The humble Raspberry Pi, the perennial leader of the low-power, single-board computing (SBC) world, has hit a price parity with its rival, the Intel N100-based mini PCs. An investigation by Jeff Geerling, which we’ve independently confirmed, shows that pricing for Pi’s is now within just a few cents with a similarly configured board from brands like GMKTec. Why does this matter? Hobbyists and homelab builders had a great 2024 / 2025 which saw low prices for their DIY setups.
If you’ve been keeping a close eye on the PC hardware market of late, you’ll have noticed prices only going one way: upward. Flash memory costs, along with tariff uncertainties last year, have forced mini PC manufacturers and retailers to raise prices across the board. As Geerling explains, an explosion in homelab builds using $100-150 mini PCs made those same PCs a better, or certainly cheaper, alternative to current-gen Raspberry Pi 5s which when bundled up with NVMe HATs, NVMe drives, cases etc, retailed for over $200 last year.
