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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

#181

Post by Kaliboy »

noosphr wrote: post #141
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.

>That’s strange, there aren’t wider market supply chain issues outside of DRAM. GPUs, ram, ssds, hdds, hell even CPUs are starting to climb in price. It's an everything shortage and it's only getting worse. A workstation that two years ago cost $3,000 was $10,000 last month and $10,500 this month. There are parts which aren't available at any price.

Wait what? That's over 300%.

Between this revelation and that post recently on HN about the scanned receipts and egg prices, I find myself wondering if we're worrying about the wrong things.

We're seeing massive inflation in computing, but because the dollar is holding its value we call it increased prices. But the buying by the big buyers is the thing driving the inflation, its mechanism is scarcity.

But it's also localized. Only we experience this as a problem because compared to the hyperscalers we're poor.

The same idea applies to the price of groceries. As the prices increase, base increase being inflation, but logistic efficiency also plays a big role.

The effect is the same. The ones with more spendable income don't experience an issue yet in the projects nobody is eating fresh veggies.

The part that scares me is the creep, as I call it. Throughout the years I've always been able to carry price shocks and such but this time I'm out of the game. No more DRAM for me.

I then wonder if one day, without losing my job, I won't be able to pay for veggies.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#182

Post by JollySharp0 »

kelnos wrote: post #177
JollySharp0 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even with ebay's buyer protection? I've had problems with it before (I can't remember specifics as it was a while ago). I'd rather not going through the hassle and/or risk in the first place. There are still plenty of scams on ebay. During this era there were people scamming. e.g the box for a GPU. Listing the entire specs and then putting right at the bottom of the listing it was only the box and not the card. > W…

> What you are doing is being hyper-pedantic. It is fucking tiresome when people do this online. That's not pedantry. There's a huge difference between "they were unavailable and I couldn't get one at any price" and "I could have bought one from a scalper but I didn't trust them". Even if it's reasonable not to trust them (it is!), the first statement is sensational, and untrue, especially considering you emphasized…

> That's not pedantry. There's a huge difference between "they were simply unavailable and I couldn't get one at any price" and "I could have bought one from a scalper but I didn't trust them". Even if it's reasonable not to trust them (it is!), the first statement is sensational, and untrue, especially considering you emphasized "at any price" in your original comment.

It is for any normal person in relatively normal setting.

Only amongst technical people is this sort of discourse tolerated where someone pretends that an unreasonable option (the scalper in this case as you admitted yourself) should be included in a statement when it is perfectly obvious it should not be included because it is not in any way reasonable.

I could have flown to the US and bought a card or China. Is that reasonable? For most people it isn't reasonable. It wasn't for me. Buying from an untrustworthy seller, is unreasonable.

> the first statement is sensational, and untrue, especially considering you emphasized "at any price" in your original comment.

They were out of stock on every reputable site. Therefore I could not buy a card at any price from them because they didn't exist.

> That's what you should have said in the first place; that would have been honest and correct.

I was honest and correct to begin with. The poster was using prices and availability in the US and not the UK.

> And please, there's no need to call the other poster names.

I never called them names. I expressed my annoyance at their behaviour.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#183

Post by Dylan16807 »

JollySharp0 wrote: post #182
kelnos wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What you are doing is being hyper-pedantic. It is fucking tiresome when people do this online. That's not pedantry. There's a huge difference between "they were unavailable and I couldn't get one at any price" and "I could have bought one from a scalper but I didn't trust them". Even if it's reasonable not to trust them (it is!), the first statement is sensational, and untrue, especially considering you emphasized…

> That's not pedantry. There's a huge difference between "they were simply unavailable and I couldn't get one at any price" and "I could have bought one from a scalper but I didn't trust them". Even if it's reasonable not to trust them (it is!), the first statement is sensational, and untrue, especially considering you emphasized "at any price" in your original comment. It is for any normal person in relatively norma…

> It is for any normal person in relatively normal setting.

A normal person understands scalping and that if they want it badly enough they can go on ebay.

They're not going to say it's "unavailable at any price" when it's right there for double the price.

If you're willing to pay the scalped price, the risk of using ebay is not in fact unreasonable.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#184

Post by kelnos »

JollySharp0 wrote: post #182
kelnos wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What you are doing is being hyper-pedantic. It is fucking tiresome when people do this online. That's not pedantry. There's a huge difference between "they were unavailable and I couldn't get one at any price" and "I could have bought one from a scalper but I didn't trust them". Even if it's reasonable not to trust them (it is!), the first statement is sensational, and untrue, especially considering you emphasized…

> That's not pedantry. There's a huge difference between "they were simply unavailable and I couldn't get one at any price" and "I could have bought one from a scalper but I didn't trust them". Even if it's reasonable not to trust them (it is!), the first statement is sensational, and untrue, especially considering you emphasized "at any price" in your original comment. It is for any normal person in relatively norma…

> It is for any normal person in relatively normal setting.

I disagree. But clearly I'm not going to convince you (and vice versa), so let's just call it a day.

> I never called them names. I expressed my annoyance at their behaviour.

"Smart arse" is name-calling.

Why don't you step back from the keyboard for a bit and cool down. Might do you some good.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#185

Post by JollySharp0 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #175
JollySharp0 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even with ebay's buyer protection? I've had problems with it before (I can't remember specifics as it was a while ago). I'd rather not going through the hassle and/or risk in the first place. There are still plenty of scams on ebay. During this era there were people scamming. e.g the box for a GPU. Listing the entire specs and then putting right at the bottom of the listing it was only the box and not the card. > W…

I wasn't trying to be a smart arse at all. "I couldn't get a new card from a store" and "I couldn't get a card at all" are extremely different claims in my mind. I'd rate my pedantry level as quite low. From my point of view this is not a nitpick. Especially because you emphasized "at any price". It's the scalpers and the used market that were selling at any price. Sticking to reputable stores means sticking close to…

Buying from scalpers and other untrustworthy people like thieves and other toerags is unreasonable.

I would expect people to understand that unreasonable options should be omitted from conversation.

There was no stock at any of the online outlets that are commonly used in the UK when it came to GPUs for what seemed like a long time.

> I'd rate my pedantry level as quite low. From my point of view this is not a nitpick.

"I have investigated myself and found that I did nothing wrong".

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#186

Post by noosphr »

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…

>They're already regretting spending so much now that prices have started to tick downward.

Where?

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#187

Post by Dylan16807 »

polishdude20 wrote: post #168
ttul wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This time is different. https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/#ram.ddr5.60... The price for a couple of 32GB sticks is now over $1200 after being stable at about $200 for several years until last September. That's not a blip; that's 6-fold hike and there is no sign it is slowing down any time soon.

https://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX00115488

Let's see, this is a low speed 2x16GB DDR4 kit for $300.

The closest option on the pcpartpicker chart was about $75 as a stable price. So that one's only a 4x increase.

Versus DDR5 where... it looks like a 5x increase to me? I'm seeing a jump from 200USD up to 1000USD. Edit: Oh there's an extra jump in the last month on the CAD version but not the USD version.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#188

Post by Dylan16807 »

JollySharp0 wrote: post #185
Dylan16807 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't trying to be a smart arse at all. "I couldn't get a new card from a store" and "I couldn't get a card at all" are extremely different claims in my mind. I'd rate my pedantry level as quite low. From my point of view this is not a nitpick. Especially because you emphasized "at any price". It's the scalpers and the used market that were selling at any price. Sticking to reputable stores means sticking close to…

Buying from scalpers and other untrustworthy people like thieves and other toerags is unreasonable. I would expect people to understand that unreasonable options should be omitted from conversation. There was no stock at any of the online outlets that are commonly used in the UK when it came to GPUs for what seemed like a long time. > I'd rate my pedantry level as quite low. From my point of view this is not a nitpic…

Ebay is reasonable.

Ebay is not all scalpers either. You could have gotten another 1080Ti from a legitimate previous owner.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#189

Post by hombre_fatal »

andrewstuart2 wrote: post #105
bashtoni wrote: post #95

Helium supply issues are only going to make this worse. I feel like for the first time in our lives we might have seen peak technology for the next few years. Everyone is going to have to make do instead of depending on ever increasing performance.

Finally, good efficient code is going to get its moment to shine! Which will totally happen because it's not like 80% of the industry is vibe coding everything, right?

Vibe coding might be a positive here since there's no need to optimize for DX over perf when the clanker is the one reading/writing code.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#190

Post by JollySharp0 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #183
JollySharp0 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's not pedantry. There's a huge difference between "they were simply unavailable and I couldn't get one at any price" and "I could have bought one from a scalper but I didn't trust them". Even if it's reasonable not to trust them (it is!), the first statement is sensational, and untrue, especially considering you emphasized "at any price" in your original comment. It is for any normal person in relatively norma…

> It is for any normal person in relatively normal setting. A normal person understands scalping and that if they want it badly enough they can go on ebay. They're not going to say it's "unavailable at any price" when it's right there for double the price. If you're willing to pay the scalped price, the risk of using ebay is not in fact unreasonable.

You are being a pendant as far as I am concerned and arguing semantics with me is not going to convince me and many others.

So I suggest in future you should learn that using this line of logic (where you expect me to do something unreasonable to a huge number of people) is not something that people are going to put up with. It is really annoying to have to converse in this manner and in fact I believe that often that is wholly disingenuous and I no longer wish to speak to you.

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