RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung • Hacker News Board

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

#201

Post by skylurk » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 5:35 PM UTC

wongarsu wrote: post #149

asenna wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

For as long as I can remember, before M1, Macs were always behind in the CPU department. PC's had much better value if you cared about CPU performance.

After the M1, my casual home laptop started outperforming my top-spec work laptops.

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

#202

Post by MrVitaliy » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 5:38 PM UTC

Forgeties79 wrote: post #198

vondur wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha, I bought one of those for $500 from Ebay. It's a dual Xeon Silver workstation with a Nvidia Quadro P400 8GB, 128GB RAM and 256G SSD. I threw in a 1TB SSD and it's been working pretty well.

What are the limitations of machines like these?

Just performance when compared to current generation hardware. Not significantly worse, but things like DDR4 ram and single thread performance show the signs of aging. Frankly for similar $$$ you can get a new hardware from beelink or equivalent.

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

#203

Post by filloooo » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 5:39 PM UTC

itopaloglu83 wrote: post #4

The manufacturers are willing to quadruple the prices for the foreseeable future but not change their manufacturing quotes a bit. So much for open markets, somebody must check their books and manufacturing schedules.

Memory chips have always been a very cyclical business, that's why their stock prices remain relatively low despite a windfall happening.

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

#204

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 5:41 PM UTC

aceazzameen wrote: post #157

I really wanted to build a new PC this year, which is obviously not happening anymore. But I do have 2x16GB DDR5 SODIMMs from my laptop that I'm not using, after I upgraded to 64GB a while back. Now I wonder if I can build a tiny PC around those? Does anyone make motherboards that support DDR5 laptop memory?

[deleted]

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

#205

Post by t0mas88 » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 5:43 PM UTC

Forgeties79 wrote: post #198

vondur wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha, I bought one of those for $500 from Ebay. It's a dual Xeon Silver workstation with a Nvidia Quadro P400 8GB, 128GB RAM and 256G SSD. I threw in a 1TB SSD and it's been working pretty well.

What are the limitations of machines like these?

Power usage is the main limitation of using these as a home server. They have a high idle power use.

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

#206

Post by simlevesque » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 5:46 PM UTC

ls65536 wrote: post #166

simlevesque wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

The total size isn't what matters in this case but rather the total number of files/directories that need to be traversed (and their file sizes summed).

I responded here, it's essentially the same content: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46150030

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

#207

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 5:47 PM UTC

Forgeties79 wrote: post #198

vondur wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha, I bought one of those for $500 from Ebay. It's a dual Xeon Silver workstation with a Nvidia Quadro P400 8GB, 128GB RAM and 256G SSD. I threw in a 1TB SSD and it's been working pretty well.

What are the limitations of machines like these?

[deleted]

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

#208

Post by arprocter » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 5:49 PM UTC

Forgeties79 wrote: post #198

vondur wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha, I bought one of those for $500 from Ebay. It's a dual Xeon Silver workstation with a Nvidia Quadro P400 8GB, 128GB RAM and 256G SSD. I threw in a 1TB SSD and it's been working pretty well.

What are the limitations of machines like these?

On Dell you'll probably be stuck with the original mobo, and their SFFs don't take standard PSUs

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

#209

Post by zzzeek » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 5:49 PM UTC

Cerium wrote: post #74

nickjj wrote: 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 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.

ive dealt a bit with ewaste kinds of machines, old Dells and such and have two still running here, the issue is they use a crapton of power. I had one such ewaste Dell machine that I just had to take to the dump it was so underpeforming while it used 3x more power than my other two Dells combined.

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

#210

Post by khannn » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 5:50 PM UTC

n8cpdx wrote: post #189

khannn wrote: post #125

"The price of eggs has nothing on the price of computer memory right now.". A dozen eggs went to ~$5. They are eggs and most people use what, max 12 eggs a month? Get out of here with that trite garbage. Everyone knew that the egg shortage was due to the extreme step the US does of culling herds infected with avian flu and that they were transitory.

Eggs have traditionally been an extremely cheap protein staple. A typical pattern might be to have two eggs for breakfast (a whopping 120 calories), boiled eggs for lunch/snack (another 60-120 calories), and of course baking, but I will pretend that people don’t bake. A more typical serving for an adult breakfast might be 3 eggs if not supplemented. For mom and dad and the little one, you’re now at 35 (2+2+1+2)x5 egg…

Parents in the US don't feed their kids eggs for breakfast, it's majority cereal or breakfast bars. Maybe some yogurt but that's almost always upper middle class or above.

"If you’re a typical HN user in the US you might be out of touch with the reality that costs going up $10/week can be a real hardship when you’re raising a family on limited income.".

Skill issue. Oatmeal is very cheap and filling. The aforementioned yogurt. Nothing, yeah nothing, because the average person is obese here and nothing is exactly what they need for breakfast. A piece of fruit like the perennial classic banana for breakfast. Complaining about egg prices comes from the camp of "I tried nothing and nothing worked".