Live data from Hacker News

RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung

pcworld.com

141–150 of 427 posts

Re: RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had this with gen5 PCIe SSDs recently. My T710 is so fast it's hard to believe. But you need to have a lot of data to make it worth. Example: > time du -sh . 737G . ________________________ Executed in 24.63 secs And on my laptop that has a gen3, lower spec NVMe: > time du -sh . 304G . ________________________ Executed in 80.86 secs It's almost 10 times faster. The CPU must have something to do with it too but t…

To me that reads 3x, not "almost 10x". The main differrence here is probably power. A desktop/server is happy to send 15W to the SSD and hundreds of watts to the CPU, while a laptop wants the SSD running in the ~1 watt range and the CPU in the 10s of watts range.

There's over twice as much content in the first test. It's around 3.8gb/s vs 30gb/s if you divide both folder size and both du durations. That makes it 7.9 times faster and I'm comfortable calling this "almost 10 times".

Re: RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, it was just GPU for a while. But same boat. I regret not getting the 4090 for $1600 direct from Nvidia. "That's too much for a video card", and got the 4080 instead. I dread the day when I need to replace it.

The Radeon RX 9070 XT performs at a similar level to the RTX 5070, and is retailing around $600 right now.

No CUDA means not an option for me.

Re: RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung

#143
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't worry, if you are happy with those specs you can get corporate ewaste dell towers on ebay for low prices. "Dell precision tower", I just saw a listing for 32gb ram, Xeon 3.6ghz for about 300 usd. Personally, at work I use the latest hardware at home I use ewaste.

surely these will soon be scavenged for ram? Arbitrage opportunity?

If they’re DDR4 (or even DDR3), it has no value to e.g. OpenAI so it shouldn’t really matter

Re: RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sears had horizontal market where all of it did basically the same thing. Samsung is a huge conglomerate of several completely different vertical with lots of redundant components. It makes absolutely no sense to apply the lessons from one into the other.

I think what the GP was referring to was the "new" owner of Sears, who reorganized the company into dozens of independent business units in the early 2010s (IT, HR, apparel, electronics, etc). Not departments, either; full-on internal businesses intended as a microcosm of the free market. Each of these units were then given access to an internal "market" and directed to compete with each other for funding. The idea w…

to put a finer point on it, it wasn't just competition or rewarding-the-successful, the CEO straight up set them at odds with each other and told them directly to battle it out.

basically "coffee is for closers... and if you don't sell you're fired" as a large scale corporate policy.

Re: RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung

#145
post #18

I'm running a box I put together in 2014 with an i5-4460 (3.2ghz), 16 GB of RAM, GeForce 750ti, first gen SSD, ASRock H97M Pro4 motherboard with a reasonable PSU, case and a number of fans. All of that parted out at the time was $700. I've never been more fearful of components breaking than current day. With GPU and now memory prices being crazy, I hope I never have to upgrade. I don't know how but the box is still g…

You can still buy DDR4 for pretty cheap, and if you're replacing a computer that old any system built around DDR4 will still be a massive jump in performance.

Re: RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung

#146
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, this actually sounds kinda healthy.

The opposite, nepotism, is very unhealthy, so i think you're correct.

Not sure that the opposite of transfer pricing is nepotism. As far as I know it’s far more common for someone who owns a lake house to assign four weeks a year to each grandkid , than to make them bid real money on it and put that in a maintenance fund or something. Though it’s an interesting idea, it’s not very family friendly

Re: RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were in minimum wage jn the 90s your lifelihood likely didn't rely on Pentium processors. Also, it is frightening how close that is to current day minimum wage.

Except nobody earns the minimum wage today, it's less than 1/2 of 1% of US labor. The median full-time wage is now $62,000. You can start at $13 at almost any national retailer, and $15 or above at CVS / Walgreens / Costco. The cashier positions require zero work background, zero skill, zero education. You can make $11-$13 at what are considered bad jobs, like flipping pizzas at Little Caesars.

Counterpoint: affording average rent for a 1-bedroom apartment (~$1,675) requires that exact median full-time wage. $15 an hour affords you about $740 for monthly housing expenses. One can suggest getting two roommates for a one-bedroom apartment, but they would be missing the fact that this is very unusual for the last century. It's more in line with housing economics from the early-to-mid 19th century.

Re: RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Radeon RX 9070 XT performs at a similar level to the RTX 5070, and is retailing around $600 right now.

No CUDA means not an option for me.

What kinds of applications do you use that require CUDA?

Re: RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung

#149
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you on SSDs, that was the last upgrade that felt like flipping the “modern computer” switch overnight. Everything since has been incremental unless you’re doing ML or high-end gaming.

I know it's not the same. But I think a lot of people had a similar feeling going from Intel-Macbooks to Apple Silicon. An insane upgrade that I still can't believe.

The M1 was great. But the jump felt particularly great because Intel Macbooks had fallen behind in performance per dollar. Great build quality, great trackpad, but if you were after performance they were not exactly the best thing to get

Re: RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung

#150
post #18

I'm running a box I put together in 2014 with an i5-4460 (3.2ghz), 16 GB of RAM, GeForce 750ti, first gen SSD, ASRock H97M Pro4 motherboard with a reasonable PSU, case and a number of fans. All of that parted out at the time was $700. I've never been more fearful of components breaking than current day. With GPU and now memory prices being crazy, I hope I never have to upgrade. I don't know how but the box is still g…

Don't all RAM manufacturers offer a lifetime warranty?

That said, if the shortage gets bad enough then maybe they could find themselves in a situation where they were unable/unwilling to honor warranty claims?

Post reply on HN