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Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

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Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#261

Post by bji9jhff »

lasthemy wrote: post #173
solarengineer wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"that the limited supply goes to the buyer who need it the most" - I would say that the limited supply goes to the buyer who can afford to pay higher than others. Someone may need the memory more, but may not have the deeper pockets to pay for it like NVidia and Apple might.

I would have framed it as "buyer who can get the most leverage from it", which equates to being able to spend more. It's an economic argument, not a values argument.

You suppose what you'll do with the ram has an incidence on your capacity to buy it which is only true if you are part of those able to get financing.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#262

Post by lalaland1125 »

shimman wrote: post #251
elictronic wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it makes you feel better. The US government looks like it might start removing some of the 28k troops that are stationed in South Korea over this. No reason to keep them in a country that enables this sort of behavior.

Probably for the best. No hosting nation of imperialism has ever benefited and now we see what the US is willing to throw away because their corporations are upset.

> No hosting nation of imperialism has ever benefited

That's why Japan and Germany are some of the worst places to live in the world. Oh wait, I had that quality of life chart upside down.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#263

Post by danmaz74 »

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.

Memory fabs take years to build, they cost a lot and there is no guarantee that the demand will stay as high years in the future. It's all very complex.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#266

Post by gambiting »

My PC built February 2025, with a 5090 and 64GB of ram, is literally worth more than double than what I paid for it. I'm actually concerned what my home insurance would do if it was stolen, since the cost of replacement is so much higher than my invoices say.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#267

Post by andrewstuart2 »

rossant wrote: post #265

Really happy I got a new PC last year with 128 GB of RAM, 4 TB SSD, and an RTX 5090. This would have been prohibitively expensive now.

Congrats. Happy for you. Nice.

Yeah, I built mine in 3090 times and told myself I'd upgrade every 2-3 GPU generations. I do have 128G ram and I'm thankful for that but I'm definitely not on the same upgrade schedule any more.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#268

Post by handedness »

ncallaway wrote: post #129
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…

> 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…

As has already been pointed out further down, OPEC is the perfect example of this. Things don't really work that way when the time scales are so extended. What we need is fracking, but silicon.

This system is too complex, the few individual players too big, with too many artificial distortions for the adjustment to equalize out in a way that's anything but years-long (it may have shock-waves that extend past the decade), and highly destructive to everyone who isn't OPEC, or their largest customers, in this analogy.

The brunt of it will be paid by the people further down the food chain.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#269

Post by handedness »

mschild wrote: post #178
lvzw wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Would they? Cartels aren't known for massively increasing production to satisfy all demand. Far from it I'd say, they're more likely to expand supply to such a level that they can still reap massive profits. Very few countries/companies have the knowhow and willingness to be able to build more. OPEC is a perfect example of this behaviour. They set hearly production goals to keep prices high. Or the Quebec Maple Syrup…

> OPEC is a perfect example of this behaviour.

It really is. First thing I searched for in the thread.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#270

Post by greenchair »

chriskanan wrote: post #219
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

Same thing happened with eggs in the USA with bird flu used as an excuse.

thank goodness the adults are in charge now
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