RAM Costs Have Already Come for the Beloved Raspberry Pi

Sorry, Raspberry Pi fans, the RAM price debacle has now come to roost for the beloved brand that makes miniature computers. As is always the case with supply chain constraints, major global economic disruptions will inevitably hurt the smallest companies first. And, yet again, you can thank the ballooning demands of AI for the price hikes.

The company, which makes low-cost single-board computers used in a variety of computer builds and hacks, is bumping up the cost of its Raspberry Pi 4 and 5. Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton says that the move is to offset “the recent unprecedented rise in the cost of LPDDR4 memory.†How much more each model costs depends on the size of each computer’s RAM. A 4GB Raspberry Pi 4 will cost $60, $5 more than before. An 8GB model will go up by $10, from $75 to $85.

The top-end Raspberry Pi 5 with 16GB of LPDDR4 RAM will demand $145, up $25 from before the price hike. Upton said his company would start “unwinding†these new costs once the pressure on memory prices finally dissipates. When that could happen is anyone’s guess, but analysts have warned we may not see any relief until 2027 at the earliest. Digitimes reported, based on comments from memory maker TeamGroup, that the memory supply will only get worse going into 2026.

The higher costs are in addition to price hikes of Raspberry Pi’s 4GB and 8GB compute modules. The company’s 16GB variant of its Compute Module 5 now starts at $140. Meanwhile, a new Raspberry Pi 5 with only 1GB of RAM will now cost $45, which may be good news for tinkerers constructing small-scale DIY projects. However, even something as small as a cyberdeck—old-school, mobile computers meant to ape mid-80s cyberpunk designs—will still want more RAM for the sake of today’s internet browsers.

Raspberry Pi is still small enough that price hikes could hurt sales. Major tech firms are building AI data centers all over the U.S. and across the world, and these centers are demanding huge amounts of high-bandwidth memory. DRAM (dynamic random access memory) makers are refocusing their production for AI data centers, which are willing to pay much more for these computing components than the consumer-focused brands.

Major PC component makers, like TeamGroup and Corsair, have both made public statements that contract prices for DRAM and NAND (the major type of today’s flash storage) have doubled in recent months. That has led to RAM prices blowing through the roof. Some RAM prices have increased by 500%.

Price Changes Coming December 7th 2025, Due To Market Conditions ðŸ””â€¼ï¸ pic.twitter.com/et0HADhc08

— CyberPowerPC (@CYBERPOWERPC) November 25, 2025

CyberPowerPC, a major prebuilt PC maker, announced late last month it plans to adjust prices of all its desktop towers starting on Dec. 7. The PC maker added that SSD (solid state drive) storage prices have increased by 100%, but that “price increases will be temporary.†Nothing is off the table, and prices will get far worse before they get better, but we’ve only seen the start of the memory crunch. Expect GPUs, which rely on VRAM, and CPUs to also get more expensive. UK-based computer retailer Overclockers UK told PC Gamer the price of graphics cards may increase late in this year, but it will get worse in 2026.

From the smallest to the high-end consumer-level computer, no price is safe.