There were sellers buying the smallest RAM units, changing the RAM chips, and then reselling them as the higher RAM SKUs. The sellers who do this don’t always care to use good RAM chips and may even use QA reject parts. When the unit doesn’t work correctly, the anger and RMA requests are directed back at the Raspberry Pi foundation.
The user friendly option would be to print the amount of RAM in very large letters on the PCB.
There happens to be a lot of suitable surface on the PCB to the right of the text "Raspberry Pi 5" on the PCB anyway (§). Right now the amount of RAM is hard to read and easy to modify (move a little tiny SMD resistor).
Drawback: You need different silkscreens for different amounts of RAM.
Btw, if you're worried about RAM-swapped units you can already verify them as described at <a href="https://geekworm.com/blogs/news/prevent-ram-swapped-raspberry-pi-5-how-to-verify-factory-ram-size" rel="nofollow">https://geekworm.com/blogs/news/prevent-ram-swapped-raspberr...
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(§) as can be seen here <a href="https://pip-assets.raspberrypi.com/categories/1129-pcn/documents/RP-006041-PC-2-PCN%20Raspberry%20Pi%205B%20Rev%204.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://pip-assets.raspberrypi.com/categories/1129-pcn/docum...
Embedding it on the board won't work. Fraudsters are really good at doctoring chip and board makings nowadays, even below the solder mask. It's hard to imagine as a westerner, but the necessary equipment to do that kind of thing is trivially available in most of east Asia.
On-chip fuses would be a good solution. Which, of course, is already what they're using to lock chips to specific memory. There's just not a good reason to brick the board when the memory doesn't match. Have the firmware flash a warning on the screen before boot. Problem solved.
Aurornis · · focus · HN ↗
Tepix · · focus · HN ↗
Drawback: You need different silkscreens for different amounts of RAM.
Btw, if you're worried about RAM-swapped units you can already verify them as described at <a href="https://geekworm.com/blogs/news/prevent-ram-swapped-raspberry-pi-5-how-to-verify-factory-ram-size" rel="nofollow">https://geekworm.com/blogs/news/prevent-ram-swapped-raspberr...
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(§) as can be seen here <a href="https://pip-assets.raspberrypi.com/categories/1129-pcn/documents/RP-006041-PC-2-PCN%20Raspberry%20Pi%205B%20Rev%204.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://pip-assets.raspberrypi.com/categories/1129-pcn/docum...
ryukoposting · · focus · HN ↗
On-chip fuses would be a good solution. Which, of course, is already what they're using to lock chips to specific memory. There's just not a good reason to brick the board when the memory doesn't match. Have the firmware flash a warning on the screen before boot. Problem solved.