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Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

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Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#101

Post by z2 »

bpye wrote: post #53
iLoveOncall wrote: post #4

Storage has more than doubled as well. The same SSD (4TB M.2) I bought in September 2025 for £229 is now £500. I also had another order where I paid £30 for a 1TB SSD (sata though) and it is now more than £100...

Not just SSDs, HDDs are also way more expensive. End of 2024 I bought 4 14TB drives for ~$250 CAD each, $400+ for even a refurb drive now. The possibility that these fail does concern me.

And that's the really fun part of all this, that weak substitutes will also become more expensive. But on the bright side, I've got dozens of sticks of DDR3 RAM that I'm hoarding like Pokémon cards. Any day now, we'll get desperate enough to start using them again!

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#102

Post by matheusmoreira »

Analemma_ wrote: post #41
qurren wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would absolutely love if some startup came up right now to manufacture and sell RAM at normal prices to everyone else and put Crucial et al out of business for price-gouging everyone just because they can.

DRAM fabs are multi-billion dollar investments which take years to come online. That's the whole reason we're in this situation, there is no quick fix available.

Surely the chinese are spinning up fabs as we speak?

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#103

Post by ls612 »

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 built my machine in 2022 with 64GB of memory and upgraded to a 4090 at MSRP in 2023 so at this point I'm good but I fear the back end of the bathtub curve. I currently expect to have to hold on until 2029 and at that point the mobo and CPU will be 7 years old, and the GPU almost 6.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#104

Post by derf_ »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #13
forinti wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

> The component category I've never seen fail is CPU.

The CPU can fail if the heatsink falls off! That is something that happens (I've had one come off in my hand that was being held on by nothing but hopes and dreams, fortunately not while the CPU was powered on). More likely in a desktop tower form factor.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#105

Post by 1saadcodes »

500% in a year is just insane. I knew RAM prices were going up, but $3k+ for 128GB of DDR5 makes me wonder how much of this is actually AI demand, and how much is this just manufacturers taking advantage of it. They have done this in the past after all

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#106

Post by aliasxneo »

mk_stjames wrote: post #55

I noticed that resellers on ebay of used server equipment that I keep an eye on in Germany pulled all their DDR4 from surplus and used server racks and now list it separately for sale, at jacked up prices. Where you used to be able to see a used Gigabyte server listed with "128GB" "256GB" etc listed in the title, they now all say "0GB". They took extra effort, to pull used ram from older servers, and list it separate…

Why would I voluntarily choose to sell the hardware I have for less than the going price? The odds of it getting picked up by a scalper and resold are extremely high. If I was sitting on a goldmine of old server hardware, I would absolutely be ripping out the RAM and selling it per stick in this market.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#107

Post by luma »

1saadcodes wrote: post #105

500% in a year is just insane. I knew RAM prices were going up, but $3k+ for 128GB of DDR5 makes me wonder how much of this is actually AI demand, and how much is this just manufacturers taking advantage of it. They have done this in the past after all

There are only 3 manufacturers (about to be 4 soon) total. This is a demand crunch the likes of which the market hasn't seen before, prices are doing the natural thing.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#108

Post by auc »

stuxnet79 wrote: post #57
tedggh wrote: post #56

I still hope all this will come crashing down, there will be an oversupply of components and RAM will be cheaper than paper.

While I share your optimism, I still don't fully understand why a crash will necessarily lead to an oversupply and lower prices for regular consumers. The components / RAM you are referencing are for enterprise use / data centers which in my limited understanding is not a 1:1 swap for the kind of components that your smartphone / car / fridge / gaming rig use. I would love for someone more informed than me to spell o…

"I've seen gluts not followed by shortages, but I've never seen a shortage not followed by a glut." - NNTaleb

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#109

Post by magic_hamster »

1saadcodes wrote: post #105

500% in a year is just insane. I knew RAM prices were going up, but $3k+ for 128GB of DDR5 makes me wonder how much of this is actually AI demand, and how much is this just manufacturers taking advantage of it. They have done this in the past after all

To take advantage they'd have to do some form of price fixing which in most places is a very big footgun.

I honestly don't think they need to fix their prices, and it's possible that selling to consumers is a secondary market for them compared to datacenters, like Nvidia selling GPUs to gamers. We know that's not where the money is.

Seeing some companies actually exit the consumer market is evidence for this.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#110

Post by bigbuppo »

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.

Yeah, it really sucks I can't even afford a computer that can have two Chrome tabs open these days.
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