Generative “AI” data centers are gobbling up trillions of dollars in capital, not to mention heating up the planet like a microwave. As a result there’s a capacity crunch on memory production, shooting the prices for RAM sky high, over 100 percent in the last few months alone. Multiple stores are tired of adjusting the prices day to day, and won’t even display them. You find out how much it costs at checkout.
If this bubble doesn’t pop soon, I expect a memory card thefts to start making the headlines. Small and easier to carry off while being more expensive than some jewelry of the same size.
As someone buying load of secondhand tech, you don’t need the latest and greatest
Yeah but even second hand drives are stupid-priced today. No, I dont want to buy your 2014 1TB drive for 25€ + shipping.
I can’t wait for this to pop, I mean if it does in a way that produces selloffs.
This is nothing new. I worked at a small computer shop in a small town between 2005-2007. The owner treated memory as a commodity. He checked national ram module prices daily. Buying low, and selling high. He sometimes adjusted the module price on a per-customer basis.
I get that it’s much harder to do that with online stores, where prices are published to multiple places, and for chain stores where the price needs to be consistent between locations.
First they came for the hard drives, and I did not speak out because I didn’t need a hard drive. Then they came for the GPUs and I did not speak out because I had a pretty dope GPU. Then they came for my 8gb of ram and there was nobody left to speak out for me.
I have 128gb of corsair ddr5 in my closet. IM RICH!
Just did a quick check, it’s worth double what I paid for it. I’ll just let it sit in my closet until it’s worthless.
I also have 128gb of ddr5 ram
And 64gb of ddr5 ram
And some laptop ddr5 ram
I’m going to wrap them all in Saran Wrap and stick them up my ass so my brain works faster
Ah, but you see, if you wrap it in Saran wrap, they won’t be able to make contact. You’d be better off using contact grease for that easy insertion
Of course. That must be why it didn’t work the last time. Thank you kindly for that wonderful advice.
Is it sitting on top of a pile of beanie babies?
If it’s new it genuinely might be worth 2k. Looked at the prices yesterday and corsair had 64gb for ~1k.
So? Don’t fucking buy it! Has that never occurred to some y’all? If the rest of the world had my purchasing habits we’d already be looking at Depression 2.0.
Some peopne may need RAM, however.
Just pirate it then
I usually download my warez RAM modules from ramgirl repacks
I mostly get mine from https://downloadmoreram.com/
Multiple stores are tired of adjusting the prices day to day, and won’t even display them. You find out how much it costs at checkout.
Someone should tell them about those e-paper price tags…
If you want to see a good set of graphs on pricing over time, PC Parts Picker does some good ones. It’s absolutely INSANE how bad it’s getting. The graphs in question.
I was like DDR4 doesn’t count
One well-documented memory industry trend that is behind the price increases seen is said to be makers shutting down their DDR4 production in favor of DDR5 and other more profitable lines. In February, we noted that the likes of Micron, Samsung, and SK hynix were being rudely elbowed out of the DDR4 market by Chinese players (such as CXMT and Fujian Jinhua) ruthlessly undercutting them in this segment.
Samsung was seen to flinch in late April, as reports circulated that the South Korean technology and manufacturing giant had scheduled to cease DDR4 production in early June.
Now there are indications that oversupply from Chinese ‘dumping’ is at an end, as CXMT has been instructed by the Chinese government to abandon DDR4 manufacturing. Thus, the reported spikes in DDR4 pricing in recent weeks may stem from a perfect storm of the above supply-side factors all exerting an effect over a relatively short period of time.
But still ouch :)
Lol pricing computer parts like they do fish in an expensive restaurant.
What a time to be alive.
Thing is, this isn’t new in the slightest.
I remember calling around to different PC stores in the 90s and early 00s to find the cheapest RAM and hard drive prices.
Before that, I remember my grandfather, an IBM employee in the 60s-90s calling places looking for best pricing on 64k-128k SIPP memory for an ibm pizzabox 286.
I’ll never forget the time someone in my neighborhood found out one of the local PC shops had a deal on 8MB of RAM for like 100 bucks. That’s not a typo kiddies 8 Megabytes. We were so excited, a bunch of us piled into one car and rushed over there before they sold out!
That was the norm before it was so easy to buy online from across the country, local stores set their own prices and a few minutes of calling to find the best deal is like searching on Google for a few minutes to find the best deal… But they weren’t doubling in price in a couple months, that I can recall anyway.
I swear there’s a new gold rush every time I want to upgrade my pc.
because we’re in an era where there always will be a gold rush for a specific component. upgrades have slowed down considerably in the past 10 years, my laptop is 4 years old and still kicks like the first day, I still game on my 8 year old laptop which is permanently attached to the TV and running as a steam machine with more than decent performance.
this wasn’t even thinkable in the 00’s
I’m pretty sure after hard disks, GPUs, rams the next shortage is either Arm CPUs or a specific future type of PSUs
I feel like the luckiest person because I built my last PC right before the crypto hype and my current one right before the AI bubble.
It wouldn’t be quite so bad if the previous gold rush ended first, but they seem to just be stacking up.
This AI bubble needs to explode yesterday, Wall Street be damned.
Speak for your self - scored a nice GPU upgrade during the crypto crash, maybe something similar will be achievable after this insanity hits the brakes.
Until the next crisis…
This is why I’m still running ddr4. Every time I think about upgrading a generation, there’s a run on some integral component.
AM4 is gonna last until the 2030s at this rate…
With how good my 5600x still performs, I could very well see it lasting that long. Assuming it doesn’t randomly kill itself after a few years like my previous ryzen 5.
I was silly and got myself a 5950X. But I feel less silly about it now tbh. It’s gonna become my new homelab core whenever I get the chance to do a new gaming build again that’s not a high 4-figure investment.
Totally worth it with how good ryzens have held up performance wise. Unless you’re doing some really CPU heavy stuff or have a beast of a GPU, you probably won’t get bottlenecked by the CPU for at least 5 more years.
Unless you’re using windows in your homelab. I assume you’re not since you have a home lab.
5800x3d was probably my best cpu purchase of all time, damn
Why wouldn’t it?
In a sane world, the limitations of a CPU socket would be reached, and then newer SKUs would no longer be release and all stock for prospective builders would be second hand.
That’s clearly not the case here. AM4 continues to get new CPU releases and parts are still available new from retail, years after the support officially ending. That’s a good thing for variety and entry level machines, but such dependency means a future CPU could be limited in featureset/performance if it releases on AM4 instead of AM5, which there may be enough demand to force designers to downgrade chips for AM4 compatibility.
I dki so too - just upgraded my X2600 with a shiny X5950, the nicest cpu my aging mainboard can run. with 16 cores and 64 gigs of ram i see a future when i simply replace the entire machine for daily use and make this one a very nice server.
It’s why I started treating computers as commodities — I rarely upgrade anymore; just wait the 5 years and by an entirely new system.
Same except for me it’s 10 years.
This is about my upgrade cadence, except for storage. I ran my Ryzen 1600 until the 7000 series dropped and upgraded mobo+RAM at once for about $600.
I then moved the old parts to another case to use as a low load server only for both the motherboard and CPU die within a few weeks. 🫡
So it’s your fault…
It’s not a fucking lobster. Base pricing per unit based on whatever profit margin you need on that item.
Nope, let’s get as much as we can at all times, like it’s silver bullion.
No, they have to base the price on what it costs to order the next shipment, unless they want to just stop carrying ram or you expect them to take on a loan for that. The wholesale market for ram must be fucking wild for a retail store to think they have to post something like that.
Another user in the BlueSky thread showed a photo that appears to be a Best Buy case of RAM, showing a 32GB set of two DDR5 DIMMs going for over $400 USD, a 64GB kit for over $900.
If I hit Google Shopping, which indexes a ton of retailer sites, I can find 2x16GB DDR5 DIMMs for far less than that at various retailers that haven’t jacked up prices yet.
https://www.google.com/shopping?udm=28
My first hit for “2x16gb 32gb ddr5” sorted by price is this:
https://pcpartshawaii.com/products/kingston-fury-ddr5-32gb-2x16gb-5200mhz-cl40-ram
Kingston Fury DDR5 32GB (2x16GB) 5600MHz CL40 RAM KF556C40BBK2-32
$100.00
They say that they have two in stock.
These guys are next lowest:
https://www.barcodediscount.com/catalog/kingston/part-kcp548us8k2-32.htm
Price: $103.06
Who goes to best buy for ram? Like the physical store… Everything small is marked up anyways.
And what’s not marked up is sold out. Fuck that place.
I only use Alaska King RAM.
As a result there’s a capacity crunch on memory production, shooting the prices for RAM sky high, over 100 percent in the last few months alone
They said “market price”… What market are you shopping at?!
(I know it’s not the point, but a reminder that data center climate impact, including heat, is nowhere near flight, agricultural waste, or construction. Hate it for its own reasons, not for fake ones.)
