market behind a long time ago. There are some used in education these days but if I understand correctly the main usage is now in industry, especially when looking at the CM3 or CM4
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Sunday October 09 2022, @08:55AM (3 children)
Well, that's kinda unlikely because the only ones that are routinely available at non-scalper prices (read: From genuine distributors) are the CM4s.
(Score: 3, Informative) by canopic jug on Sunday October 09 2022, @09:11AM (2 children)
See the link in the comment below from takyon about Eben Upton's statement about availability and priorities [soylentnews.org]. Hobbyists are at the end of the queue and they are doing what they can to keep industry supplied. CM3 and CM4 are a key part of that. Demand has increased greatly despite producing around half a million units a month [makeuseof.com]. Anyone who has tried to get a normal Raspberry Pi in the last year and a half has noticed that they are really hard to get [jeffgeerling.com]. I for one am unwilling to pay scalpers and find scalping unacceptable especially since it defeats the Foundation's stated goal in regards to price. I don't have a good solution to offer in regards to prosecuting the scalpers though. However if one expands the search to include competitors, then things like the Rock Pi are sometimes more available.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Opportunist on Sunday October 09 2022, @02:40PM
I'd have a good solution, but my lawyer said that it's illegal to shoot them on sight. He couldn't provide a good reason why, though.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday October 10 2022, @02:17PM
Scalping a product and selling it on e-bay isn't a criminal offense and it shouldn't be. The unfortunate issue here is that this niche market provider is being overwhelmed by demand. Not from their original target audience, but by manufacturers that are having a hard time getting high tech equipment due to shortages. The producers of the Raspberry Pi are doing everything they can do keep up with the demand. Which is good, but they can't take a huge hit, unlike the likes of Intel/AMD. Even then, the likes of Nvidia/AMD/Intel can't ramp up supply at the drop of a hat. This is a weird places we've arrived at. As long as there's no collusion between manufacturer's, etc. (actual illegal things.) Then, there's no actual problem.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 5, Insightful) by takyon on Sunday October 09 2022, @05:40AM (3 children)
I'm ready to ditch ARM junk and go back to x86. The N305/N300 look like a great release to do that, but I bet prices will be high since it looks like they will be given "Core" branding while the quad-cores will just be named along the lines of "Intel Processor N200". I would want a full system to be closer to $150, but it could be more like $300. If they absolutely churn out those chips and dump them onto OEMs, maybe we'll see some cheap Acer Aspire XCs with them.
SBC ARM chips are slow, run old FrankenLinux and outsource development of compatible operating systems to "the community", and/or have proprietary GPU problems.
Zero2W is cute but they couldn't make it to 1 GB of RAM despite seemingly wanting to [raspberrypi.com]. 2 GB would be the target to hit to offer a reasonable amount (good enough OR more than enough) for desktop, emulation, and media (LibreELEC). Radxa managed to get 4 GB of RAM into their competitor, and use USB-C instead of microUSB, micro-HDMI instead of mini-HDMI. Theoretically, you could use only USB-C for everything (power, video using DisplayPort or HDMI alt modes, data) and fit 3-4 ports on the Zero form factor. So I hope RPi breaks case compatibility and does that next time around (years from now).
Here are some recent articles about the supply issues:
Waiting for Raspberry Pi: Eben Upton talks supply constraints and demand shock [techcrunch.com]
Still can’t buy a Raspberry Pi board? Things aren’t getting better any time soon [arstechnica.com]
So in summary, there are still various random component shortages, COVID lockdown problems in China, business customers are given absolute priority over hobbyists with products like Compute Module 4, and other miscellaneous chaos. Future products are delayed because 40% of engineering effort is being spent on qualifying component alternatives. Maybe the situation will be resolved by Q2 2023. Other SBC makers like Hardkernel have had similar problems to RPi, if not worse.
I've seen some grumbling about businesses getting priority over hobbyists, but that's just the way it has to be. Businesses want stability, will stick with a supplier for years, and buy older products at higher margins when they want exact replacements. Hobbyists/enthusiasts can be absolutely whipped until they are red in the face and swearing off the market forever, but will always slink back for more (see the GPU crisis).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday October 09 2022, @12:48PM (2 children)
NUC and Pi are different animals. I have a NUC driving the living room TV because it handles Netflix, YouTube (webcam streaming like the Cornell bird feeders) and miscellaneous unplanned things better than the Pi.
I have two Pis with Kodi installed on other screens because the limited use case of just playing recorded media is handled well enough by a Pi4 and even a Pi2W which Bluetooth connects to a pair of speakers and runs off of a USB power pack, including a 15" screen for about 6-8 hours on a charge.
There are another couple of Pis around the house, one is a dedicated jukebox music player controlled via WiFi web server interface, another is an audio player for sound clips for motion detection events on ZoneMinder (ZoneMinder obviously? runs on an Intel box).
Then for low power (solar/battery) apps there are a couple of Pi Pico Ws in the yard. They consume about 45mA at 3.3v running a continuously available web server that can trigger ultrasonics to "communicate" with the neighbors' dogs when we are annoyed by their barking. Solar power is very nice for the lack of wires out by the fence.
Different tools for different use cases, you can run a general purpose desktop on a Pi 4, buy why would you?
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday October 09 2022, @01:07PM (1 child)
https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-4-model-b/ [raspberrypi.com]
RPi's own marketing portrays the RPi 4 as a desktop. It's the reason for dual display outputs, and the main reason for having 4-8 GB RAM options.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday October 09 2022, @03:34PM
It can do that. Having had a Pi4 8GB serve as a desktop computer for 2 years in our house, all in all I'd rather have an Intel core i3, or preferably i5 for that use case, preferably gen 7 or later, I consider Skylake to be cursed and earlier generations too weak.
The annoyances of an ARM based desktop are few and far between, but they still exist. Also, heavy loads require fan cooling on a Pi4, and the fan solution we had on our Pi was both typical, and super cheesy.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday October 09 2022, @05:04PM
As long as mfgrs are willing to make them for $30 with 100% profit margins while people will pay $150 on Amazon "because of the chip shortage" there will be infinite scalpers as middlemen.
Eventually the entire market will die because there's nobody using them anymore, too expensive; I can't imagine using a Pi in 2022 when there's infinite nearly free ESP32 out there, and for the Arduino LED-blinking-crowd using Micro/Circuit-Python is a huge upgrade.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by driverless on Sunday October 09 2022, @08:42AM (4 children)
Get an Odroid or Orange Pi or similar, something designed by qualified EEs rather than My First ARM Project, and you'll both avoid the comedy of errors that has been the Pi hardware over the years as well as having a far more capable device in roughly the same form factor.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Sunday October 09 2022, @09:00AM (1 child)
The "roughly the same factor" part is the tricky one here. A lot of people want those RPis not because they want to create something on their own but because they want to put it into existing projects that the original creator of the project designed around a RPi.
(Score: 3, Informative) by driverless on Sunday October 09 2022, @09:08AM
Yup, that's the Pi curse. I've been running software like Pihole on an Odroid just fine, but there's some stuff that really is so Pi-specific (e.g. Piaware) that, in those cases, you can only use an actual Pi.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Sunday October 09 2022, @05:07PM (1 child)
Was it the pi 3 or pi 4 that's USB powered but drew too much current to run off most real world USB chargers? That was hilarious.
The main problem with the competitors is they don't seem to have a usable installation process and what OS they have seem unsupported after someone initially made it boot. At least with the pi there's a chance if a security hole is discovered next week it'll be patched by someone and apt-get update apt-get dist-upgrade will work. The 4th party clones are more like Android phones, if it boots it ships and there's zero support or patches after it ships.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday October 10 2022, @02:33PM
There was some brouhaha about the power issues with the first release of the Pi4.
This seems to be the issue: https://hackaday.com/2019/07/16/exploring-the-raspberry-pi-4-usb-c-issue-in-depth/ [hackaday.com]
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Sunday October 09 2022, @09:38AM (14 children)
Or maybe an old tablet? Or an old laptop?
While I admit there's plenty of better and cheaper options than the RasPi in the SBC space, I've fairly certain MiniPCs like the NUCs don't fall into the same power-budget and form-factor as the RasPi.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday October 09 2022, @10:18AM (12 children)
A used NUC from eBay is someone's 2nd hand PC. Whether the price/performance is acceptable compared to larger PCs or what you have lying around is something for the buyer to figure out. They are larger and use more power than a Pi, but not much for a desktop. TFA makes the argument that the higher power consumption is not a big deal, and that is almost always true for desktop usage.
"NUC" is a broad Intel marketing term that doesn't mean a lot other than small form factor; for example, NUC 12 Extreme supports 12-inch dual-slot graphics cards.
x86 has gone all the way down to Pi and stick form factors, especially using the Cherry Trail Atom CPUs from 2015-2016 [wikipedia.org], but IDK if it is worth it.
https://linuxgizmos.com/raspberry-pi-clone-sports-1-84ghz-intel-cherry-trail-processor/ [linuxgizmos.com]
https://liliputing.com/pick-cherry-trail-pc-stick-asus-69-today/ [liliputing.com]
Then there's "palm-sized" like the GMK NucBox K1 and Chuwi LarkBox:
https://www.notebookcheck.net/GMK-NucBox-K1-vs-Chuwi-LarkBox-Mini-PC-Review-Two-Birds-of-a-Feather.493456.0.html [notebookcheck.net]
Pico-ITX (100 mm × 72 mm) and NUC default (roughly 100 mm × 100 mm) are better board sizes IMO that can allow the use of M.2 storage, SO-DIMMs, etc.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday October 09 2022, @12:56PM (6 children)
I tried an Intel stick PC back in the 2015 timeframe. Too underpowered compute wise and too hot running for my taste.
The Pi4 is teetering on the edge of too hot running for passive cooling as well, and it's on the bottom end of "usable" as a general purpose desktop.
It all depends on use cases.
Most of my Pi projects attempt to minimize development time and effort, and the Pi support community is a strong asset in that area, usually more than making up for their design wrinkles.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday October 09 2022, @04:27PM (5 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday October 09 2022, @05:45PM (1 child)
Pis have been in short supply for a few years now, even while they produce 400,000 per month. If they keep up this availability drought for much longer they are going to kill off their grassroots community.
Ironically, our business avoided RasPi back in the 2015 era because they were "too unreliable for future availability" and today apparently it's all the businesses who did rely on Pi who are getting the product first, not to mention that RasPi products have proven to have better long term availability than much of the alternatives, if you are a business user.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 4, Interesting) by FatPhil on Sunday October 09 2022, @10:58PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday October 09 2022, @06:21PM (2 children)
Pi400 had the latest "C0" silicon revision with improved clock gating [raspberrypi.com]. It also has a massive aluminum heatsink nearly the size of the keyboard which is about as good as it gets for passive cooling.
I think the revision is providing a significant improvement, which explains why the Pi400 could outperform decent cases for the Pi4 while running at its higher default of 1.8 GHz (today, most Pi4s running Raspberry Pi OS Bullseye default to 1.8 GHz [raspberrypi.com]).
https://tutorial.cytron.io/2020/11/02/raspberry-pi-400-thermal-performance/ [cytron.io]
"C0" has showed up in newer Pi4 Model Bs, so if you see any testing which compares it to "B0" using the same cooling solution, that might be informative. Although the silicon lottery can affect such a comparison.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday October 10 2022, @02:38PM (1 child)
Generally I get a RaspberryPi to tinker with. Just to see how much I can do with such little power. The low power consumption of the raspberry pi makes for some interesting possibilities. Sure, you could get a consumer tablet, but you can't tinker with it. And older computers are essentially extra space heaters for your room.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday October 10 2022, @03:13PM
RPi's main competitor in the ARM SBC space is now the Rockchip RK3588, made on Samsung's "8nm" process with more efficient ARM IP. That has its own problems as usual but will probably age well due to having a Mali GPU, and a powerful one at that.
I'm wondering if RPi will skip down to "12/14/16nm" instead of sticking on 28nm for a Pi 5. Huge amounts of cash are being pumped into the company, and if they wait long enough those nodes will become "budget". But they stuck on 40nm for a long time so moving off 28nm in one generation would be a surprise.
Wow, I hate Broadcom's website.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Disagree) by RamiK on Sunday October 09 2022, @05:29PM (4 children)
I typed "normal PC" originally but since I had MiniPC later (i.e. the pico-atx, NUC form factor) I figured it's redundant and cut it out. I guess I was wrong.
RasPis idles at 2.9 w while an x86 is lucky to sleep at twice that let idling at ~8-15 w. Then there's the question of cooling and size as well as io pins... They're just not the same thing.
They don't run fast enough passive at least not for the price compared to available SBCs and streamers.
M2 storage sleeps at 2w and idles at 3.5 and works at 5 w while an SD card draws 1 w on max.
Do note all these power usage figures aren't just to show why the embedded qualities of SBCs make the comparison inappropriate. They're there to point out minipcs come with 3-4 higher utility bills which typically tilts the scales in favor of ARM solutions even when considering 2nd hand NUCs.
All-in-all, MiniPCs have a very specific niche that doesn't overlap with SBCs like the RasPi in both performance and cost-of-ownership.
compiling...
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09 2022, @06:48PM (1 child)
They don't claim it is the same thing. They claim it is not a big deal. And I agree, depending on your use case. I use Lenovo M700 and M910q and they idle ~10w but have 4-8x more performance than an pi4b depending on benchmark.
Depends on your use case. I want a small server that's quiet and doesn't use a ton of power. NUC or SBC both fit that criteria. If your ONLY criteria is power usage, then sure, stick with ARM-based SBC. If performance (or availability) factors in, then there are other options to consider.
10w idle for a NUC at my power rate is $0.82 per month. I could save a whole 60 cents per month and have 5x lower or worse performance? No thanks. I spend more on coffee in a week than I would spend to power a NUC at idle for a YEAR. This is why all my rpi sit in a drawer now.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Sunday October 09 2022, @08:04PM
California rates $0.31/kWh so I guess millage may vary applies here.
compiling...
(Score: 1) by Atominator on Tuesday October 11 2022, @05:13AM (1 child)
Your info is quite a but outdated. All but the highest end Intel NUCs sleep in the 3W range and idle in the 5W.
Today's m.2s can sleep sub 10mW and idle at 30mW.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday October 11 2022, @11:18AM
From my tests, even current NUCs stay in S3 and don't fall into S5 if connected to HDMI with CEC. But there's reddit discussions suggesting there's a lot of bugs in that space so maybe some configurations work better than others: https://www.reddit.com/r/intelnuc/comments/scsp8o/nuc11_tiger_canyon_hdmi_cec_powering_tv_on_while/ [reddit.com]
Not all new NUCs support S0 Modern and not all m2 actually idles or even sleeps on anything out of s4/s5. It's a common issue with laptops where people upgrade their storage only to realize "battery life" dropped and they end up disabling Fast Startup and adjusting the sleep timers to compensate... Admittedly though, things are getting better nowadays and you can even find many desktop configurations that can sleep properly which was very rare just 3 years ago.
Regardless, we're talking about 2nd hand NUCs and those still suffer from many of those issues.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday October 09 2022, @05:10PM
They were probably discarded thus "old" because the battery capacity was like 10% of new so they're entering the red-giant expansion phase where the battery swells up right before the battery pops and goes supernova.
Also for better or worse the Pi has GPIO and I2C and SPI pins hanging out whereas consumer goods have roughly zero I/O or its buried inside an un-openable laser welded case.
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Sunday October 09 2022, @05:17PM
If you're just running Python scripts and stuff, the $10 replacement for the $35/$150 pi ecosystem is the nRF52840 (for bluetooth) and the mid-range ESP32 chips (for wifi).
If you want to run C then you're PROBABLY best off with midrange ESP32.
The "fun" part about ESP32 series is just like everything else, if it sells, carazay shit gets sold under the brand name, so there's RISC-V chips being sold as one of the ESP32 newer models. Older original ESP32 are not powerful enough and are often enough unsupported (original ESP32 no longer works with CircuitPython also MicroPython supports it ... for now...). Newest ESP32 are not supported by anything.
Note that anything that has an arduino pinout can have a ESP8266 wifi "modem" slapped on it where the ESP8266 acts like a wifi modem complete with AT command sequences, so "anything" that has an arduino pinout now has wifi.
If you like C there's always MBED/OS and Zephyr RTOS, both free.