Andrew Cunningham
We’re months past the Raspberry Pi shortage, and the board is finally widely available at its suggested retail price on most platforms with no wait times or size limitations. One sign that the Pi Foundation is more optimistic about the stock’s position: the launch New 2GB configuration of Raspberry Pi 5Available starting today for $50. That’s $10 less than the 4GB configuration and $30 less than the 8GB version of the board.
Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton writes that the 2GB version of the board includes a revised version of the Broadcom BCM2712C1 SoC, which is slightly cheaper to manufacture. Upton says the BCM2712C1’s D0 stepping eliminates some “dark silicon” built-in functions that don’t use the Pi but still take up space on the silicon die and increase the cost of the chip.
“From a Raspberry Pi user’s point of view, [the chip] Functionally identical to its predecessor: the same fast quad-core processor; Same multimedia capabilities; “It’s the same PCI Express bus that proved to be one of the most exciting features of the Raspberry Pi 5 platform,” Upton writes. This, combined with the savings from halving the memory capacity, allowed us to take $10 off the cost of the finished product.”
At $50, the price tag is just north of the basic $35 price that the bag has started at for years. The Pi 4 sold a 1GB model for $35, and a $35 2GB model was available briefly in 2020, but widespread shortages and supply chain issues led to a “temporary” price increase in late 2021. This writing is still in place. At least the 2GB Pi 5 costs $5 more than the 2GB version of the Pi 4, which is still in stock at several retailers for $45.
While you may prefer the full 8GB Raspberry Pi if you want to use one as a daily desktop PC, there are plenty of Pi use cases that benefit from its extra speed and connectivity options without needing more RAM. Retro emulation boxes aren’t necessarily RAM-hungry, but can benefit from the Pi 5’s extra CPU and GPU speed, and many types of lightweight server applications (Wireguard, Homebridge, Pi-hole, to name a few) can benefit from a faster Wi. Improved support for -Fi and Ethernet and reliable NVMe storage.
For $10 more, we’ll point many more to the more flexible and future-proof 4GB version. All the Pi boards sitting around my house have had multiple lives at this point, picking up new tasks as my needs have changed, and new Pi boards have come out—if your Pi project doesn’t benefit from more RAM today, it probably will. Pie plan for tomorrow.
The 2GB is available to order at outlets like Pi5 Byshop And Connaught It should filter down to other bag retailers soon.
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