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RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung

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Re: RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung

#122
post #73
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's an absolutely deranged opinion. Most tech jobs can be done on a $500 laptop. You realise some people don't even make your computer budget in net income every year, right?

Most tech jobs could be done on a $25 ten year old smartphone with a cracked screen and bulging battery. That’s exactly my point. Underspending on your tools is a misallocation of resources.

Yes, you don't want to under spend on your tools to the point where you suffer. But, I think you are missing the flip side. I can do my work comfortably with 32GB RAM, but my 1% a year budget could get me more. But, why not pocket it.

The goal is the right tool for the job, not the best tool you can afford.

Re: RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung

#123
post #25
post #18

I'm running a box I put together in 2014 with an i5-4460 (3.2ghz), 16 GB of RAM, GeForce 750ti, first gen SSD, ASRock H97M Pro4 motherboard with a reasonable PSU, case and a number of fans. All of that parted out at the time was $700. I've never been more fearful of components breaking than current day. With GPU and now memory prices being crazy, I hope I never have to upgrade. I don't know how but the box is still g…

Am I crazy for thinking that anyone using computers for doing their job and making their income should have a $5k/year computer hardware budget at a minimum ? I’m not saying to do what I do and buy a $7k laptop and a $15k desktop every year but compared to revenue it seems silly to be worrying about a few thousand dollars per year delta. I buy the best phones and desktops money can buy, and upgrade them often, becaus…

Most people who use computers for the main part of their jobs literally can't spend that much if they don't want to be homeless.

Most of the rest arguably shouldn't. If you have $10k/yr in effective pay after taxes, healthcare, rent, food, transportation to your job, etc, then a $5k/yr purchase is insane, especially if you haven't built up an emergency fund yet.

Of the rest (people who can relatively easily afford it), most still probably shouldn't. Unless the net present value of your post-tax future incremental gains (raises, promotions, etc) derived from that expenditure exceeds $5k/yr you're better off financially doing almost anything else with that cash. That's doubly true when you consider that truly amazing computers cost $2k total nowadays without substantial improvements year-to-year. Contrasting buying one of those every 2yrs vs your proposal, you'd need a $4k/yr net expenditure to pay off somehow, somehow making use of the incremental CPU/RAM/etc to achieve that value. If it doesn't pay off then it's just a toy you're buying for personal enjoyment, not something that you should nebulously tie to revenue generation potential with an arbitrary 1% rule. Still maybe buy it, but be honest about the reason.

So, we're left with people who can afford such a thing and whose earning potential actually does increase enough with that hardware compared to a cheaper option for it to be worth it. I'm imagining that's an extremely small set. I certainly use computers heavily for work and could drop $5k/yr without batting an eye, but I literally have no idea what I could do with that extra hardware to make it pay off. If I could spend $5k/yr on internet worth a damn I'd do that in a heartbeat (moving soon I hope, which should fix that), but the rest of my setup handily does everything I want it to.

Don't get me wrong, I've bought hardware for work before (e.g., nobody seems to want to procure Linux machines for devs even when they're working on driver code and whatnot), and it's paid off, but at the scale of $5k/yr I don't think many people do something where that would have positive ROI.

Re: RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you on SSDs, that was the last upgrade that felt like flipping the “modern computer” switch overnight. Everything since has been incremental unless you’re doing ML or high-end gaming.

I've had this with gen5 PCIe SSDs recently. My T710 is so fast it's hard to believe. But you need to have a lot of data to make it worth. Example: > time du -sh . 737G . ________________________ Executed in 24.63 secs And on my laptop that has a gen3, lower spec NVMe: > time du -sh . 304G . ________________________ Executed in 80.86 secs It's almost 10 times faster. The CPU must have something to do with it too but t…

To me that reads 3x, not "almost 10x". The main differrence here is probably power. A desktop/server is happy to send 15W to the SSD and hundreds of watts to the CPU, while a laptop wants the SSD running in the ~1 watt range and the CPU in the 10s of watts range.

Re: RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung

#125
"The price of eggs has nothing on the price of computer memory right now.". A dozen eggs went to ~$5. They are eggs and most people use what, max 12 eggs a month? Get out of here with that trite garbage. Everyone knew that the egg shortage was due to the extreme step the US does of culling herds infected with avian flu and that they were transitory.

Re: RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung

#127
post #73
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's an absolutely deranged opinion. Most tech jobs can be done on a $500 laptop. You realise some people don't even make your computer budget in net income every year, right?

Most tech jobs could be done on a $25 ten year old smartphone with a cracked screen and bulging battery. That’s exactly my point. Underspending on your tools is a misallocation of resources.

Overspending on your tools is a misallocation of resources. An annual $22k spend on computing is around 10-20x over spend for a wealthy individual. I'm in the $200-300k/year, self-employed, buys-my-own-shit camp, and I can't imagine spending 1% of my income on computing needs, let alone close to 10%. There is no way to make that make sense.

Re: RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, makes absolute sense. A bit like Toyota putting a GM engine in their car, because the Toyota engine division is too self-centered, focusing to much on efficiency.

You mean toyota putting bmw engine (supra). Your statement is contradicting as Toyota has TRD, which focuses on the track performance. They just couldn't keep up with the straight six perf+reliability when comparing to their own 2jz

Buying a Supra is stupid. Either buy a proper BMW with the b58/Zf8 speed and get a proper interior or stop being poor and buy an LC500.

Better yet, get a C8 corvette and gap all of the above for a far better value. You can get 20% off msrp on factory orders with C8 corvettes if you know where to look.

Re: RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung

#129
post #25
post #18

I'm running a box I put together in 2014 with an i5-4460 (3.2ghz), 16 GB of RAM, GeForce 750ti, first gen SSD, ASRock H97M Pro4 motherboard with a reasonable PSU, case and a number of fans. All of that parted out at the time was $700. I've never been more fearful of components breaking than current day. With GPU and now memory prices being crazy, I hope I never have to upgrade. I don't know how but the box is still g…

Am I crazy for thinking that anyone using computers for doing their job and making their income should have a $5k/year computer hardware budget at a minimum ? I’m not saying to do what I do and buy a $7k laptop and a $15k desktop every year but compared to revenue it seems silly to be worrying about a few thousand dollars per year delta. I buy the best phones and desktops money can buy, and upgrade them often, becaus…

are you paid by the FLOP?
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