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Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

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Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#181

Post by aok1425 »

jnpnj wrote: post #170
haunter wrote: post #157

If you want even more bad news: display panel makers also want to raise prices "Due to the continued rise in the prices of core components globally, the production cost of monitors has increased significantly, and we can no longer absorb this pressure on our own." https://respawnfirst.com/we-can-no-longer-absorb-this-ktc-wa...

It would strange if just when a lot of articles mention computing / social networks are detrimental, governments start passing laws to forbid platforms and/or phones for kids, and now price gouging flares up everywhere, this would entice people to just stop using these devices and maybe enjoy natural taper-off.

I like this idea! Perhaps folks will game less on PCs and consoles. But would they shift to playing on their phones? Or play less video games overall?

Also, when OpenAI's new device comes out, would people shift to talking to these small devices?

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#182

Post by icedchai »

harhargange wrote: post #126
icedchai wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently had part of a 32 gig DIMM go bad on a 128 gig system. One of the larger VMs was spontaneously rebooting for no apparent reason. I was able to find the addresses with MemTest86 and map out 512 megs of the affected DIMM with the Linux kernel memmap option.

So you can still use the hardware via software fix?

Correct! Basically, I excluded the bad range so Linux doesn't touch it. It's been stable for weeks now. I should send the DIMM back under warranty.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#183

Post by javier2 »

aeturnum wrote: post #135
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

FWIW I have a friend who makes hardware and it's extremely difficult for him to secure memory at any price. Because AI people have locked up so much of the upcoming supply it's often not a question of how much it will cost but of finding someone who will sell you memory at all. If this were price gouging I would expect he'd have no trouble finding allocations at exorbitant prices but that doesn't seem to be the case.

same here, even when we went to larger hardware producers, they were basically we would sell you, but we cant actually get any RAM at all either.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#185

Post by ncallaway »

lvzw wrote: post #147
ncallaway wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you have a massive excess of demand ready to pay any price, and a limited supply, of course the sellers will take advantage, that's how any market work The question is how quickly the supply adjusts. In a free market, the suppliers would respond to the price signal by quickly expanding their production to meet the elevated demand. But a market captured by a cartel will be much slower to expand the supply. So, th…

Memory fab build out times are years not months. The existing ones already run 24/7. If these companies could pull more supply out of thin air they would, but they cannot.

I didn't say the build out time was months.

I said:

> the test isn't "how much is price going up" it's "how aggressively are the RAM producers expanding supply production"

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#186

Post by inquirerGeneral »

afavour wrote: post #176
cm2187 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the distinction you are making. If you have a massive excess of demand ready to pay any price, and a limited supply, of course the sellers will take advantage, that's how any market works. They can do that because of the lack of supply. Over the long term demand will rationalise and supply will adjust. But in between there is a squeeze, and the right price is the maximum price buyers are willing to…

> I don't understand the distinction you are making. It's pretty simple. In a correctly regulated market the sellers are in competition with each other so there is a limit to how much they can increase prices, since they'll just lose business to their competitor. In a poorly regulated market that allows competitors to collude with each other to raise prices by the same amount, they'll inflate prices much further.

[dead]

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#187

Post by rwyinuse »

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.

This is one of the rare situations where an out-of-control homelab & PC building hobby is actually useful. With over 250GB of RAM & 90TB of storage I will be fine for a while, especially as long as DDR4 era machines remain relevant.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#188

Post by ncallaway »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #153
ncallaway wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you have a massive excess of demand ready to pay any price, and a limited supply, of course the sellers will take advantage, that's how any market work The question is how quickly the supply adjusts. In a free market, the suppliers would respond to the price signal by quickly expanding their production to meet the elevated demand. But a market captured by a cartel will be much slower to expand the supply. So, th…

Even if the memory market was completely competitive the time it takes to expand supply is measured in years. There was no way for them to serve the AI demand without reducing supply given to everyone else in the short run

> There was no way for them to serve the AI demand without reducing supply given to everyone else in the short run

I didn't say that there was a way to do it in the short run. I laid out what the test is to determine if there's cartel-like behavior or competitive-market-like behavior.

I will say, in a market with only 3 players and very high cap-ex cost, my prior is that you're likely to see more cartel-like behavior than competitive-market-like behavior, but that's still to be determined.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#189

Post by rwyinuse »

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.

Interesting, I've had two fail already in much shorter time. One was brand new, another quite old.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#190

Post by leni536 »

t-writescode wrote: post #140
dist-epoch wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the memory manufacturers have refused to budge on creating new fabs That's EXACTLY how a free market is supposed to work. The existing memory manufacturers are FREE to not build new factories, and anyone else is FREE to build those factories in their place.

Then perhaps we’re seeing one of the downsides of that. When 0->1 is prohibitively expensive, existing players can continue to raise prices *very* high because cost-of-entry is extreme, until it’s not sufficiently extreme. And then we have bubble issues because the introduction of a new, cheaper player, causes the bottom to fall out and for the circumstances that allowed the new manufacturer to exist to completely go…

In addition of being expensive, it's also a gamble. If it wasn't risky then I don't think financing it would be that big of an issue.
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