Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business • Hacker News Board

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#231

Post by Aeolun » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 5:01 AM UTC

mh- wrote: post #176

tharkun__ wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not my experience. I've been able to go to a local store to buy PC components for more than 35 years now and last did to upgrade the RAM in the laptop to be eligible for Win11. Online only was not cheaper and local store had it available same day. Local store does have online presence and is a chain tho. Mouse replacement on a weekend coz old one broke same story (button smashed in and not usable at all any longer).…

I'm curious where you live. Anecdotally, this is the opposite to the experience of everyone I know.

I can do this in in Tokyo, and even small town Netherlands. Though in the last I’ll only have a choice between two different crappy mouses.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#232

Post by 0manrho » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 5:04 AM UTC

theelous3 wrote: post #45

httpz wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The brand aware "consumers" are really just DIY PC builders, which is relatively a small number. Enterprise DRAM business is doing so great that Micron just doesn't see the consumer market is worth chasing. This is bad for consumers though since DRAM prices are skyrocketing and now we have one less company making consumer DRAM.

The people who occupy the b2b ram buying kind of jobs are not aliens from another planet. Brand awareness in consumer markets, especially ones that are so closely tied to people's jobs (nerds gonna nerd) is going to have a knock on effect. It's not like a clothing brand or something.

Yes, but the consumer brand has to have a good reputation for that to pan out positively in B2B. Crucial has a decent reputation, but the problem is that there hasn't been any innovation in the consumer DRAM market for 2 decades that wasn't driven by/copied from the enterprise sector. The difference between a Crucial DIMM and a Micron Unbuffered dimm is which brands sticker they put on it, and maybe a heatsink and tighter binning/QA. That's not unique to Micron/Crucial. Aside from "Moar RGB", what innovation has happened in this space in the consumer side of things that isn't just a mirror of the enterprise side (eg DDR4 to DDR5)? XPO/XMP? That's Intel/AMD dictating things to DRAM companies. So what impression really are people meant to carry over from Crucial to Micron in this instance? How is Micron meant to leverage the Crucial brand in this space to stand out above others?

Similar story on the SSD side of things regarding reputation/innovation, especially when you consider that Crucial SSD's are no more "micron" in a hardware sense than a Corsair one built using Micron flash (support is a different matter), as the controllers were contracted out to 3rd parties (Phison) and the flash used was entry level/previous gen surplus compared to what's put in enterprise. The demands and usecase for consumers and even prosumers/enthusiasts are very different and in general substantially less than on the enterprise side of things with SSDs, and that gulf is only growing wider. So again, what is meant to carry over? How can Micron leverage Crucial to stand out when the consumer market just doesn't have the demands to support them making strong investment to stand out?

Frankly, taking what you say farther, I think if this is what they want to do (having consumer brand recognition that can carry over in some meaningful way to B2B), then sundowning crucial now (given the current supply issues) and then eventually re-entering the market when things return to some sense of "normal" as Micron so that both consumer and enterprise brands are the same brand, "Micron", makes much more sense.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#233

Post by seanmcdirmid » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 5:09 AM UTC

linguae wrote: post #139

I'm sad. I'm a software guy, not much of a hardware expert, so please bear with me if I"m too pessimistic. However, I feel that if trends like this continue, it might be the end of enthusiast-level personal computing as we know it. No more being able to head down to the electronics store and purchase RAM, motherboards, processors, GPUs, storage, and other components. We're going to be limited to locked-down terminals…

Apple CPUs come with their own GPUs on die and RAM in the chip package now. How much more is going to be put on the chip and assembled in increasingly fine grained processes?

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#234

Post by xethos » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 5:12 AM UTC

mh- wrote: post #176

tharkun__ wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not my experience. I've been able to go to a local store to buy PC components for more than 35 years now and last did to upgrade the RAM in the laptop to be eligible for Win11. Online only was not cheaper and local store had it available same day. Local store does have online presence and is a chain tho. Mouse replacement on a weekend coz old one broke same story (button smashed in and not usable at all any longer).…

I'm curious where you live. Anecdotally, this is the opposite to the experience of everyone I know.

In Canada, BC's lower mainland (and parts of Ontario, Alberta, and a few others I can't speak of first-hand) have both Memory Express and Canada Computers. We used to have NCIX as well, though they've left (at least) BC

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#235

Post by nish__ » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 5:15 AM UTC

sgnelson wrote: post #93

I feel like the "democratization of technology" is on the back slide. For the longest time, we had more and more access to high end technology at very reasonable price points. Now it feels like if you're not Facebook, Google, OpenAI, etc. etc. computation isn't for you. I hope this is just a blip, but I think there is a trend over the past few years.

It's definitely just a blip.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#236

Post by darkteflon » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 5:19 AM UTC

Despite not really needing it yet, I took the opportunity to go straight to Amazon and pick up a 2tb 2230 for my Steam Deck. I’m also going to upgrade the homelab to an M4 Mini now, despite having decided earlier this month that the current N100 was fine for a few more years. Genuinely feels like whatever is happening is going to fundamentally change the way these products are marketed and sold in a permanent way.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#237

Post by ebuss » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 5:25 AM UTC

tehlike wrote: post #207

dawnerd wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, it's actually pretty awesome the deals you can get on used enterprise gear.

At the cost of power consumption. My small homelab is already at 600Ws which is around 290$/mo in california.

Is there a particular reason you're in California?

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#238

Post by renewiltord » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 5:26 AM UTC

sgnelson wrote: post #93

I feel like the "democratization of technology" is on the back slide. For the longest time, we had more and more access to high end technology at very reasonable price points. Now it feels like if you're not Facebook, Google, OpenAI, etc. etc. computation isn't for you. I hope this is just a blip, but I think there is a trend over the past few years.

This is an unreal thing to say. Dude I can buy a chip on eBay with almost a gigabyte of L3 cache. That’s never been possible before.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#239

Post by zarzavat » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 5:27 AM UTC

jmward01 wrote: post #197

zarzavat wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just a brand. They can start it up again later if enterprise demand falls.

I hear the cries of a thousand people in marketing right now. Building a brand takes time. I could see this if they were thinking they needed to re-invent the brand and to help with that they were strategically taking a break but that seems like a stretch.

It's kind of the opposite. Crucial is a throwaway brand so that the premium brand (Micron) can sell cheaper shit without tarnishing their enterprise branding.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#240

Post by dawnerd » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 5:38 AM UTC

tehlike wrote: post #207

dawnerd wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, it's actually pretty awesome the deals you can get on used enterprise gear.

At the cost of power consumption. My small homelab is already at 600Ws which is around 290$/mo in california.

I prefer to just not think about it and blame charging my car. Also in Cali.

I don't know if I'd buy any of the servers or older computers but the internal components are pretty dang good. Stuff like hard drives, network cards, hbas, that's the real money saver right there.