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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

#81

Post by antisthenes »

kragen wrote: post #34
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 "m…

> If we measure the value of the dollar against megabytes of RAM

We should be measuring it by the amount of RAM in a typical household PC in 1987 and today.

Even though a "meg" of RAM costs less than 1 cent today, I can't do anything useful with it.

Even if we are generous and buy a whole $1 of RAM today, it only gets us 150 MB of RAM, which, while infinitely more useful than 1MB, is still completely useless for running a modern OS/Browser.

What does your math say about that?

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#82

Post by [deleted] »

Ninjinka wrote: post #38
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…

[deleted]

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#83

Post by jakebasile »

lupire wrote: post #31
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

I can afford it. Other people cannot, and the hobby is driven by a market existing for games. If newer people don’t enter the hobby as others die out, it fades away.

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#84

Post by jakebasile »

loeg wrote: post #45
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.

Just live with the PC you have for two more years. It's probably not a big deal? A moderately capable machine from 5 years ago is still marginally capable.

Hopefully this blows over in a few years and you’re right and I’m just catastrophizing.

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#85

Post by jakebasile »

edm0nd wrote: post #32
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

It’s frustrating that it’s been one thing after the other, seemingly aimed directly at the thing I enjoy most.

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#86

Post by [deleted] »

somenameforme wrote: post #79

I don't understand this. I'm looking at prices on some Asian store fronts and it's nowhere even remotely near these. I'm looking at DDR5-6000 2x16 for about $130, with no apparent limits. Even with tariffs, transport, and other fees, you could get this to the US for way less than $400. I doubt the market could be this inefficient - in other words I don't think I just found a get rich quick scheme. So, what gives?

[deleted]

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#88

Post by twoodfin »

edm0nd wrote: post #33
ggm wrote: post #3

the other side of the AI bubble are a huge amount of 2nd hand parts of all kinds going to come onto the market?

I would snag up every possible H100 and H200 if the AI bubble burst and their prices went into steep decline.

Why? Doesn’t that suggest that demand justifies the “bubble”?

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#89

Post by AdieuToLogic »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #59
AdieuToLogic wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What specifically happened in June to set this off? Tariffs implemented by this administration: "Inflation has begun to show the first signs of tariff pass-through," said Ellen Zentner, chief economic strategist at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management. "While services inflation continues to moderate, the acceleration in tariff-exposed goods in June is likely the first of greater price pressures to come. The Fed will wa…

Afraid not. This has not happened across the board to all components.

> Afraid not. This has not happened across the board to all components.

Afraid so. Industry impact from tariffs does not require them to be applied "across the board to all components." See here[0] for more information.

With erratic massive tariff proclamations, counter-tariffs are to be expected. All it takes for companies to inflate prices is to either:

  A) be provably impacted by tariffs
  B) be opportunistic by being "tariff adjacent"
The net result is directly or indirectly, the tariffs implemented and/or threatened to be so are a significant contributor to electronic component costs.

0 - https://www.tradecomplianceresourcehub.com/2025/12/03/trump-...

Re: Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months

#90

Post by wtallis »

mistercheph wrote: post #71
VladVladikoff wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Novice question: If they built something other than classic dram modules with the wafers maybe they could achieve faster bus speeds? How does Apple do it?

shorter traces than soldered DIMM allow higher MT/s, this is fixed by CUDIMM/CAMM2, the other part of this is # of memory channels on the board, not sure why, but most consumer DDR5 boards have been 2 memory channels, you need to go to threadripper to get 4 or 8, It's unclear to me if this will still be an issue with future platforms.

You're not paying enough attention to the performance and cost impact of connectors and sockets. CAMM2/LPCAMM and CUDIMM have yet to be demonstrated operating at speeds that speeds that match the fastest soldered LPDDR, let alone GDDR; there's still a clear advantage for soldering memory.

CPU sockets with more than two memory channels are also far more expensive; the higher pin count usually increases the number of layers the motherboard needs, and the larger size of the socket requires more metal for stiffening (and EPYC CPUs still have issues with imperfect mounting leading to some IO lanes not working).

Using BGA soldering for both the processor and the memory sidesteps a bunch of engineering challenges.

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