So, my stupid ass was looking at scalper prices at the inception of this thread over lunch. Time to make some edits.
But, there’s still a discussion to be had here. With the RPi4 - and the popular SBC supply chain in general - blinked out of existence, what exactly do we recommend now to fill in the SBC hole?
So I bet this one’s gonna turn into a dumpster fire, but I’m curious about the community’s take on it.
I think anyone that’s seen me post in the Lounge about it knows where I stand on the Raspberry Pi these days. I don’t like it, for the price they’re at these days. The base model RPi4 4 with 1GB of LPDDR4 goes for $120, 4GB model for $154 right now.
Or there’s a whole pile of other hardware out there, mostly enterprise surplus/off-lease, that would be perfect for someone to mess around with.
What reasons are there for the RPi 4 being so universally recommended for people that want to start getting into learning about admin stuff? What reason specifically are you guys recommending them over getting a small used system like above that could be modified/expanded for different purposes like dropping in a ConnectX card/etc?
Those are genuine questions, I’m not into the RPi ecosystem so maybe I’m missing something here. Anyone care to share their thoughts? I don’t get it. The same goes for almost all of these derivative SBCs that have popped up in the market Raspberry Pi made for them… they almost universally start at $100 up to like $300+, and it just makes less and less sense to me as the price keeps going up.
Am a board designer so I get that… but the RPi4 isn’t small because of more advanced processes etc, it’s small because it just doesn’t have the hardware to do much. The RPi4 is a 6-layer PWB with an ARM SoC on it, neither of which are anything new, and some mundane surface mount packages… it’s not exotic hardware. If we were talking an entire server platform packed onto that board with a 32-layer stackup using blind vias/via-in-pad stuff, then maybe, but there’s no bleeding edge technology on the thing.
Supply chain constraints driving up the cost of the SoC because of low volumes makes sense to me, but making sense doesn’t make the price acceptable.
So would I. $35-45 is a reasonable price for what it is. It just pains me to see them still being recommended so much for $130+, sometimes even more when you factor in international price differences/etc.
I’m not really making the argument, I’m just saying that’s likely the argument to be used by them. I just don’t see what other argument they’d really have.
The Rasp Pi is an excellent hobby computer for a reasonable cost. If you think it’s too expensive, that’s fine. There’s lots of alternates out there. $150 for a fully functional Linux computer is just fine by me and their goals are worthy of my support.
Yeah you’ve got me there, I didn’t catch the Sold By wasn’t the same as Ships From Amazon. :feelsbad: I said I was open to feedback here lol… that makes a little more sense to me, although now I’m a bit worried about anyone that does defend it against my little rant there.
I guess the thread is kinda moot then since my argument is that it makes sense at the original price point, the real problem is that they just don’t exist anymore. It looks like Farnell is reporting that they won’t be back in stock until April 2023 10/23/23, although I’m guessing that’s directly from them and distributors will at least have first call on inventory a little earlier.
Alright then, how about alternatives? I don’t see any single board computers in stock. It looks like you can still get the Orange Pi knockoff on AliExpress but I don’t see anything from any of the big names I know of.
What would you recommend to people that they can get their hands on right now?
Before the now artificial chip shortage it was fairly inexpensive for what it is, got progressively more powerful to the point that a Pi 4 is entirely capable of handling a 1 or 2 person self hosting platform, it’s small in size, heat production and power requirements, has lots of GPIO ports to experiment with, it’s easy to get going or re-start from scratch with (reformat a micro SD and you’re good to go) and infinite software support everywhere due to it’s popularity.
Now, for the same price, it’s possible to buy a waay more powerful x86 machine. But it’s still not as efficient and small as a Raspberry Pi.
And RPi’s are not special, as you noted, but the name has cache (like Intel) while the board is kind of a middle road- not great at anything, but versatile?
In fact, other products beat it in a lot of ways, each iteration of RPi having some hack/drawback, like the gigabit port not being gigabit, or the messed up charging port or whatever.
But at retail, the devices are a great price. The further from retail one gets, the worse the deal is.
In fact, the used enterprise gear was good at retail when launched, but arguably Better at current prices, because they are so much lower?
None of them have the documentation and third party support the pi has, which if you’re starting out with the small systems is worth the small number of dollars.
The funny thing is a lot of sbc went either out of stock or nonexistent I was looking picking up a ASRock sbc Intel Celeron no can’t find it anywhere or a great price over MSRP
The ODROID board MSRPs are getting back up to what caused my original complaint with pricing, and they’re in a whole different market segment competing with high volume embedded ITX boards with PCIe/etc for the same price.
Honestly if you going Sbc sever I would go with Rock64 pro it has a pcie slot. Not a lot of other boards do but you have to use their case or 3d print adapters for a reg case.
Time to make some edits.