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.
Well if you know of a better way to generate pictures of comically obese bearded men gayly dancing, I’d love to hear it.
DMing you my patron
As someone buying load of secondhand tech, you don’t need the latest and greatest
I can never get people to understand this. I’ve got servers running on i7 8th gens, with stock 16GB ram. I could upgrade, but no need. People thinking they need 128GB to plays games are delusional.
To run games, you might need at least 32Gb. 64 Gb is sufficient in most cases. Still expensive af
16GB is fine for most games, 32GB is handy if you run a lot of poorly optimized mods, but also memory compression helps with that significantly. 8gb of memory gets pretty cozy for gaming these days though, but again memory compression makes a big difference.
Both my and my wife’s computers have 32GB of RAM because it was cheap enough to not be worth worrying about, but if RAM is expensive you don’t need a ton of it to enjoy your games
Yeah, this is my point and experience too. 32 is better, I’d say 16 min. But people crying about needing 128 should rethink their priorities for gaming, were in a recession lol. Save your money.
Are people throwing 128GB in for shits and giggles these days? I’m kinda out of the loop and still used to people arguing about if 32GB is excessive or not. Used to be only needed for media production and honestly it’s still debatable for pure gaming systems if more than 16GB is overkill
It’s not that it’s excessive, that’s a lot of money to spend right now with the way things are.
My husband and I have been using computers we built 15 years ago and we decided this year we’ll finally build new computers… Lmao sucks to be us :( already built mine, his is almost done but missing a key component… RAM lmaooooo
Just get the least necessary and hope that prices will drop :(
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.
A friend of mine lives in Egypt and that would be a steal
Is it difficult to buy stuff trom Europe in Egypt?
Checking leboncoin (french place where people sell & buy stuff) there are lots of em for 20€ +p&p
But there are also these kinds, for 10€, I almost want to make a RAID6 with a bunch just to see
He said that receiving is the issue. So even if you buy it cheaply here, he might have to pay a huge sum in taxes
Ah yeah gotcha. Like stuff from england, 7€ tax + 16€ “tax handling fee”…
No, I dont want to buy your 2014 1TB drive for 25€ + shipping.
well damn that’s a steal. I’d buy it.
Lived in the Silicon Valley in the 1990’s, when the price of RAM exploded with the web, armed robberies of manufacturing plants and warehouses for RAM became a thing for a few years.
Insert <Aw shit, here we go again . meme>
But now the surveillance capabilities of both the state and large corporations have been ramped up to infinity and beyond. I’m expecting a partnership announcement between Micron and Raytheon any day now, where Raytheon gets free DDR5 and Micron gets armed and autonomous security drones.
Kind of \s, kind of not
I think the RAM manufacturers were found to be guilty of colluding/price-fixing in that case (maybe this case too).
Altman secretly secured 40 % of the world’s DRAM manufacturing capacity last month. Supposedly Samsung and HK Hynix weren’t aware they were both signing up for it.
That alone would be enough to call collusion if it wasn’t an obvious play to strangle his competition by literally choking them out of hardware.
https://www.mooreslawisdead.com/post/sam-altman-s-dirty-dram-deal
OpenAI just bought the raw wafers? WTF.
You don’t hate AI slop enough…
Can’t wait for the AI bubble to burst and we can all buy RAM at auction for $2 plus a 28% buyers premium.
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.
I swear there’s a new gold rush every time I want to upgrade my pc.
Same. Got 3080 for $1,500 usd in late 2020
So it’s your fault…
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. 🫡
Yeah, i think the correct response to planned obsolescence from the side of computer manufacturers is to exclusively buy products from companies who have produced long-living machines in the past.
That gives manufacturers an incentive to make the machines they produce last longer, instead of shorter to sell newer products more frequently.
It wouldn’t be quite so bad if the previous gold rush ended first, but they seem to just be stacking up.
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.
I thought they weren’t using gaming gpus this time though?
Gaming GPUs during normal crypto markets don’t compute fast enough to mine crypto profitably, but if crypto prices get high enough such as during a boom cycle, it can become profitable to mine on gaming GPUs
Edit to add: For crypto there’s basically a set speed that any given GPU mines at. The hash rate specifically. It really doesn’t change noticably over time through software updates, nor does the power consumption of the GPU. Its basically a set cost per cryptocurrency mined with any given hardware. If the value earned by mining can exceed the cost to run the GPU then GPU mining can quickly start making sense again.
Yeah, even less so with gen AI though I think.
Machine learning models have much different needs that crypto. Both run well on gaming GPUs and both run even better on much higher end GPUs, but ultimately machine learning models really really need fast memory because it loads the entire weights into graphics memory for processing. There’s some tools which will push it to system memory but these models are latency sensitive so crossing the CPU bus to pass 10s of gigabytes of data between the GPU and system memory is too much latency.
Machine learning also has the aspect of training vs inference, where the training portion will take a long time, will take less time with more/faster compute and you simply can’t do anything with the model while it’s training, meanwhile inference is still compute heavy it doesn’t require anywhere near as much as the training phase. So organizations will typically rent as much hardware as possible for the training phase to try to get the model running as quickly as possible so they can move on to making money as quickly as possible.
In terms of GPU availability this means they’re going to target high end GPUs, such as packing AI developer stations full of 4090s and whatever the heck Nvidia replaced the Tesla series with. Some of the new SOCs which have shared system/vram such as AMD’s and Apple’s new SOCs also fill a niche for AI developer and AI enthusiasts too since that enables large amounts of high speed video memory for relatively low cost. Realistically the biggest impact that AI is having on the Gaming GPU space is it’s changing the calculation that AMD, Nvidia and Intel are making when planning out their SKUs, so they’re likely being stingy on GPU memory specs for lower end GPUs to try to push anyone with specific AI models they’re looking to run to much more expensive GPUs
Until the next crisis…
That’s the tariffs, now. GPUs had come down a bit before the dumbass
This AI bubble needs to explode yesterday, Wall Street be damned.
There was a nice window from about a year or two ago to about 3 months ago where no individual components were noticably inflated. Monitors took the longest to recover since the pandemic shortages so that was arguably around the beginning of this year that they seemed to fully normalize
Its funny because at work we’ve been pushing hard on Windows 11 refreshes all year and warning that there will likely be a rush of folks refreshing at the last possible minute at the end of the year inflating prices. And we ended up being correct on the inflated prices part but it was actually the AI bubble that did it
This is why I’m still running ddr4. Every time I think about upgrading a generation, there’s a run on some integral component.
DDR4 is expensive as shit too now. I was trying to build out a new rack for my homelab and 256GB of ram went from like $300 6 months ago to $1500.
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.
AM4 is gonna last until the 2030s at this rate…
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.
The good thing about new AM4 boards being available at this point in time is you have options to keep older hardware running. Usually the CPU and memory will out-survive motherboard. Much like those new Chinese motherboards supporting 4th and 6th gen Intel CPUs, this is great for longevity and reduces how much production is needed
In a sane world, the limitations of a CPU socket would be reached, and then newer SKUs would no longer be released
I’d argue that it would be best if computers were more like cars, a new platform gets released each decade or so, and small improvements are made to individual parts but the parts are largely interchangable within the platform and produced for a decade or two before production is retired. More interchangable parts, slower release cycle and more opportunities for repair instead of replacement
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.
5800x3d was probably my best cpu purchase of all time, damn
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.
Nope - proxmox is the way
Did I tell you about using arch?
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
That’s crap. They’ve loaded their stock on a certain price and they want to surf the high wave while they can.
They also need to be able to replenish that stock at current prices. I’ve worked retail many times in my life and arguably kinda-sorta do so now (albeit largely over the Internet) and I’ve never run any store where we did not set our pricing by replacement cost rather than original invoice cost. In my current operation there are some rare exceptions for clearance items and the like, but for the vast majority of products we sell for what it’s going to cost me to get the next one to put back on that shelf, not what it cost me for the one I’m selling you now.
I don’t have any insider insight into other companies’ operations, but I imagine a lot of other retailers work things the same way. Especially these days.
That’s Free Markets, baby!
Almost all retailers inventory on consignment. So, no.
No they don’t. They purchase at a fixed rate.
I think what we’re seeing is the result of their stock depleting actually. AI has been buying up supply for a while, and I don’t think the consumer markets are able to compete.
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 :)
Sells st a lower price: the web: they were Ruthlessly undercutting!!
They even don’t need to lower prices to “undercut”, just not raise them too much!
Oh no.
So even if I manage to somehow get DDR4 for lower prices, I can’t expect the SK Hynix modules.Guess it’s going to be a few more years before I can get a RAM upgrade, or maybe never at all.
It might end up being similar to how DDR3 ended up being more expensive than DDR4 for multiple years.I mean since it’s driven by demand from companies running AI models it’s mostly impacting higher speed modules with lower speed/capacity kits being less significantly impacted. Granted that’s also pushing demand up for those lower speed kits since for gamers quantity matters far more than speed, meanwhile AI really cares about speed most
I am going by mainly 2 points:
- DDR4 being dropped in favour of DDR5
- What if the places with high quality output end up just staying on DDR5
- DDR4 being taken by the cheaper manufacturers
- Ever since seeing how well my old SK Hynix DDR2 has lasted, I have been kinda partial to it. paying $10 - 15 extra to get something that I won’t have to replace for the device’s lifetime (~20 years) makes sense to me
- The new modules made by the cheaper ones might not end up being as good and reviews may be hard to find as most enthusiasts that do quality testing, tend to do so only when the tech is new (and now that is DDR5)
- DDR4 being dropped in favour of DDR5
Here’s some that’s significantly cheaper than the graph would suggest: https://www.amazon.com/G-SKILL-Trident-64GB-SDRAM-Memory/dp/B0BSB94VC2
Not that it’s a good price in general or anything, but if you absolutely must buy now…
Currently unavailable.
Well that didnt last long at all!
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.
I LOVE FREE MARKETS!
I LOVE FREE MARKETS!
I LOVE FREE MARKETS!
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I LOVE FREE MARKETS SO MUCH!
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 wonder how long ill be staying on my AM4 motherboard… those updated CPUs for gaming that AMD came out with might be my only option for a long time.
The 64GB kit I purchased Aug 2024 for $195 is now listing for $540
Bitch, are you surge pricing ram? Cuz it looks like you’re surge pricing ram…
