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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

#191

Post by tempest_ »

zozbot234 wrote: post #78
tempest_ wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isnt lost but it also isnt a common skill set in programmers any more. Most programmers are JS web devs writing client side code or server side CRUD. I would guess < 10% of programmers writing code today get perf / valgrind out on the regular. I know I dont.

You can still write JS or TypeScript code that tries its best to keep memory use under check. JavaScript was around in the late 90s when the memory footprint of software was at least an order of magnitude lower, so it's absolutely doable.

JavaScript in the late 90s was doing a hell of a lot less than it is today.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#192

Post by JollySharp0 »

kelnos wrote: post #173
JollySharp0 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Scalpers claimed to have cards. But I wouldn't risk sending a lot of money to some random seller on ebay. Ah, so you could have bought one, but you judged the available suppliers to be too risky. Completely fair, but then it's not true that you couldn't buy one "at any price". It was just not a price+risk that you were willing to take. Also, re: Raspberry Pis, you couldn't always get the exact RAM configuration you…

> Completely fair, but then it's not true that you couldn't buy one "at any price". It was just not a price+risk that you were willing to take.

You are being pedantic. I find this type of discussion very tiresome. I've explained why in other forks of this thread. Quite honestly it pisses me off.

> Also, re: Raspberry Pis, you couldn't always get the exact RAM configuration you wanted, but they were pretty continuously available during COVID on Aliexpress. You did have to pay 3-5x normal price, but you could do it. I really needed one after one at home died, and paid the 3x markup, and it was annoying but fine. Not sure if Aliexpress is equally as available in the UK as it is here in the US, though.

Not in the UK. Someone was running a site with all the places that you could buy from. I was checking most days. Stock was extremely limited other than a few models.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#194

Post by hsbauauvhabzb »

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?

Browsers treat RAM as infinite, if you want to for whatever reason open LinkedIn, you might wanna get a bigger model. I’d personally rather buy more ram than I need rather than deal with the cost of fixing / working around the issue in future

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#195

Post by Dylan16807 »

JollySharp0 wrote: post #190
Dylan16807 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 tha…

If I categorized these situations the way you do, and I said what I'm saying, I would be a pedant.

But I see things a different way. The logic I'm actually using is not pedantic.

You calling me disingenuous over this is painful to look at. Get out of your own head for a second. We're using different premises, and we're reaching different conclusions because of that. My logic is fine, and your logic is fine.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#196

Post by mrob »

Aurornis wrote: post #140
zozbot234 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not a reasonable response. If you don't need a PC right now, buying in the middle of a demand spike is the worst time to do it.

It's only a spike if it comes down. Every RAM chip is a lottery ticket with a plausible chance of giving one lucky winner fabulous prizes like absolute dictatorship of the entire world and physical immortality. What else are the billionaires going to spend their money on? Arms races can absorb unlimited resources.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#197

Post by Waterluvian »

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

This feels kind of worn out. Yes we use more memory but we have more to work with. At the very worse you just let your favourite LLM take a pass at improving memory usage. For example, yesterday I was debugging an Electron crypto mining blockchain 2.0 app and the WebWorkers wou—-

  ?OUT OF MEMORY ERROR IN 0
  READY.
  >

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#198

Post by JollySharp0 »

kelnos wrote: post #184
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. 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.

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

Try it in a IRL conversation and see how quickly someone gets annoyed with you. It won't be very long.

> "Smart arse" is name-calling.

I said "If you are going to be a smart arse". Which means "If you are going to engage in this behaviour then ...".

I never called anyone names.

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

I am perfectly fine. I can be mildly annoyed by someone and still be quite rational.

Also this sort of statement is close to concern trolling.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#199

Post by selectodude »

michaelt wrote: post #174
kube-system wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a truck yeah, but across the ocean, it isn't quite that simple because GPUs and grains are sent in different types of ships (or different modes entirely) that aren't interchangeable.

You're right - perishable goods have to be shipped fast. Your bananas, berries, fresh fish, and not-fron-concentrate juice can't be on some slow-steaming container ship with the furniture, clothes, building materials and vehicles. The GPUs can though.

And the GPUs are such high margin that they all take an airplane anyway.

Re: DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market

#200

Post by duskwuff »

homebrewer wrote: post #25
dangus wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are talking about brand new latest gen hardware here. People with low budgets are always scraping and saving for deals and don’t need to buy something brand new from a pricey brand name like raspberry pi. You can still jump on eBay and buy all kinds of dirt cheap used pieces of hardware. My buddy just bought a used ThinkPad T14 with 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage for about $500. You can get by with a whole lot les…

Have you looked at how expensive international shipping is? eBay covers just a few countries, the rest of us can't buy there because we'll be paying 10 times the cost of hardware to get it over here. I already moaned about this recently, but to briefly reiterate: the only hardware that's becoming available for most people in my region are Frankenstein desktops built from heavily used 10+ year old Xeons running on sus…

> Frankenstein desktops built from heavily used 10+ year old Xeons running on suspicious motherboards made by obscure Chinese manufacturers you've never heard of.

I've heard reports that these are actually surprisingly good. I wouldn't want to use one in a production environment, but for homelab stuff they're an incredible deal.

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