Why Buy a Raspberry Pi?

First off, I need to point out that this post is not intended to be a hit piece on the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Instead, it is simply a discussion of the current economic realities facing us which has been brought on by the demand for computer memory. And so to begin...

Not that long ago, starting a new Pi-Plates design meant a quick drive to my nearby MicroCenter to pick up a couple of Raspberry Pi 5 boards, a pair of heatsinks, microSD cards, and the official 5V power supplies. But as most people are aware by now, massive investment in AI has created a RAM shortage — and prices have skyrocketed. Raspberry Pi single-board computers have not been immune. The table below shows each price jump since May 2025:

These numbers sting a little more when you remember that the original Raspberry Pi launched at $35. A sticker I still have on my laptop is a bittersweet reminder of that era:

To address this, we made a simple assumption: everyone who uses a Raspberry Pi also has some kind of PC on their desk or in their lab. So we developed a low-cost plate that replaces the RPi entirely, letting you control Pi-Plates hardware through a USB port on your computer. We call it the BRIDGEplate. It works with Windows, Linux, and macOS, and supports Python programming, our PIPLATElogger software, and even LabVIEW (on Windows for now). If you've already written Python code for our products on a Raspberry Pi, the transition to BRIDGEplate will be nearly seamless.

During development, we needed to get our hands on a Mac and a small Windows 11 PC with a clean install — we already had a Linux Mint machine. So we went shopping on Amazon and eBay.

From Amazon, we picked up a compact NUC-form-factor PC with an Intel N95 CPU, 8GB of DDR4 RAM, and a 256GB SSD, on sale for $229. It's not going to run 4K games at 144fps, but it was perfect for our needs (the current price is $249).

From eBay, we found a refurbished Mac Mini from Ingram Micro for $185 — an i7 with 32GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. Fast enough for everything we needed to develop and test our software:

So why share all these details? Because when the 8GB and 16GB RPi 5 prices jumped to $175 and $305, we found ourselves asking: why buy a high-end Raspberry Pi when you can get a refurbished PC — with a 256GB SSD, a case, and a power supply — for the same amount or less?

Of course, the one real downside is size. These mini PCs are small, but they're still considerably larger than an RPi and won't mount to a DIN rail in an industrial enclosure.

If you're curious, head to eBay and search for a "Lenovo ThinkCentre" as an example. While writing this, I spotted a ThinkCentre M910x with the following specs :

CPU : INTEL CORE i5-7500 @ 3.40GHz

RAM : 1 x 8GB DDR4 RAM ( 1 MORE RAM SLOT AVAILABLE )

SSD : 256GB NVMe INSTALLED

OS: Windows 11 Home

Price: $135

That's $40 less than an 8GB RPi 5 — before you've added a case, a power supply, or a microSD card. I almost bid on it just for the price value alone!

In summary, if seeing the cost of a new Raspberry Pi 5 is making your eyes water, consider purchasing a refurbished PC - they are a great value for the money.

That’s all for now - I hope everyone’s summer is off to a good start!