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Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

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Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#31

Post by lupire »

jakebasile wrote: post #27

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.

There is more than a lifetime of incredibly great PC games that run on your existing hardware, and if this is your life's hobby, then paying an extra $100 or so every year or few is a drop in the bucket of your gaming expenses

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#32

Post by edm0nd »

jakebasile wrote: post #27

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.

I mean its pretty rare to buy more RAM after completing your PC build + that single PC is going to last you 5+ years. Also mobos usually only have 4 slots in total so its not like its even going to take a lot. I'm rocking 2x48gb sticks and that's plenty for gaming.

The prices are wild tho.

I bought that ram in March 2024 for $384.81. Now it's priced at $1,172.99. LOL

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#34

Post by kragen »

Daishiman wrote: post #5

Inflation metrics seem to fail to capture the increase in leading-edge tech products of the past 18 months.

If we measure the value of the dollar against megabytes of RAM, well, in 01987, the difference between a StarBoard with "2 megs space" and a StarBoard with "2 megs installed" was US$484 (https://archive.org/details/amazing-computing-magazine-1987-...), so a "meg" of RAM cost US$242. Today https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/ says "DDR4-3200 2x8GB" costs US$108; if that means 16GiB, as in 16384 "megs", a "meg" of RAM costs US$0.0066 today.

So the dollar's value has increased by roughly a factor of 36700 over those 38 years, averaging 32% per year.

That would be an average yearly inflation of -24%.

Too bad you can't live in DRAM or eat it when you're hungry.

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#36

Post by kragen »

dvaun wrote: post #14
Alex2037 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

What a ridiculous statement. We have a massive number of people in the USA relying on financial support for purchasing food. Not every single American is fat, especially those who literally can’t afford to eat.

There are lots of Americans who go hungry, but mostly outside the USA. Starvation deaths inside the USA are almost entirely secondary to medical conditions that interfere with eating.

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#37

Post by jmspring »

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.

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#38

Post by Ninjinka »

jakebasile wrote: post #27

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.

Increased demand for computer components for purposes other than gaming constitutes "AI bros murdering your lifelong hobby"?

PC gaming is not "murdered", it's doing better than ever.

In 2015 there were 3,000 games released to Steam, last year there were 18,000. In 2015 Steam's peak concurrent user count was 8.6 million. This year it's 41 million.

The inflation-adjusted price per gigabyte of RAM has dropped from $3/GB to $2/GB over the last 10 years, even including the recent price hikes.

So spare me the hysterics, your hobby is fine.

And you know what? The increased demand for compute always spurs innovation, so you'll probably get a better computer in the end as a result. You're welcome.

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#39

Post by walterbell »

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!

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#40

Post by energy123 »

tstrimple wrote: post #8
Daishiman wrote: post #5

Inflation metrics seem to fail to capture the increase in leading-edge tech products of the past 18 months.

They seem to fail to capture a whole lot of things. Supposedly $1 in 2000 is worth $1.88 in 2025. So 88% inflation over the 25 years. Meanwhile the median home price has increased by 150%. Family insurance by 350%. Median college tuition by 225%. Childcare costs have risen by 200%. But sure. We can buy super cheap 65" tvs now. Hurray for us! Literal kings who lived hundreds of years ago couldn't possibly imagine a wo…

The inflation basket only represent a hypothetical average person, who doesn't even exist.

It's more useful to construct multiple separate inflation measures that represent different types of people. Like a "typical renter" inflation figure vs a "typical homeowner" inflation figure. It wouldn't be hard to do and would shine a light on inequality and help explain the rise of populism in certain segments of society.

An even better measure would somehow appropriately normalize the figure by the average disposable income in each of the segments to come up with a figure that measures the felt impact better.

The figure would be negative for wealthy people (who actually benefit from inflation because of asset price inflation) and positive for poor people (whose disposable income mostly goes to rent).

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