When will this stop? The Raspberry Pi 5 16GB SBC now sells for $385

Re:When will this stop? The Raspberry Pi 5 16GB SBC now sell... by OhMeadhbh on Monday November 09, 2026 @01:21PM (#50429373)

Sure... but... the original $35 RasPi is closer to a modern RasPi Zero 1, which looks like it's selling for $45 - $50 on Amazon.

Modern top-of-the-line RasPis seem more like ARM PCs with fast, efficient multi-core CPUs and GigE. I bought a RasPi 500 at the beginning of the year just to see what it was like and it's my new "email and light web browsing" daily-driver. Though yeah, I probably wouldn't have paid $410 for it.

I bought my original RasPi mostly for the I/O. I wanted to blink some lights, drive some servos. And if I wanted to do that again, I would probably buy a Pico or Zero.

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Re:When will this stop? The Raspberry Pi 5 16GB SBC now sell... by oakchris1955 on Monday November 09, 2026 @01:31PM (#50429523)

> Sure... but... the original $35 RasPi is closer to a modern RasPi Zero 1, which looks like it's selling for $45 - $50 on Amazon.

Yeah, because a second-hand 13-year-old computer is gonna last quite a long time.

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Re:When will this stop? The Raspberry Pi 5 16GB SBC now sell... by PorciiVorbesc on Monday November 09, 2026 @01:36PM (#50429584)

A 13 year old computer is gonna use a lot more power than a RPi, that's for sure.

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Re:When will this stop? The Raspberry Pi 5 16GB SBC now sell... by OhMeadhbh on Monday November 09, 2026 @03:43PM (#50431795)

You would think... but if you don't have to run the 13 year old computer at full tilt, then the power difference may be minimal. The LEON SoS SPARC clones I used wound up consuming MUCH less power than modern intel cores.

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Re:When will this stop? The Raspberry Pi 5 16GB SBC now sell... by PorciiVorbesc on Monday November 09, 2026 @05:04PM (#50432916)

>but if you don't have to run the 13 year old computer at full tilt

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Re:When will this stop? The Raspberry Pi 5 16GB SBC now sell... by OhMeadhbh on Monday November 09, 2026 @03:41PM (#50431758)

I have a 60 year old computer attached to my Minuteman III and it's doing fine. A 13 year old computer that still works is a computer that still works. And if it's worked 13 years, then it might last another 13 years (unlike the Intel NUC that died after 18 months.)

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Re:When will this stop? The Raspberry Pi 5 16GB SBC now sell... by nyargh on Monday November 09, 2026 @04:35PM (#50432550)

Your /what/?

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Re:When will this stop? The Raspberry Pi 5 16GB SBC now sell... by booty on Monday November 09, 2026 @04:56PM (#50432830)

When you say, "my" do you mean "my personal property" and by "Minuteman III" are we talking about the missile?

Ignoring all of that for a second, and focusing on the generalized sentiment:

    I have a 60 year old computer attached to my 
    [...] and it's doing fine

Well, I'm a huge fan of that, but that seems like a fixed-purpose system. What a lot of people want from personal computers is the flexibility of doing fun and new things: new software, games, whatever.

Even "browsing the web" is (highly unfortunately) not a fixed purpose, as web standards evolve and pages (highly unfortunately) get heavier and more JS-dependent.

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Re:When will this stop? The Raspberry Pi 5 16GB SBC now sell... by Aurornis on Monday November 09, 2026 @01:43PM (#50429709)

> Sure... but... the original $35 RasPi is closer to a modern RasPi Zero 1, which looks like it's selling for $45 - $50 on Amazon.

You want the Pi Zero 2 W, which is under $20 when it's in stock.

You also need to buy somewhere other than Amazon, which is where sellers go to unload their inventory at exorbitant prices between restocks.

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Re:When will this stop? The Raspberry Pi 5 16GB SBC now sell... by OhMeadhbh on Monday November 09, 2026 @03:34PM (#50431663)

Absolutely. Amazon isn't the go-to place to pick up electronics. I think I picked it because prices there are probably the highest you'll reasonably find for Pi stuff. Though they often have availability when everyone else is out of stock (likely because they have a bit more mark up than most everyone else.)

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