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DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

jeffgeerling.com

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Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#151

Post by [deleted] »

JollySharp0 wrote: post #120
Chyzwar wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Main producers actually reduced dram output in 2026. When you have few players with very high capital cost you will end up with cartels like light bulb cartel.

Someone will come in when the price goes up enough. It will take time, but it will happen. What people are complaining about is that the time for this to happen is too long. Oh look, there is a player coming into the market it seems: https://economy.ac/news/2026/02/202602288291#:~:text=If%20eq... EDIT: In fact many other chinese companies are now expanding into DRAM because of the high prices. Which confirms exactly…

[deleted]

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#153

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

knicholes wrote: post #132
wpferrell wrote: post #2

Totally agree. Just like graphics card prices. Is it worth building a pc now?

After discovering Dell Alienware clearance and graphics card availability in those Alienware computers, I haven't felt the need to build a computer for the last five years.

I looked on their site. I don’t see any section for clearance.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#154

Post by stuxnet79 »

Havoc wrote: post #62

Bought a couple of 32gb SBCs before this all hit the fan. And also built a SSD NAS before the wave hit. So timed that all pretty great. What worries me is my desktop is up for a full new buy somewhere around early '28. That could be a train wreck depending on how taiwan situation goes

> So timed that all pretty great. What worries me is my desktop is up for a full new buy somewhere around early '28

That's a very specific date / timeline. How do you decide to do a full new buy? I ask because I own a desktop that I built 15 years ago which I was flirting with replacing completely last year, but unfortunately I didn't pull the trigger ... oops :(

My old rig is still going strong. The motherboard can only take up to 32GB DDR3 though. CPU is an Intel i7-4790k which is still very fair today if you are not running a resource hog OS (looking at you Windows). Overall it is completely serviceable for my needs. Being honest with myself the only reason I wanted to upgrade was for nerd cred but I don't game much anymore and don't do any ML tasks that require lots of local compute.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#155

Post by dghlsakjg »

culi wrote: post #125

Does anyone mind explaining why the 2GB model only increased by 20% in price while the 16GB model nearly tripled in price?

The main cost input is presumably ram. They are passing it through.

If everything on the board but the ram costs $30, and ram is going from $10/gb to $20/gb, then they have to change the price $50 -> $70 to break even on the 2gb board, and $190 -> $350 for the 16gb board.

In other words, the raspi is now priced like a stick of ram with a bonus computer attached because ram is massively more expensive than the rest of the computer.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#156

Post by JollySharp0 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #147
JollySharp0 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you not read what I said? I couldn't even get a replacement video card at any price during the height of COVID and believe you I had the money to pay for one. I couldn't even get a Raspberry PI (any model) for about a year. They were constantly out of stock. > That's not a blip; that's 6-fold hike and there is no sign it is slowing down any time soon. How does that invalidate anything I said? As states in the art…

> Did you not read what I said? I couldn't even get a replacement video card at any price during the height of COVID and believe you I had the money to pay for one. You're comparing to memory sticks that went up 6x. If you were offering anywhere near 6x MSRP and you couldn't get a video card... I don't believe you. https://www.pcmag.com/news/scalpers-have-sold-50000-nvidia-r... https://www.pcmag.com/news/read-it-and-…

I am in the UK. Not the US!

> If you were offering 5x MSRP and you couldn't get a video card... I don't believe you.

My 1080Ti had died. I had to use a 8800GTS from the late 2000s for about a year. As that was the only GPU I had. I have no iGPU on my CPU.

There was at one time, no stock available. Not on Amazon, Not on Overclockers, Not on Scan. They had some weird lotto system taking place on most sites.

Scalpers claimed to have cards. But I wouldn't risk sending a lot of money to some random seller on ebay.

> Unless this article is massively misleading, sure it was out of stock at 1x price but it wasn't out of stock at 2-3x price.

Again I am in the UK. You could not buy any PI other than 1GB model and maybe the zero. Both of which were useless to me.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#157

Post by JollySharp0 »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #121
JollySharp0 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doomers IMO are just click baiting. There is a saying that is often trotted out my economists "That the cure for high prices, is high prices". There is a consumer market and business need for DRAM outside of AI. Someone will fulfil the need as there is a high incentive to. It just going to take a bit of time for this to happen. My equipment is going to be fine for another few years. So I am going to just hang tight a…

So are AI evangelists to be fair.

It is almost as if two or more things can be true at the same time.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#158

Post by Dylan16807 »

JollySharp0 wrote: post #156
Dylan16807 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did you not read what I said? I couldn't even get a replacement video card at any price during the height of COVID and believe you I had the money to pay for one. You're comparing to memory sticks that went up 6x. If you were offering anywhere near 6x MSRP and you couldn't get a video card... I don't believe you. https://www.pcmag.com/news/scalpers-have-sold-50000-nvidia-r... https://www.pcmag.com/news/read-it-and-…

I am in the UK. Not the US! > If you were offering 5x MSRP and you couldn't get a video card... I don't believe you. My 1080Ti had died. I had to use a 8800GTS from the late 2000s for about a year. As that was the only GPU I had. I have no iGPU on my CPU. There was at one time, no stock available. Not on Amazon, Not on Overclockers, Not on Scan. They had some weird lotto system taking place on most sites. Scalpers cl…

Okay, UK, maybe that changes things more than I expected. But what about ebay and the sites that replaced classified ads? And is it unreasonable for me to say that you could have bought a US listing and had it reshipped?

Edit since you added: Scalpers claimed to have cards. But I wouldn't risk sending a lot of money to some random seller on ebay.

Even with ebay's buyer protection?

Well not to be mean but I think "I refused to use ebay" invalidates your claim that you couldn't buy a card.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#159

Post by autophagian »

jokoon wrote: post #6

it's probably time to call those old retired programmers to ask them how to reduce software memory footprint or to teach that again

Seems unnecessary. We can simply ask the LLMs to do it after, of course, imploring them to not make any mistakes.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#160

Post by megous »

pessimizer wrote: post #67
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?

Because it can't?

Based on a FIDO2 spec I used it to write a reasonably compliant security token implementation that runs on top of Linux USB gadget subsystem (xcept for attestation, because that's completely useless anyway). It also extracted tests from an messy proprietary electron based compliance testsuite that FIDO alliance uses and rewrote them in clean and much more understandable C without a shitton of dependencies that electron mess uses. Without any dependencies but openssl libcrypto, for that matter.

In like 4 hours. (and most of that was me copy pasting things around to feed it reasonable chunks of information, feature by feature)

It also wrote a real-time passive DTLS-SRTP decryptor in C in like 1 hour total based on just the DTLS-SRTP RFC and a sample code of how I write suckless things in C.

I mean people can believe whatever they want. But I believe LLMs can write a reasonably fine C.

I believe that coding LLMs are particularly nice for people who are into C and suckless.

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