High RAM prices mean record-setting profits for Samsung and other memory makers
- Thread starter JournalBot
- Start date
DDR4 absolutely has gone up as well. A 64GB of DDR4 to match what I have now is ~3x more than what it was when I bought it.
It's not as bad as DDR5, but it's still pretty rough.
Upvote
24
(24
/
0)
Upvote
7
(7
/
0)
When this bubble pops, at least 1 large tech company (meta, google, microsoft, amazon, etc.) is going to die. I am predicting it now. I think the likelihood will be this from most to least: meta, microsoft, google, amazon.
Meta is only alive due to ad revenue. Their hardware business doesn't make enough to sustain them and they are way behind.
Microsoft has dumped way too much money into "AI" and is on the verge of facing a huge backlash due to Windows 11 and subscription costs rising due to forced bundling. Subscription revenue goes quick when recessions or depressions hit.
Google and amazon? That was a tossup. I gave Google a narrow edge because they, for the most part, own the search engine market, and therefore, would be likely the target for a government bailout to save the internet. Amazon has a profitable service business along with a real estate company (Amazon.com isn't about eCommerce, you folks know that right?), however the fact that real estate prices are falling combined with increased competition from competitors (Walmart+, Heztner, Digital Ocean, etc) may offset this significantly in case of a severe economic downturn.
Just an observation. Carry on.
Meta is only alive due to ad revenue. Their hardware business doesn't make enough to sustain them and they are way behind.
Microsoft has dumped way too much money into "AI" and is on the verge of facing a huge backlash due to Windows 11 and subscription costs rising due to forced bundling. Subscription revenue goes quick when recessions or depressions hit.
Google and amazon? That was a tossup. I gave Google a narrow edge because they, for the most part, own the search engine market, and therefore, would be likely the target for a government bailout to save the internet. Amazon has a profitable service business along with a real estate company (Amazon.com isn't about eCommerce, you folks know that right?), however the fact that real estate prices are falling combined with increased competition from competitors (Walmart+, Heztner, Digital Ocean, etc) may offset this significantly in case of a severe economic downturn.
Just an observation. Carry on.
Upvote
-2
(5
/
-7)
In the long run, this development may prompt Apple to design an engineer, its own memory chips in house. In the past there was no compelling reason for Apple to do this task, but similar to its approach with CPUs, GPUs, and modems. By designing and engineering memory chips in-house, Apple can exert greater control over its destiny.
The financial savings generated by avoiding the acquisition of Warner Brothers or the allocation of funds to Sam Altman at OpenAI, as the Wall Street/tech analysts would like to see, because of Apples restraint in the current bubble AI rush funds can be utilized to further enhance Apple Silicon capabilities. It is likely that the Apple Silicon design team, led by Johny Srouji and John Ternus, will be called on make another step forward in the near future.
Doing something like this isn’t necessarily because Apple wants to, but because the market has changed, kinda like Intel saying no or when dealing with bad tech actors like Qualcomm and Nvidia.
The financial savings generated by avoiding the acquisition of Warner Brothers or the allocation of funds to Sam Altman at OpenAI, as the Wall Street/tech analysts would like to see, because of Apples restraint in the current bubble AI rush funds can be utilized to further enhance Apple Silicon capabilities. It is likely that the Apple Silicon design team, led by Johny Srouji and John Ternus, will be called on make another step forward in the near future.
Doing something like this isn’t necessarily because Apple wants to, but because the market has changed, kinda like Intel saying no or when dealing with bad tech actors like Qualcomm and Nvidia.
Last edited:
Upvote
-3
(2
/
-5)
Man, I really need to brave the used market. I feel like I could make a ton if I could be bothered to sell my used RAM, GPUs, and storage. However, I end up needing it all for other things (family members, etc.) and my stock is dwindling.
Upvote
2
(2
/
0)
No, it won't. Memory chips aren't CPUs/GPUs. Apple would have to invest billions over the course of several years (possibly decades) to catch up. It's different tech.
Upvote
17
(18
/
-1)
Ha! Wait until you see what my wife spends on yarn. And she's not even getting the high end stuff, much less the boutique stuff.
Upvote
20
(20
/
0)
I just spent way too much money on a cruise for my GF and myself. You only turn 50 once.
So I'll have to bow out of upgrading my TrueNAS's RAM.
Upvote
6
(6
/
0)
Yes, I was shocked to see a price of $349 for 32Gb in Newegg's flyer yesterday. Glad I'm not building a new box anytime soon.
Upvote
1
(1
/
0)
Do we honestly think the prices will ever return to normal?
Grocery prices remained inflated at COVID prices even after the supply chains were restored to normalcy.
Grocery prices remained inflated at COVID prices even after the supply chains were restored to normalcy.
Upvote
23
(23
/
0)
Enshittification is one hell of capitalist drug. 'Sell' less and less, while continually charging more and more. Because you can. Because there is no authority to whom you have to justify product quality and price. Just 'whatever the market will bear' ... when you exercise unilateral control over said market.
Upvote
14
(15
/
-1)
You mean they are artificially jacking up prices because they know the big customers don't have any choice ? Who are they gonna go to instead? Everyone else who is also inflating prices because everyone else is?Shocking.
Greedy sods. Truly the Samsung way.
New day new way to fuck the rest of society
Greedy sods. Truly the Samsung way.
New day new way to fuck the rest of society
Upvote
20
(21
/
-1)
With prices like this, might encourage software to become more efficient again...
Upvote
8
(8
/
0)
You can always tell a Republican in a crowd by their inability to understand the finer points of economic changes over time. That and FU! I-had-it-rough-so-you-should-to mentality.
Upvote
27
(29
/
-2)
It is fascinating that the people who most cling to the “American Dream” (insert image of white nuclear family with 2.5 children staring boldly up and off to one side) of the next generation having it better than the previous are also the ones most determined to make sure there’s never any progress.
Which, I guess, is a really long way to spell “conservative”.
Upvote
21
(23
/
-2)
My wife only buys acrylic yarn and between the amount needed and time/labor its pretty damn expensive to do as a more serious hobby. And acrylic is a fraction of the price of the legit hand weaved cotton yarn.
Upvote
4
(4
/
0)
Consumer subscription revenue will dry up, but commercial sales will keep them afloat. Active Directory and Exchange are too strong a drug.
Upvote
9
(9
/
0)
jm_leviathan
Ars Scholae Palatinae
For a couple of weeks there it looked like we might be approaching at least a plateau in RAM pricing, but prices have jumped again in the last few days.
Upvote
2
(2
/
0)
I don't really see this situation improving unless consumer memory moves to an older process that is not in competition with HBM. From the announcements I've seen from the memory makers they're expanding capacity but not by enough to be relevant to consumers. It's purely for HBM supply. So yeah we're going to see consumer memory prices double, triple, quadruple, be sold out and entirely unavailable at any price, etc.
Not looking good for gaming. Great for investors profiting off of data center money though. So I guess in my case I get a pile of money from my Nvidia investment but get to keep playing games on an old laptop instead of upgrading.
Not looking good for gaming. Great for investors profiting off of data center money though. So I guess in my case I get a pile of money from my Nvidia investment but get to keep playing games on an old laptop instead of upgrading.
Upvote
3
(3
/
0)
For a year or two, it's going to be rough, but if the prices stay this high, they will expand capacity.
Upvote
2
(2
/
0)
Hopefully china tech industries try do something about this. They have brought down battery and storage prices before defying apple and samsung effort to sell short life phone with small battery capacity phone and those awful cloud storage service afterall.
Also thanks to them for being the one who brought deflation for middle class even when US stock and crypto bubble have siphoning money from everyone and make everything expensive.
Also thanks to them for being the one who brought deflation for middle class even when US stock and crypto bubble have siphoning money from everyone and make everything expensive.
Upvote
0
(4
/
-4)
Start running Linux TODAY if this upsets you. Dual boot if you have to. Get off the fascist Microsoft tit. Don't use ChatGPT.
YOU HAVE OPTIONS. You will either pay to use a mega-corp's computer or run your own.
YOU HAVE OPTIONS. You will either pay to use a mega-corp's computer or run your own.
Upvote
-6
(11
/
-17)
The white rich people in the 'west' that are behind pretty much all the problems we have in the west right now, are ultimately after one thing: neo-feudalism, where they own everything and everyone, (the latter merely effectively, because actual slaves cost too much). That this ideal means destroying everything to reubuild it again (and killing a lot of people in the mean time), enabling as many pariah states as possible (because neo-apartheid is also part of the plan), makes them also allies of Putin, which also should be obvious to everyone by now.
That these far right extremists beleive in might-makes-right before anything else, should also be unsurprising...
Upvote
13
(17
/
-4)
Enthusiast forums like ArsTechnica or HardOCP are possible places. That is what I had to do for a set of sticks last months for a build. Still higher than what it would have cost in June/July of 2025 but much less than retail.
Upvote
1
(1
/
0)
Upvote
9
(10
/
-1)
pretty sure I paid an extra $400 in 2021 to get my 16" mbp with 32 gigs, and I think the 64 was $800 but that seemed overkill at the time... still love that machine
So right in line with current PC DDR5 prices https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/
Upvote
4
(4
/
0)
Also, I would expect that they have serious forward contracts with memory suppliers as they likely do with everyone else, along with direct investments giving priority access like they have with TSMC, etc. The contracts will eventually wash out but I suspect that the manufacturers (four out of five of the biggest are Asian) will think twice about gouging a long term volume customer with lots of money who pays up front over what may turn out to be an ephemeral/imaginary demand from companies that are technically bankrupt.
I don’t see a massive rush to build new plants as no-one wants to be left with excess capacity in a few years should the AI bubble pop or even just reduce to a sane level of demand. They’ve been there before.
Upvote
8
(8
/
0)
I still need RAM for that Linux computer and software to run on it, so even if this is a bubble that bursts, all the money for infrastructure went into datacenters. So while now it's seemingly infinite investment dollars funneling into data centers, post collapse it'll be heavily subsidised data centers propping up new businesses.
The cloud is here and it's not going away.
Upvote
7
(8
/
-1)
The real question is how much RAM do you need. The combo deals right now are still pretty good, especially for am4/ddr4. Today saw 32 gigs of ddr4 and a am4 mobo for like 230?
Upvote
2
(2
/
0)
A dollar not being worth a dollar has very "15 miles uphill in the snow, both ways" vibes
Upvote
17
(17
/
0)
Server farms doesn’t even use standard PC ram. It’s just more bs, for company’s to raise prices to what they were in the 90s
Upvote
-11
(1
/
-12)
They use the same wafers and production nodes. And you can have 3 or 4 DRAM dies for each HBM, high bandwidth memory, die that are used for the fancy autocomplete (I refuse to call LLMs AI) servers
Upvote
15
(15
/
0)
Best wishses to cxmt to catch up on their process and flood the market with cheap ddr5.
I really hope a miracle can happen and they surprise the world way before the "offical" estimations.
I really hope a miracle can happen and they surprise the world way before the "offical" estimations.
Upvote
0
(1
/
-1)
No, DDR4 has tripled as well over the past half year, probably because AM4 is still a perfectly serviceable platform. There's also a lot of people on older Intel platforms that would rather upgrade their DDR4 system than have to buy a new system with the even pricier DDR5 RAM .
Hell, even DDR3 is seeing a minor price hike on the used market, because savvy users know they might want to hang on to their old tech for a few more years and want to have enough RAM to use a web browser in those extra years.
I have a bit, but I'm keeping it all because if the modules I currently use fail, I really don't want to spend several hundred dollars getting my system up again
Last edited:
Upvote
9
(9
/
0)
Actually, out of all components, RAM size rose most slowly.I'm always amazed at just how far computers have come in the last 40-50 years. In the early 1980's my family had an Apple II+, which came with 48KB of RAM. My father spent $200 (roughly $800 in today dollars) on a 16KB expansion card. Six orders of magnitude increase in memory capacity in a much smaller form factor for (effectively) half the price, inflation adjusted. Even at the new ridiculous prices, the progress is astounding. That said, screw AI.
Upvote
2
(2
/
0)