Raspberry Pi 5 firmware has blocked RAM swaps since 2024

Raspberry Pi 5 bootloader EEPROM releases from 23 September 2024 onward refuse to initialise memory that does not match the board's factory provisioning, so a board with a swapped LPDDR4X chip fails SDRAM init and does not boot. The behaviour is now publicly documented in an rpi-eeprom issue, though the changelog never mentions the memory check.

• Bootloader checks memory against an approved list; no OS-level workaround exists
• A swapped board flashes the green ACT LED eight times, the SDRAM failure code
• Only EEPROM releases from 10 September 2024 or earlier tolerate a swapped chip
• Raspberry Pi cites resellers fitting larger chips and selling boards as factory 8 GB units