Is the RAM shortage killing small VPS hosts?

Post by iszomer » Thu, Jan 29, 2026, 10:48 PM UTC

dijit wrote: post #90

direwolf20 wrote: post #88

RAM is still cheaper than 10 years ago. Every time you ask "are RAM prices killing X?" ask yourself if we had X 10 years ago.

I'm not sure this holds up when you look at the actual numbers. In 2016, you could get a DDR4-2400 16GB kit for $81 [1], and a comparable G.SKILL Ripjaws V kit was around $52 [2]. Today (January 2026), that same G.SKILL kit costs $105-146 [3], and most 16GB DDR4 kits are running $95-150 [4]. So RAM is actually more expensive now than it was 10 years ago, not cheaper. The "did we have X 10 years ago" argument also mis…

Post by filloooo » Thu, Jan 29, 2026, 10:52 PM UTC

direwolf20 wrote: post #89

filloooo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their scale is simply too small to affect the market outside China, majority of their chips will be eaten up by HBM3 production with yet unknown yield rate. They are forbidden to buy foreign equipment beyond their current process node, which is already obsolete, die size is 40% bigger than Samsung, not to mention lithography, the big 3 are using EUV while they are stuck with lobotomized DUV. They can start making som…

They will grow exponentially and catch the western market unawares in 10-15 years with a sudden flood of cheap, effective chips. Just like everything else China makes. Electric vehicles for example.

Post by nagisa » Thu, Jan 29, 2026, 10:57 PM UTC

nerdsniper wrote: post #60

alecco wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will first fill the local demand for all their electronics manufacturing. Then their massive computer infra and AI. And if any is left, it will be bundled to local PC exporters like Lenovo.

It’s fine if it’s just filling Chinese manufacturing. Low-cost VPS hosts are going to be using brands like Supermicro anyways. It still gets exported. Except for RAM from YMTC, which the USA gave a near-death sentence to by placing it on the Dept. of Commerce “Entity List” so no USA-associated business can do business with YMTC now.

Post by direwolf20 » Thu, Jan 29, 2026, 10:59 PM UTC

neelc wrote: post #70

miyuru wrote: post #2

Most low-end providers will just keep using old hardware for longer. IPv4 shortages didn’t kill it, and I don’t think this will either.

For providers like us, we have to lease IPv4. We came long after IPv4 was already depleted. IPv4 prices did go down. Despite that, the $15/year 128MB BuyVM plan is long-gone. But for a new provider like us, we'd have to spend more than an established player like BuyVM or RackNerd who bought most of their servers pre-AI-boom.

Post by direwolf20 » Thu, Jan 29, 2026, 11:00 PM UTC

megous wrote: post #64

Tiberium wrote: post #44

I don't know if you can consider Netcup "small", but their RS 4000 G12 ("root server", basically a VPS with dedicated/guaranteed resources) costs ~€31 for a monthly contract for any location in Europe without VAT included. It's 12 dedicated cores of a modern EPYC CPU, 32GB RAM, 1TB NVMe. I got that offer during their Black Friday sale and pay €25/month (price before VAT), plus the offer I got has a 2TB NVMe instead o…

So with 8 customers per box (AMD EPYC™ 9645 CPU has 96 cores) if they have single-cpu boxes, that would need 256 GiB RAM. CPU launch price 11000 USD. RAM will likely be another 10000 USD 20000 / 8 customers / 40 USD/mo = 62 months just to recoup CPU and RAM let alone other components. Weird, whenever I napkin math offers of any HW for renting, I get that I could buy it myself in 1-2 years of rent. Sometimes faster. D…