The price of the 4 GB Raspberry Pi 5 has increased significantly, with its official reseller, Kubii, now selling it for more than 135 euros—up from just over 60 euros previously. This rise is due to a shortage of memory chips, driven by high demand from artificial intelligence companies, which has caused prices for these components to climb. In response to the higher costs, some users have tried modifying their Raspberry Pi devices by replacing the memory chip, a process that involves removing and attaching the chip with specialized tools. However, this is not a task that many users can easily perform. Raspberry Pi has introduced a firmware block that stops the device from starting up if the memory chip is not the correct size or not certified for use with the board. This measure is now in place on both the Raspberry Pi 5 and the Compute Module 5. An engineer at Raspberry Pi explained that the situation is complex, as some individuals might replace a 2 GB memory chip with an 8 GB chip of uncertain quality and then resell the device as an 8 GB unit. This could lead to instability and frequent system crashes. Minimachines, a hardware enthusiast, suggested that displaying a warning message during startup—indicating that the memory had been modified—might have been a better approach than using the firmware block. This would have informed users about the change and potentially prevented the sale of counterfeit or modified boards. Jeff Geerling, a popular hardware YouTuber, pointed out that the firmware update and the implementation of the block were made in 2024, but it was only recently confirmed by PhilE, an engineer at Raspberry Pi and a moderator on the company’s community forums.