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Samsung's 60% DRAM price hike signals a new phase of global memory tightening

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Re: Samsung's 60% DRAM price hike signals a new phase of global memory tightening

#141
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just looked at the invoice for my current PC parts that I bought in April 2016: I paid 177 EUR (~203 USD) for 32GB (DDR4-2800). It's kinda sad when you grow up in a period of rapid hardware development and now see 10 years going by with RAM $/GB prices staying roughly the same.

Aside, $203 USD back then would be about $276 USD after inflation. Not a primary effect, but contributory.

Also we’re likely comparing RAMs at different speeds and memory bandwidth.

Re: Samsung's 60% DRAM price hike signals a new phase of global memory tightening

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funniest thing is that somehow the executive class is even more out of touch than they used to be. At least before there was a certain common baseline derived from everyone watching the same news and reading the same press. Now they are just as enclosed in their thought bubbles as everyone else. It is entirely possible for a tech CEO to have a full company of tech workers despising the current plan and yet that p…

The out of touch leader is a trope that I'm willing to bet has existed as long as we've had leaders. I remember first hearing the phrase "yes man" in relation to a human ass kisser my dad worked with in like 1988. It's very easy to unknowingly surround yourself with syncophants and hangers on when you literally have more money than some countries. This is true now and has been true forever. I'm not sure they're more…

It's more than the fact they are surrounded by sycophants. It's also that, despite the mythology the executive-worship-industry tries to paint, CxOs and board members of companies are just not very creative or visionary people. They largely spend their time looking at their peers and competitors for hints about what they should be doing. And today, those hints all are "do AI". They're not sitting down and deriving from first principles that AI is the way--they're seeing their buddies steering other companies and they're all saying AI is the way, so they say AI is the way, too.

Re: Samsung's 60% DRAM price hike signals a new phase of global memory tightening

#143

All I can say is, - the insane frothing hype behind AI is showing me a new kind of market failure - where resources can be massively misallocated just because some small class of individuals THINK or HOPE it will result in massive returns. Even if it squeezes out every single other sector that happens to want to use SDRAM to do things OTHER than buffer memory before it's fed into a PCIE lane for a GPU. - I'm really R…

why do you think allocating hardware to gamers is proper usage? maybe AI cures cancer, or at least writes some code

Gamers at least enjoy their GPUs and memory.

The tone from the AI industry sounds more like a dependent addict by comparison. They're well past the phase where they're enjoying their fix and into the "please, just another terawatt, another container-ship full of Quadros, to make it through the day" mode.

More seriously, I could see some legitimate value in saying "no, you can't buy every transistor on the market."

It forces AI players to think about efficiency and smarter software rather than just throwing money at bigger wads of compute. This might be part of where China's getting their competitive chops from-- having to do more with less due to trade restrictions seems to be producing some surprisingly competitive products.

It also encourages diversification. There is still no non-handwavey road to sustainable long-term profitability for most of the AI sector, which is why we keep hearing answers like "maybe the Extra Fingers Machine cures cancer." Eventually Claude and Copilot have to cover their costs or die. If you're nVidia or TSMC, you might love today's huge margins and willing buyers for 150% of your output, but it's simple due diligence to make sure you have other customers available so you can weather the day the bubble bursts.

It's also a solid PR play. Making sure people can still access the hobbies they enjoy is an easy way to say you're on the side of the mass public. It comes from a similar place to banning ticket scalping or setting reasonable prices on captive concessions. The actual dollars involved are small (how many enthusiast PCs could you outfit with the RAM chips or GPU wafer capacity being diverted to just one AI data centre?) but it makes it look like you're not completely for sale to the highest bidder.

Re: Samsung's 60% DRAM price hike signals a new phase of global memory tightening

#144
post #6

I'm so mad about this, I need DDR5 for a new mini-PC I bought and prices have literally gone up by 2.5x.. 128GB used to be 400$ in June, and now it's over $1,000 for the same 2x64GB set.. I have no idea if/when prices will come back down but it sucks.

Why do we all need 128GB now? I was happy with 32.

Close a few Chrome tabs, and save some DDR5 for the rest of us. :-)

Re: Samsung's 60% DRAM price hike signals a new phase of global memory tightening

#145
post #6

I'm so mad about this, I need DDR5 for a new mini-PC I bought and prices have literally gone up by 2.5x.. 128GB used to be 400$ in June, and now it's over $1,000 for the same 2x64GB set.. I have no idea if/when prices will come back down but it sucks.

it's cyclical. just wait 10 years

Re: Samsung's 60% DRAM price hike signals a new phase of global memory tightening

#146
post #6

I'm so mad about this, I need DDR5 for a new mini-PC I bought and prices have literally gone up by 2.5x.. 128GB used to be 400$ in June, and now it's over $1,000 for the same 2x64GB set.. I have no idea if/when prices will come back down but it sucks.

I just looked at the invoice for my current PC parts that I bought in April 2016: I paid 177 EUR (~203 USD) for 32GB (DDR4-2800). It's kinda sad when you grow up in a period of rapid hardware development and now see 10 years going by with RAM $/GB prices staying roughly the same.

Olds remember the years around '95 when RAM stayed the exact same price per megabyte for what seemed a decade.

Re: Samsung's 60% DRAM price hike signals a new phase of global memory tightening

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The out of touch leader is a trope that I'm willing to bet has existed as long as we've had leaders. I remember first hearing the phrase "yes man" in relation to a human ass kisser my dad worked with in like 1988. It's very easy to unknowingly surround yourself with syncophants and hangers on when you literally have more money than some countries. This is true now and has been true forever. I'm not sure they're more…

It's more than the fact they are surrounded by sycophants. It's also that, despite the mythology the executive-worship-industry tries to paint, CxOs and board members of companies are just not very creative or visionary people. They largely spend their time looking at their peers and competitors for hints about what they should be doing. And today, those hints all are "do AI". They're not sitting down and deriving fr…

Sounds quite a bit like stock market. The more sober and cynical of them see fads as fads, irrational but powerful movements, and ride the waves, selling to a greater fool.

Re: Samsung's 60% DRAM price hike signals a new phase of global memory tightening

#148
post #6

I'm so mad about this, I need DDR5 for a new mini-PC I bought and prices have literally gone up by 2.5x.. 128GB used to be 400$ in June, and now it's over $1,000 for the same 2x64GB set.. I have no idea if/when prices will come back down but it sucks.

Why do we all need 128GB now? I was happy with 32. Close a few Chrome tabs, and save some DDR5 for the rest of us. :-)

I like to tell people I have 128GB. It's pretty rare to meet someone like me that isn't swapping all the time.

Re: Samsung's 60% DRAM price hike signals a new phase of global memory tightening

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We give the military far too much money in the USA. ~ themafia, 2025 (sorry) On a more serious note the military is sure a money burning machine, but IMHO it's only government spending, when most of the money in the US is deliberately private. The fintech sector could be a bigger representation of a money vacuuming system benefiting statistically nobody ?

It's around 3.4% GDP. That puts us in the top 10% or so worldwide, but it's not ridiculously high. It's on a similar level as countries such as Morocco and Colombia, which aren't known for excessive military spending. It's still kind of high for a country with no nearby enemies, but for the most part, US military spending is large because the US economy is large.

Military spending is a type of wealfare for the wealthy it is one of the only forms of public or government spending that doesn't crowd out private investors, the way public housing or publicly funded hospitals do. The high military spending and the contractor class often vote more conservative than typical for their demographic and economic peers It's been high since WW2, with maybe a slight drop in the late 70s. The current stat of "3.4 times gdp" ignores the fact that a large part of our national debt is from the military and war budgets. I saw a statistic in the mid 1990s that if we had kept our military budget at inflation adjusted levels equal to 1976 our debt would have gone to zero as early as 1994.

Re: Samsung's 60% DRAM price hike signals a new phase of global memory tightening

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doubled in the last 4 months https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5Zc-FsUDCM Upgraded by adding 64GB.. last Friday I sold the 32 GB I took out for what I paid for the 64 GB in July... insane

Time to start scouring used-PC sales to reclaim the RAM and sell it for a profit?

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