- Funny how many dot-com esq things are popping up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_price_fixing_scandal
- To put this in long term relation.
Even current DDR4 3200 DIMM prices are at an all time high.
These are 6+ year old chip specs now!
I even thought stuff was overpriced four years ago in mid-2021 already, but this is a whole new level.
Some sample long term data for those:
https://geizhals.eu/?phist=2151624&age=9999
- Maybe it's time we make a simple web page 100KB again?
Is there some kind of CDN minification, adblocking and compression service?
Maybe even server side rendering of websites?
Then a smartphone would work fine with 1GB of RAM and everyone could be happy.
- I just checked my go-to stores in Europe. Holy shit. I bought a 5200-speed 16GB DDR5 kit in October for 55 eur. Now it's selling for 240 eur. The 6000-speed model is now 390 eur.
by walterbell
7 subcomments
- https://www.mooreslawisdead.com/post/sam-altman-s-dirty-dram...
On October 1st OpenAI signed two simultaneous deals with Samsung and SK Hynix for 40% of the worlds DRAM supply... the shock wasn’t that OpenAI made a big deal, no, it was that they made two massive deals this big, at the same time, with Samsung and SK Hynix simultaneously! In fact, according to our sources - both companies had no idea how big each other's deal was, nor how close to simultaneous they were. And this secrecy mattered. It mattered a lot.
Had Samsung known SK Hynix was about to commit a similar chunk of supply — or vice-versa — the pricing and terms would have likely been different. It’s entirely conceivable they wouldn’t have both agreed to supply such a substantial part of global supply if they had known more...but at the end of the day - OpenAI did succeed in keeping the circles tight, locking down the NDAs, and leveraging the fact that these companies assumed the other wasn’t giving up this much wafer volume simultaneously…in order to make a surgical strike on the global RAM supply chain…and it's worked so far...
OpenAI isn’t even bothering to buy finished memory modules! No, their deals are unprecedentedly only for raw wafers — uncut, unfinished, and not even allocated to a specific DRAM standard yet. It’s not even clear if they have decided yet on how or when they will finish them into RAM sticks or HBM! Right now it seems like these wafers will just be stockpiled in warehouses – like a kid who hides the toybox because they’re afraid nobody wants to play with them, and thus selfishly feels nobody but them should get the toys!
- If these prices don't return back to normal I just don't see how Valves steam machine is less than $1,000 USD.
by didgetmaster
0 subcomment
- I upgraded my pc about this time last year (new CPU, RAM, and motherboard).
I was originally going to just get 64GB of DDR5-6000, with the option of adding another 64GB later, thinking the price might drop even further. At the last minute, I decided to get the whole 128GB instead. Glad I did.
by somenameforme
7 subcomments
- I don't understand this. I'm looking at prices on some Asian store fronts and it's nowhere even remotely near these. I'm looking at DDR5-6000 2x16 for about $130, with no apparent limits.
Even with tariffs, transport, and other fees, you could get this to the US for way less than $400. I doubt the market could be this inefficient - in other words I don't think I just found a get rich quick scheme. So, what gives?
- How to get every tech enthusiast in the world to root for OpenAI to implode in order to release the RAM hostages.
- As I mentioned in a prior post 7/18/2023 - G.SKILL Trident Z5 RGB Series 64GB (2 x 32GB) 288-Pin PC RAM DDR5 6000 - $253.
Today - G.SKILL Ripjaws S5 Series 64GB (2 x 32GB) 288-Pin PC RAM DDR5 5600 (PC5 44800) Desktop Memory Model F5-5600J3636D32GX2-RS5W - $620.
Prices from Newegg.
- If things go the way they are, I wonder how long until buying a used Playstation 4 (8GB DDR5 RAM) at around 100USD a piece to put Linux on it and use as a server in cluster will become viable thing to do? Bring back console clusters!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_cluster
- Been planning to build my daughter a gaming PC for Xmas. Feel lucky I found a pre-built with 32GB RAM in a warehouse store on black Friday that hadn't been marked up yet. First pre-built desktop I've bought in decades and it was actually cheaper than I could build myself due to the crazy RAM prices.
- Some stores are going to a 'market price' system because the are tired of constantly printing new price tags.
https://www.pcworld.com/article/2984629/ram-is-so-expensive-...
by nick49488171
6 subcomments
- Apple system config upgrades not looking so bad anymore
- What specifically happened in June to set this off? It can't just be "waves hands AI/LLMs" because ChatGPT has existed for years.
by nullify88
3 subcomments
- A possible answer as to why this is happening. https://thememoryguy.com/some-clarity-on-2025s-ddr4-price-su...
- Really hoping this comes down again soonish. My desktop doesn’t have many years left :/
- Somehow another sign that our world is collapsing.
We have more and more wars, less free trade and international spirit, freedom and privacy is going down the sink, "everything is going down", and now ram is a good example of things that use to be abordable and with price going down, becoming expensive luxury good.
One could say that RAM price is just a special temporary event not related to our down trend but a decade ago major players would not have left a profitable consumer market without new actors coming to fill in.
But now we prefer restricting offer instead of increasing production...
- GPU prices never went down after the crypto rush replaced GPUs with ASICs. I hope this does not repeat with DRAM and AI.
by mks_shuffle
0 subcomment
- What could be the potential impact on smartphone and tablet prices in the coming months or years? I am assuming that laptop prices will start increasing next year.
- I remember when crypto ruined the market for GPUs, and now AI is ruining the market for DRAM. Darn you, fads.
- Time for Intel to re-enter the memory market?
- I wonder who the "visionaries" were that set the marked increase trend of max prices near 2024-12-09 for DDR4-3600 2x32GB and DDR4-3600 2x16GB?
I think that acted as a dog whistle for the rest of the market signalling there'd be no consequences for ripping other people off.
Also relevant: https://youtu.be/B7sB1-8jKno
by thelastgallon
1 subcomments
- So, RAM outperforms stocks, gold, bitcoin, NFTs, real estate?
- The actual headline here is sort of misleading -- the 4x price increase is over the past 3 months!
by christophilus
0 subcomment
- It’s not clear to me how long the contracts last. The Tom’s Hardware article linked below mentioned “in 2025”, so, do we know if this monopolistic DRAM grab is nearly over or only just beginning?
- I was planning to upgrade my PC 2 months ago, Corsair Dominator DDR5 96GB was ~ $400, and I thought it was a bit too much.
Well...
- Well, I guess one way these AI companies can stop us meeting our needs with local models - make it so we just cant get the hardware to run them...
by estimator7292
0 subcomment
- Man, we can't even buy bare DRAM chips at work. Nobody will sell us anything. The whole US electronics industry has suddenly been put in a chokehold for.... perpetuating the AI bubble?
Man it'd be great if these AI assholes could stop absolutely trashing every single part of society, the economy, and the physical planet at large.
by wwwlouishinofun
0 subcomment
- It hasn't been long since this happened
The price hasn't been rising all year
For d4 it's June, d5 is September
so what happens
by throwthrow_
1 subcomments
- I asked ChatGPT if it can generate a bunch of RAM for me. He says this is some kind of famous joke or something.
(I’m sorry I couldn’t resist)
- what's funny for me, I bought this nice ram a while back but my CPU caps its speed so it's stuck at 2400mhz like ugh
- Maybe this is a "strategic inflection point" for Intel... to get back into the DRAM business?
by jakebasile
5 subcomments
- I hate this. PC gaming is my hobby, the only one that’s lasted my whole life. It’s always been there. It’s how I met my wife. It’s how I relax after a long day. It’s how I’ve participated in so many stories that stick with me and given me so many memories.
All of it is being murdered by the AI bros. Before them it was the crypto bros. It’s one thing after the other and I hate it so much.
by shevy-java
0 subcomment
- I think most of us came to the conclusion that the AI hype is heavily responsible for this.
I want my money back. There should be an extra-tax on all those AI companies - they are heavily responsible for DRAM costing more now.
- Who are the main players that make or benefit from these inflated DRAM prices?
- the other side of the AI bubble are a huge amount of 2nd hand parts of all kinds going to come onto the market?
by nickpsecurity
0 subcomment
- At these prices, it might pay off to start an open-ish, non-profit, DRAM company to produce chips good enough for these purposes. They can sell a certain amount above cost for consumers and small businesses. Full price with guaranteed volume for some, enterprise suppliers.
The profits might be used to port the DRAM to multiple foundries to gradually increase supply. Alternatively, they can shift to produce other components, like VRAM. Make the low-to-midrange accelerators with larger VRAM more available at reasonable prices.
Just speculating. I don't know silicon economics well.
- On the flip side should the AI bubble burst won’t these be cheap if the data centres are liquidated?
- Why is it that consumers always get shafted here and we just keep going on like "it's just business"
Why isn't some consumer protection regulator going "actually no, OpenAI, you can't corner the market for the foreseeable future"
Hell, make OpenAI pay for this shit up front. You want to corner the market? Put up the money you don't have.
by outside1234
0 subcomment
- Stagflation!
- So it's doubled. From the complaints you'd think it was more like 10x.
- Man, fuck these AI (and crypto) companies causing the rise of prices in GPUs and now memory.
by renewiltord
0 subcomment
- Got real lucky. I was trying to negotiate a guy down on RAM. I wanted a server without as much RAM. In the end, I had to take the 768 GB. It only cost $1k more than 192 GB at the time. Unfortunately I can’t really sell off the excess because I need to substitute down the RAM modules to fill all 12. Ah well.
by Daishiman
4 subcomments
- Inflation metrics seem to fail to capture the increase in leading-edge tech products of the past 18 months.
- Moore's Law has been reversed. Instead of doubling transistors or capacity every 18 months, it is halved.
This is some kind of fundamentally different era for the tech industry, but ...
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