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Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

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Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#81

Post by pseudohadamard »

datakan wrote: post #28
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #3

The situation is absolutely awful for anybody who needs significant memory or storage (or devices incorporating such). Even people who think they have enough for the next few years already could end up with an unpleasant surprise if they e.g. have a stick or two of RAM go bad or a GPU fry. I have a few machines with aging sticks that I'm hoping will manage to hold out until when/if things improve.

I'm saving a ton of money by simply not upgrading. I used to do upgrades every 1-2 years just to keep up on things, pass the old box down to my son or otherwise donate it. Now I intend to keep my current setup for 7+ years. Its 2 years old next month. I may even stay with it longer. I just see no reason to upgrade with things how they are. I considered a Mac Studio a couple months ago. Price was up but might have pul…

My desktop PC turns 20 next year. I've never seen any need to upgrade it, went out of my way to build it with silent parts and it rarely if ever goes outside a single-digit CPU load (before anyone asks, software development and a bit of CAD work). I'll upgrade it when something in it physically fails, which means I'll need to replace it with new hardware with 5-10x the specs just to get the same performance.

My laptop is currently about two years into a typically 5-year lifespan, limited by when the keys start to fail rather than any need to upgrade it just because. The RAM in it is now worth more than the rest of the laptop.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#83

Post by Tadpole9181 »

nullsmack wrote: post #52

Even with AI pressure I'm willing to bet there's no need for prices to be this high. There has to be some price gouging/fixing going on. Same thing for nand and GPUs. Or else they're doing it to try to pressure people not to use local compute instead of the "cloud"

Memory manufacturers have gone through several cycles of lawsuits for market collusion at this point. It's gone from an open secret to just outright flaunting in our face.

Until the penalties involve actual jail time or a fine 10x larger than the profit they made from doing it, they couldn't care less.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#84

Post by matt-p »

greggoB wrote: post #80
matt-p wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typically (not always!) server memory is 'registered' so won't work with consumer CPUs which run on un-registered.

Does 'registration' introduce anything physically different? Or could they be completely interoperable?

Yeah a RCD on the memory stick, it's PCB is designed around it. The actual DRAM chips themselves are not different though, which is why I mention it would be super easy to produce more consumer unregistered and less server registered at assembly time :)

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#85

Post by dgellow »

bhaney wrote: post #39
dgellow wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the AI boosters are saying the exact same thing but mean it seriously. There is no way to distinguish without a tone indicator

> There is no way to distinguish without a tone indicator And yet many of us aren't having any trouble distinguishing.

Given the number of upvotes my comment got and the other comments where people missed the sarcasm, I wouldn’t be too sure that many people have no trouble distinguishing

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#86

Post by copperx »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #37
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, RAM failures are more common than they used to be in previous decades, I assume due to increased capacities and smaller process nodes. Looser manufacturing standards may also play a part. The component category I've never seen fail is CPU.

I've worked in and around datacenters for a few decades now and I've seen pretty much everything fail, but power supplies in particular do so at a higher rate than I expected. I've had one literally start smoking in my home office recently too. Luckily, it didn't damage any components, but it was pretty dramatic and abrupt -- just powered on my desktop and got nothing but a fog machine coming out of the rear fan unti…

What brand of power supply?

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#87

Post by preg_match »

datakan wrote: post #28
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #3

The situation is absolutely awful for anybody who needs significant memory or storage (or devices incorporating such). Even people who think they have enough for the next few years already could end up with an unpleasant surprise if they e.g. have a stick or two of RAM go bad or a GPU fry. I have a few machines with aging sticks that I'm hoping will manage to hold out until when/if things improve.

I'm saving a ton of money by simply not upgrading. I used to do upgrades every 1-2 years just to keep up on things, pass the old box down to my son or otherwise donate it. Now I intend to keep my current setup for 7+ years. Its 2 years old next month. I may even stay with it longer. I just see no reason to upgrade with things how they are. I considered a Mac Studio a couple months ago. Price was up but might have pul…

I think it's probably for the best, the hyperconsumerism around electronics was getting out of hand. Computers are fast and have been fast for a while now. An iPhone 12 is probably more than fine to do iPhone things, if Apple didn't sabotage their old phones with poorly-written poor-performance software.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#88

Post by sleight42 »

preg_match wrote: post #87
datakan wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm saving a ton of money by simply not upgrading. I used to do upgrades every 1-2 years just to keep up on things, pass the old box down to my son or otherwise donate it. Now I intend to keep my current setup for 7+ years. Its 2 years old next month. I may even stay with it longer. I just see no reason to upgrade with things how they are. I considered a Mac Studio a couple months ago. Price was up but might have pul…

I think it's probably for the best, the hyperconsumerism around electronics was getting out of hand. Computers are fast and have been fast for a while now. An iPhone 12 is probably more than fine to do iPhone things, if Apple didn't sabotage their old phones with poorly-written poor-performance software.

And Apple will continue to because they have to sell more devices to keep customers interested.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#89

Post by iwontberude »

forinti wrote: post #6
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #3

The situation is absolutely awful for anybody who needs significant memory or storage (or devices incorporating such). Even people who think they have enough for the next few years already could end up with an unpleasant surprise if they e.g. have a stick or two of RAM go bad or a GPU fry. I have a few machines with aging sticks that I'm hoping will manage to hold out until when/if things improve.

I've been using computers for more than 40 years now and the one component I have never seen fail is RAM. All the other bits in a computer I've seen fail.

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