Raspberry Pi won't let you swap the RAM on your SBC because you may use memory of "dubious origin"

Published Sep 21, 2026, 10:37 AM EDT Simon is a Computer Science BSc graduate who has been writing about technology since 2014, and using Windows machines since 3.1. After working for an indie game studio and acting as the family's go-to technician for all computer issues, he found his passion for writing and decided to use his skill set to write about all things tech. Since beginning his writing career, he has written for many different publications such as WorldStart, Listverse, and MakeTechEasier. However, after finding his home at MakeUseOf in February 2019, he would eventually move on to its sister site, XDA, to bring the latest and greatest in Windows, Linux, and DIY electronics. Sign in to your XDA account Summary Raspberry Pi 5 firmware blocks RAM swaps, refusing to boot with mismatched memory (Error Code 9). Foundation says the lock prevents fraud/unsupported upgrades and reduces support burden from dubious RAM resellers. Even same-sized RAM can fail if it lacks other device attributes; Raspberry Pi confirms swaps won't work. Raspberry Pis are beloved by DIY tinkerers everywhere, so it's only natural that some people want to mess with the SBC's hardware. Unfortunately, people are finding out the hard way that you cannot swap out the RAM on a Raspberry Pi due to a deliberate tweak performed by the Raspberry Pi Foundation to crack down on boards using memory from "dubious sources." The Raspberry Pi Foundation locks down the RAM slot on your SBC It claims it's a move to prevent flipping boards using unapproved memory upgrades Over on the Self Hosted subreddit, Glad-Independence893 noticed something odd with their Raspberry Pi 5. After applying the pieeprom-2024-09-23.bin update, their Pi 5 began performing a hard RAM capacity check. If it spots RAM that doesn't match the original factory specification, it shows Error Code 9 and refuses to boot. Someone in the comments of the thread pointed to a Consumer Rights Wiki page, detailing that Raspberry Pi is blocking RAM swaps. This page, in turn, points to a Raspberry Pi forum post. The post comes from an official Raspberry Pi account, replying to someone asking why they got errors when they tried to manually upgrade their Pi's RAM from 2GB to 4GB. Raspberry Pi's post details that the foundation purchases "large quantities [of RAM] on very competitive commercial terms," but there's always a case where someone can purchase memory for cheaper. To prevent people from exploiting that, the Pi doesn't play ball with memory upgrades: "If labour is cheap enough then there may be a minor financial gain in buying a part with say a 2GB part, swapping it for an 8GB part of dubious origin, and reselling it as an 8GB device. However, this brings an element of risk to the user - the board hasn't been tested by us - and is a potential support burden for us, with customers complaining of unreliable devices." To prevent that, the Foundation has locked Pis to the original RAM size, and may even fail if the Pi receives RAM of the same size that doesn't fit "some other device attributes." They round off the post by saying that they "don't see RAM being swapped between authorised devices of different sizes as a likely use case," before flat-out confirming that "it won't work."