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Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

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Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#511

Post by Gareth321 »

phil21 wrote: post #395
rwyinuse wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My issue is my digital hoarding. I've always said it I "collect" things digitally vs. physical, so I can scratch that itch without causing a disaster for my life. A half rack of JBODs is a lot cleaner and overall less expensive to operate than deciding I need to collect every single Lego Technic set ever produced or something. The problem is I also operated under the prior "storage always gets cheaper over time" and…

I'm at 97% of my 160TB and I need to start making hard choices :-/ I have Unraid, and an old 4TB drive sitting in a drawer which I could plug into the array. It's old, and I planned to throw it out, but fuck paying these prices for a 26TB HDD right now.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#512

Post by PowerElectronix »

tedd4u wrote: post #486
zmmmmm wrote: post #463

I wonder if supply chain constraints currently represent an inherent scepticism of manufacturers that demand will last. It feels to me like a side effect of the self-dealing / incestuous financing that is going on is that manufacturers are not willing to bet on it all materialising and therefore are not scaling up capacity nearly as much as they would if they thought it was certain.

9-Aug-2026: SK Hynix to invest $38 billion building new memory chip plants as demand soars [1] "In the AI era, technological competitiveness alone is not enough and the ability to supply the required volume at the exact moment customers need it is the ultimate competitive advantage," SK Hynix said in a press release. "We reached this investment decision after a thorough review of market demand." [1] https://www.msn.c…

They will do so in steps, tho. One cleanroom at a time so they don't eat a big loss if this crazy demand for a commodity goes away overnight.

They also took quite some time to decide to ramp up, as this comes a year or more late after they announced they were fully booked for 2026 and 2027.

And, their stock sold off on the news, so investors are not having faith either on the demand to justify capex expansion.

Honestly, it sucks to be a ram company, you are either buying into the hype and then spending years losing money, or you don't and leave a lot of money on the table while competition ramps up and eats your lunch (and then spends years losing money)

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#513

Post by Gareth321 »

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…

You're correct in theory. I'm just not sure we have a cartel situation. Micron is a US company, and it controls 25% of the global market. I see no evidence that they nor SK hynix nor Samsung are intentionally limiting production.

I do see people arguing, "they had years to increase production - why didn't they?" They've been remarkably candid about this: because RAM production has been losing them money in the past. Because they don't have a cartel, prices were on the floor. Investing in more production would have been corporate suicide.

Even now, there is considerable risk that the bubble will burst, and all this investment in new production will be flushed down the toilet. RAM production is a brutal business.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#514

Post by empiricus »

shibapuppie wrote: post #285
empiricus wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it is probable that you don't get the deepest pockets by wasting money. anyone that pays so much for memory means they expect to get even bigger value from that.

"It is probable" So RAM manufacturers will turn down company B's $2M offer for company A's $1M offer because company A "needed it more"? I'm actually done discussing this...

My comment is about B offering 2M when normally the price of that RAM was around 1M. Most probably B has a way to get > 2M value from that RAM.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#515

Post by coldtea »

RickHull wrote: post #325
coldtea wrote: post #316

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. The question is how much of this demand is actually based on AI, or just an excuse to fleece regular buyers (and AI is not really the actual demand driving such p…

> or just an excuse to fleece regular buyers In a market with healthy competition (no collusion), this generally can't happen. Every single vendor is incentivized to lower their prices slightly at all times, with a floor at cost plus margin.

>In a market with healthy competition (no collusion), this generally can't happen.

We're talking about the memory market here.

The "healthy competition (no collusion). Every single vendor is incentivized to lower their prices slightly at all times, with a floor at cost plus margin" is the fairy-tale version they teach at 101s.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#516

Post by LeBit »

UberFly wrote: post #498
zmmmmm wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TSMC in the US is a bit of a special case .... wouldn't surprise me at all if they were virtue signalling to the Trump admin more than anything with what they are doing there.

How so? They are diversifying their production chain so that all their eggs aren't in one basket. Taiwan might be threatened one day but their US, Japan, and German plants will much less likely be in the same danger.

Using tariff threats, Trump forced them to build a plant in the USA because… America First ™

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#517

Post by cjbprime »

biddit wrote: post #405
jmward01 wrote: post #329

If this was a competitive market some suppliers would be ramping up pc memory and avoiding the AI buildout. But instead we see all of them diverting to GPU memory and cutting production of PC related parts universally. This sure looks like a coordinated move. I think there is a real point people are missing here. Memory is going sky high because most of it is being shifted to GPU specific ram for server build out. Th…

> This means that when this ram hits EOL it -won't- flood the consumer market in a meaningful way. It is disposed of because most people won't put a server GPU into anything. It is like a used big rig, built for purpose and when it reaches end of life it is truly at end of life. This was true until the last year. P40, P100, V100, A40, etc are selling like hotcakes and prices have been rapidly increasing.

Not sure about that, V100s are all selling for less than $1k despite being 24-32GB VRAM around 1TB/s memory bandwidth, which is the same price point that 4090s and 5090s are commanding $4k-$5k for. Hardly hotcakes.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#518

Post by greenavocado »

PowerElectronix wrote: post #512
tedd4u wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

9-Aug-2026: SK Hynix to invest $38 billion building new memory chip plants as demand soars [1] "In the AI era, technological competitiveness alone is not enough and the ability to supply the required volume at the exact moment customers need it is the ultimate competitive advantage," SK Hynix said in a press release. "We reached this investment decision after a thorough review of market demand." [1] https://www.msn.c…

They will do so in steps, tho. One cleanroom at a time so they don't eat a big loss if this crazy demand for a commodity goes away overnight. They also took quite some time to decide to ramp up, as this comes a year or more late after they announced they were fully booked for 2026 and 2027. And, their stock sold off on the news, so investors are not having faith either on the demand to justify capex expansion. Honest…

The party's over when the CXMT freight train will pull up and unload insane amount of volume on global markets

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#519

Post by account42 »

greenavocado wrote: post #518
PowerElectronix wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will do so in steps, tho. One cleanroom at a time so they don't eat a big loss if this crazy demand for a commodity goes away overnight. They also took quite some time to decide to ramp up, as this comes a year or more late after they announced they were fully booked for 2026 and 2027. And, their stock sold off on the news, so investors are not having faith either on the demand to justify capex expansion. Honest…

The party's over when the CXMT freight train will pull up and unload insane amount of volume on global markets

What stopped them before the current demand spike?

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#520

Post by account42 »

vachina wrote: post #477
seanp2k2 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There also seems to have been a major shift in strategy from AMD / Intel / Apple / NVidia due to this, as I was used to CPU / GPU / chipset upgrades coming out more regularly with double-digit percentage improvements each year, but that seems to be basically over for the consumer space now that everyone is just trying to build as much AI hardware as fast as possible for enterprise markets. I also used to rebuild my d…

Your upgrade cadence will just exacerbate the crunch because real demand becomes spiky. The next leap in performance will come with next leap in price tiers.

You don't need to upgrade to the very latest tech either.
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