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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

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yesterday I did a price check on the PC I built two years ago. It went from $2300 to $3650. The bulk of that increase was that the ram went from $210 to $940. Its now more expensive than when DDR5 was new.

Those are rookie numbers https://stocks.sjer.red/

I thought I read that Samsung SATA SSDs were discontinued, but apparently that was a rumor and Sansung has denied it. I wonder why they exceed NVMe prices. They're the only SATA drives left with DRAM. I guess they could just be milking that fact.

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

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which problems would that be? Nasdaq crashing by a few percent and a major player to go under. Seems almost inevitable at some point.

And taking everyone's 401ks down with them because of the idiotic rules changes to accommodate SpaceX? Its going to be the largest transfer (theft) of wealth since 2008. AI is the only thing driving any kind of growth in the market at all now. That pops, its going to bring the entire economy down with it.

The vast majority of index funds are float adjusted. SpaceX will not have that many shares available relative to the total value of the company. It's a negligible percent of the overall market cap of say, VTI. This commonly repeated trope is misinformation. The change in rules is more of a problem than the actual value.

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

#223
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supply is both already constrained and AI companies have pre-purchased enough HBM at enough of a premium that most of the wafers are allocated to them. All the intermediaries are jacking up their prices so their inventory doesn't empty too quickly, because they may not be able to refill it. It is hard to overstate the damage that the infinite money being poured into AI is doing to the wider economy. Anything involved…

> It is hard to overstate the damage that the infinite money being poured into AI is doing to the wider economy. I get what you're saying but medium term this is an extremely funny sentiment. This money being poured is likely to end up being a huge boon for a lot of economic sectors, including in the US. Most commodity shortages like this end in a glut, with a medium term win for consumers, even if we have 1-2 (more)…

> This money being poured is likely to end up being a huge boon for a lot of economic sectors, including in the US.

No such thing as a free lunch. Whilst a lot of industries are doing extremely well right now (i.e. everything involved in datacenter construction), everyone else has to actually pay for it.

Therein also lies the damage; The economy wasn't doing so great to begin with, and now this massive multi-trillion-dollar expense has been added.

The direct expenses come out of the pockets of Big Tech, but all the indirect stuff like the DRAM crisis affect the wider economy directly.

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

#224

I want a more complete picture of why prices are so high from articles like this. Is supply actively constrained, or is this mostly in anticipation of future shortages? How much of this is a mix of panic buying and price gouging on bad news? I care more about the secondhand market. Prices are nuts for old used gear, but that also tracks with patterns I've been seeing since roughly the pandemic where more and more sec…

> Is supply actively constrained, or is this mostly in anticipation of future shortages?

Both. AI datacenters create immense demand on DRAM, NAND storage, even HDD storage.

Then Sam Altman went ahead and "bought" 40% of the world's DRAM production, by way of secretly approaching both Samsung and SK Hynix (each unaware of the other getting a similar deal), which sent the entire market into a panic and everyone rushed to buy ahead of the anticipated supply shortage.

The kicker is that it wasn't even a proper purchase agreement. Just a non-binding promise of "By 2030 I will have infinite dollars and buy your DRAM".

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

#225
post #212
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, DDR3 is still kinda cheap. It's really only DDR4 and DDR5 that are massively in demand. DDR3 is a bit too old for it to be in high demand by consumers.

Unbelievably, even DDR3 isn't spared. Our suppliers have been quoting us much higher prices for DDR3 for months now, and we're experiencing persistent stock shortages. Fabs are abandoning legacy nodes to prioritize AI capacity, making it rough even for maintaining old gear.

It isn't really unbelievable. Anyone who could sub in DDR4 for their projects would do so which increased the price. And then anyone who was still using DDR4 for projects would respond to the increased price by moving to cheaper DDR3 if they could. It wouldn't take much of an unexpected demand increase to move the needle since I don't believe much DDR3 or DDR4 is even being manufactured anymore. And then you have the supply side: Increased prices of upgrades will cause many of them to be delayed or cancelled denying the refurb/used market supply of the old hardware.

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

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is hard to overstate the damage that the infinite money being poured into AI is doing to the wider economy. I get what you're saying but medium term this is an extremely funny sentiment. This money being poured is likely to end up being a huge boon for a lot of economic sectors, including in the US. Most commodity shortages like this end in a glut, with a medium term win for consumers, even if we have 1-2 (more)…

> Most commodity shortages like this end in a glut The 3 RAM manufactures know this too, from painful experience. There won't be a glut this cycle because there are no capacity build-outs. Instead of increasing capacity, some OEMs left the consumer segment to focus on enterprise AI. > Calling this kind of demand economic damage is odd. It's not odd at all because the complementary industries are being damaged - possi…

Good that there is a _fourth_ one. That's actively ramping up and looking to increase market share. CXMT.

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

#227
post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Once production ramps up (and then subsequently overshoots) in the next couple years we're going to have GPUs with 96GB VRAM for the price of a 4090 today.

They're not ramping up capacity though.

CXMT will.

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

#228
Crucial has "good" prices for DDR5 6000mhz memory on Amazon. The downside is you have to wait for shipping -- I had to wait a couple weeks. I bought when these were $300 and equivalent memory prices were like $500 at the time.

Been solid so far for 6-ish months.

https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-6000MHz-Overclocking-Desktop-...

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

#230

This is the PCPartPicker chart that I monitor: https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/#ram.ddr5.5600.... - $900 for 2x32GB, used to be $200 a year ago.

Yesterday I did a price check on the PC I built two years ago. It went from $2300 to $3650. The bulk of that increase was that the ram went from $210 to $940. Its now more expensive than when DDR5 was new.

The value of my desktop pc has almost doubled, my ps5 is worth ~ $150 more than I bought it years ago.

It's gotten to the point where nvidia doesn't even bother to report their gaming revenue anymore. It's a clear sign that we're back to the bad old days of pc gaming being a 'prosumer' hobby, but don't worry I'm sure nvidia and their ilk are salivating at the idea of making pc gaming into a streaming stadia like solution that you pay for monthly

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