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32GB of DDR5 now costs $375 – AI shortage continues to squeeze PC building

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Re: 32GB of DDR5 now costs $375 – AI shortage continues to squeeze PC building

#81

Post by sixothree »

lionkor wrote: post #64
WarmWash wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People want this, the demand is there. Like clockwork, people naturally want to have their cake and to eat it too, so there will be the incessant complaining about the externalities. Half the people lack the brainpower to see the good and bad are intrinsically linked, and the other half just like complaining. But at least for now, both halves aren't pulling back (in fact it's increasing), and money, not complaining,…

> People want this, the demand is there. It's impossible to avoid using AI multiple times a day, just because it's forced into every product under the sun. That is NOT demand. None of those users WANT this.

You're wrong. There is demand. More and more people are exploring AI and getting real work done with it.

Re: 32GB of DDR5 now costs $375 – AI shortage continues to squeeze PC building

#82

Post by cogman10 »

varispeed wrote: post #43
whizzter wrote: post #35

My bet is that the prices will crash once OpenAI (and/or Antrophic) IPO's have happened. Right now the biggest threat to their IPO's is that people realize that local models are good enough for whatever they're peddling, what's the most important factor to even running good enough models? RAM since you want the models in memory to not be total slogs.

> that local models are good enough for whatever they're peddling they are not. Unless you are satisfied with plausible, but mostly garbage output.

They are actually quite a bit better than you might think. Qwen3.6 27B is pretty capable at coding.

For non-coding work, they are more than good enough. A lot of the ways my non-technical family members have interacted with AI would be perfectly served by using a local model.

After all, people were more than satisfied with the results from GPT 3. That has long since been surpassed by open weight models.

Re: 32GB of DDR5 now costs $375 – AI shortage continues to squeeze PC building

#83

Post by seltzered_ »

qingcharles wrote: post #31
usui wrote: post #12

I looked at my eBay receipt from 2023 and I paid $84.98 for a "Kingston FURY Beast 64GB (2x32GB) 3200MHz DDR4" listing and now the equivalent on eBay "Buy It Now" is $374.99 for "Kingston FURY Renegade 64GB (2x32GB) DDR4 RAM 3200MHz (KF432C16RBK2/64)". What a timeline it has become for consumer computing three years later!

I was picking up DDR3 16GB sticks for $5/piece on eBay last year. The world has gone mad.

My anecdata: bought used DDR4 ECC 16gb ram sticks (i.e. serverpulled ram) for $11 off ebay last year (Jan 2025), now as of June 2026 the lowest listing I see is $42, most are around $50.

When I bought the same ECC DDR4 16gb ram stick in 2016 (when DDR4 was rather new) it cost $85 (cant remember if it was new or used)

Re: 32GB of DDR5 now costs $375 – AI shortage continues to squeeze PC building

#85

Post by danaris »

mgfist wrote: post #15
thijson wrote: post #14

Price should send a signal to manufacturers to build more capacity. I wonder if they will though, it takes quite a bit of time, and it's not certain that the demand will continue to exist once built.

A fab for high end memory costs $20B and 5 years to build. It will happen, but yeah it takes time and money

It will only happen if the bottom doesn't fall out of the market for AI datacenters in the next few months.

Re: 32GB of DDR5 now costs $375 – AI shortage continues to squeeze PC building

#86

Post by deaton »

WarmWash wrote: post #42
z2 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is textbook negative externalities, of the AI buildout on everyone who isn't using RAM/GPUs for AI, of the use of electricity and water on anyone who isn't using it for AI. The cynic in me thinks this will go down in history alongside asbestos, leaded gasoline/paint, and the opioid crisis.

People want this, the demand is there. Like clockwork, people naturally want to have their cake and to eat it too, so there will be the incessant complaining about the externalities. Half the people lack the brainpower to see the good and bad are intrinsically linked, and the other half just like complaining. But at least for now, both halves aren't pulling back (in fact it's increasing), and money, not complaining,…

Do they?

Re: 32GB of DDR5 now costs $375 – AI shortage continues to squeeze PC building

#87

Post by nerdjon »

I am thankful that both my partner and myself are in a pretty good spot when it comes to our gaming PC's. I had hoped to double my RAM at some point but I am still at a comfortable spot.

I am annoyed that the new handhelds are all crazy so sticking with my Legion Go for now.

The one I am annoyed with is storage. I desperately need to get a couple new drives for my NAS (one to replace one that its bad sectors are growing and one to add more storage) and I am not looking forward to spending $600-$700 each for 20TB drives.

Re: 32GB of DDR5 now costs $375 – AI shortage continues to squeeze PC building

#88

Post by functionmouse »

arjie wrote: post #78
stuxnet79 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some might call this a boomer build but the 4790k is an absolute beast of a CPU and still holds up.

I recently booted up an old 4790k system and it was fine on Linux but on Windows it would nag me to update but apparently the CPU is too old for new Windows. I ended up giving it away on the Internet to whomever could pick up but afterwards it ended up with one of those reseller chaps. Ah well, I wish it had made to some kid somewhere.

That makes sense. I'm on Windows 10 LTSC so I don't get nags and scare screens from Microsoft as much as a regular machine might.

Re: 32GB of DDR5 now costs $375 – AI shortage continues to squeeze PC building

#90

Post by danaris »

wahern wrote: post #74
Shitty-kitty wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buddy they ain't building an ice-cream parlor. 200 miles of the Hudson river is a Superfund site. The biggest polluters, PCB's, lead and mercury.

And? The primary goal should be to catch and stop pollution, not make manufacturers spend years promising not to do something they're not allowed to do. If someone wants to build a factory that can't operate without illegal emissions, then so be it. It's their money lost. All that matters is that they don't actually pollute. Using red tape as some kind of prophylactic is ridiculous. If the state doesn't have the moni…

> If someone wants to build a factory that can't operate without illegal emissions, then so be it. It's their money lost. All that matters is that they don't actually pollute.

That's hopelessly naïve.

If you let them build the facility that can pollute, they're going to pollute.

And if you point to the pollution coming out and tell them "you have to stop," they're going to say "make us."

And if you point to the pollution already in the environment and tell them "you have to clean that up, because you put it there," they're going to say "prove it."

And they're going to tie the government up in court for years or decades, and then oh, whoops, somehow the entity that actually did all the polluting has no more money and can't do anything about it :-( Good thing they were only a subsidiary that all the profit and assets can be moved out of!

And the people who actually live there are suffering from preventable diseases and dying of cancer at rates 5x the national average.

How do I know all this? Because this has been industry's playbook for over a century.

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