DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market • Hacker News Board

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#81

Post by neonstatic » Wed, Apr 01, 2026, 10:57 PM UTC

ozborn wrote: post #50

neonstatic wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Collusion of large corporations promoting LLMs > We all know that DRAM prices have spiked since production is going to those infernal chatbot training data centers I know it's very fashionable here to talk about capitalism as some hand-washes-hand big corp organized scam, but if you put that ideology aside for a moment, you contradicted yourself here, I think. I personally don't like conspiracy-theory-thinking. If…

A couple of issues, first there is a history of price collusion (see DRAM price fixing scandal on Wikipedia) and while it may be "logical" from a seller point of view to prefer large orders, this upsets a lot of people and used to be illegal in the United States (it may still be illegal, but it's not enforced)

Oh, I did not know that. Thanks for the clarification

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#82

Post by throwaway85825 » Wed, Apr 01, 2026, 10:57 PM UTC

IncreasePosts wrote: post #49

zozbot234 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just rewrite your biggest memory hogs in Rust, it routinely slashes RAM footprint and demand for RAM throughput. The effect is even bigger than the typical reduction in CPU use. You can even ask AI to help you with the task, it will use a lot less RAM for it than the rewrite will save down the road.

Why would we need rust, if the AI can just write really good code in C that doesn't exhibit any of the issues that rust protects you from?

The Rust ecosystem and build tools are much easier to use than C. The value of a language isn't just syntax.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#83

Post by parl_match » Wed, Apr 01, 2026, 10:57 PM UTC

rtpg wrote: post #71

am I crazy for thinking that the 16GB Pi 5 is just there to absorb money from people who purchase the most expensive version of things? Like really nobody needs that much RAM on a Pi?

Yes, you are crazy for thinking that. The extra ram is useful for small LLMs and also running lots of dock containers. The very low power consumption makes it ideal for a low end home server.

I use the 16GB SKU to host a bunch of containers and some light debugging tools, and the power usage that sips at idle will probably pay for the whole board over my previous home server, within about 5 years.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#84

Post by teaearlgraycold » Wed, Apr 01, 2026, 10:57 PM UTC

fidotron wrote: post #4

OTOH things which belong on microcontrollers are now being pushed back to microcontrollers for cost reasons, so there is a win to be found there.

I’ve been having a lot of fun with the Pi Pico 2W. It can host an access point, a web server, be a USB host, and of course has GPIO. And not running an OS means it’s way simpler.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#85

Post by jonhohle » Wed, Apr 01, 2026, 10:58 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #73

The extreme DRAM market has had an unexpected side effect of triggering a lot of panic buying. I know several people who delayed PC upgrades for years but then panic bought new systems in this market. The trigger was seeing all of the "It's only going to get worse" and "This is the end of personal computing" headlines. They're already regretting spending so much now that prices have started to tick downward. I keep t…

What’s interesting is mini pcs are dirt cheap. The RAM for them costs as much or more than a barebones Ryzen 7 mini pc.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#86

Post by duskwuff » Wed, Apr 01, 2026, 10:58 PM UTC

elwebmaster wrote: post #55

mhb wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if AI cures cancer.

You don't have to imagine, it will hallucinate you a slop with full confidence every time.

I've already seen at least one person who was pretty sure that the preprint paper they co-authored with AI (read: AI wrote for them) was going to cure cancer and make them billions of dollars.

There was only one problem. The paper jumped straight from "this paper will show how our new treatment could cures cancer forever" to "as you can see, these results clearly show that our treatment cures cancer" - with neither any actual results nor any specifics on the treatment. And I don't just mean that the paper didn't go into details; writing the paper was the full extent of their "research".

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#87

Post by IncreasePosts » Wed, Apr 01, 2026, 10:59 PM UTC

msy wrote: post #58

IncreasePosts wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would we need rust, if the AI can just write really good code in C that doesn't exhibit any of the issues that rust protects you from?

'rewrite in C, make sure there are no memory leaks'. You first.

Why is that less realistic than saying 'rewrite in rust, make sure there are no memory leaks'?

My point, which I should have been clearer with, is that we aren't at a state where you can just one shot a rewrite of a complex application into another language and expect some sort of free savings. Once we are at that state, and it's good enough to pull it off, why wouldn't the AI be able to pull it off in C as well?

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#88

Post by zozbot234 » Wed, Apr 01, 2026, 10:59 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #73

The extreme DRAM market has had an unexpected side effect of triggering a lot of panic buying. I know several people who delayed PC upgrades for years but then panic bought new systems in this market. The trigger was seeing all of the "It's only going to get worse" and "This is the end of personal computing" headlines. They're already regretting spending so much now that prices have started to tick downward. I keep t…

That's actually a reasonable response to market volatility and illiquidity. It's not just high prices, but prices that still fail to be representative of the actual market stance despite the rises.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#89

Post by nostrademons » Wed, Apr 01, 2026, 10:59 PM UTC

CTDOCodebases wrote: post #30

dangus wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s strange, there aren’t wider market supply chain issues outside of DRAM. Maybe your vendor is just throwing excuses around.

Fuel price rises = logistics price rises.

This is driven by AI datacenter demand, not fuel prices. RAM prices have actually dropped significantly in the last couple days as the Iran war hit and the possibility that interest rates might go up and pop the AI bubble sunk in. (Though let’s see where they go after the last couple days of whipsawing.)

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#90

Post by SideQuark » Wed, Apr 01, 2026, 11:00 PM UTC

elwebmaster wrote: post #55

mhb wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if AI cures cancer.

You don't have to imagine, it will hallucinate you a slop with full confidence every time.

AI was used fundamentally for COVID vaccine development. AI is used for research in all modern drugs. It’s a certainty if cancer gets cured AI will have played a fundamental role since it’s already fundamental to precursors.