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Comment by lunfard000 | Hacker News Reader

Raspberry is not really cheap anymore. The start package (rp4 4gb + charger + sd + ethernet/hdmi cables) is 100 euros in my country.

Meanwhile you can get a GK3V mini pc on Aliexpress with a j4125, 8gb LPDDR4 and 256GB SSD for 180 euros, which probably has 3x-4x the performance of the pi.

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The kits are always going to be marked up—and even more so today, since it's so hard to find individual Pis in stock anywhere.

Here in the US, the only way for many people to get a Pi 4 is in a kit that's at least $100 (sometimes scalped and marked up to $150-200 on Amazon or eBay). Until about 3 months ago, though, I could reliably find a model I wanted from Micro Center or one of the official Pi online resellers for $35-75 (list price).

Any reason why this is the case? Chip shortages? Backing up of imports?

I just noticed this the other day when looking to get a Pi 4 as a gift for my brother. It's crazy to think just a year or two ago I bought two at normal price, and now one can't find any individual boards anywhere really

Mostly the chip shortages—Raspberry Pi has pulled out all the stops but couldn't come anywhere close to meeting demand over 2021. And they even decided to focus production only on the BCM2711-based devices for the latter part of this year.

They posted a blog post with some detail behind what's going on: https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/supply-chain-shortages-and-...

I’ve found this to be the case for most of the time Raspberry Pis have been around. The cost proposition has always relied on using other components people have “lying around”, like the power adapter, SD card, etc. However as the power quality requirements have gone up for each Pi release, old AC adapters can’t be used anymore, SD cards need to be better quality to handle the writes, and you want a case for it, etc. From my perspective you’ve always been looking at close to $100 to get everything you need for it to be useful.

That's quite a markup you're experiencing. A conversion based on US prices makes it seem like you should be able to get that stuff for a little more than sixty Euros. If you can get it at all: availability is tough right now all over, I assume.

Is that price difference about shipping costs or VAT or what?

> GK3V mini pc

That is a very cool looking thing, but targeting a different use case, I would think.

idk, maybe you get it a bit cheaper if you look around. This is from a offical store though: https://www.raspberrystore.nl/PrestaShop/complete-sets/245-r...

It's the rest of the kit that makes it expensive.

If you don't need all the parts, then you can shave some off.

https://www.kiwi-electronics.nl/nl/merk-raspberry-pi

I mean, at the very least you always need a charger and a sd card, the barebone price is kinda misleading

Not everyone has to buy that separately. For example, I have plenty of sd cards laying around. For the charger you are probably right due to the rpi not working with every usbc adapter, but that's 10 euros.

You selected the 4GB one, but if you select the 2GB or 1GB version things get cheaper too. I think they are great value for a very reasonable price.

I'd be interested if anyone can comment on commercial bulk procurement of Pis. Any idea what the volume discounts are? And also would be interesting to know what the supply has been like for the past year(s) for commercial customers.

I've heard anecdotally that most Pis sold are used in industry, so wouldn't be surprised if they're being prioritized.

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