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Thanks a lot, AI: Hard drives are sold out for the year, says WD

mashable.com

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Re: Thanks a lot, AI: Hard drives are sold out for the year, says WD

#131

Post by numpad0 »

ghywertelling wrote: post #51
glimshe wrote: post #8

There's clearly easy/irrational money distorting the markets here. Normally this wouldn't be a problem: prices would go up, supply would eventually increase and everybody would be okay. But with AI being massively subsidized by nation-states and investors, there's no price that is too high for these supplies. Eventually the music will stop when the easy money runs out and we'll see how much people are truly willing t…

Earlier gamers got punished by crypto and now they are being punished by AI.

GPUs before crypto had a lot less amount of VRAM. Crypto investment funded a lot of stupid experiments, of which some did stick to the wall. I don't think gamers had lives completely ruined by crypto in the end.

Re: Thanks a lot, AI: Hard drives are sold out for the year, says WD

#132

Post by nipperkinfeet »

markus_zhang wrote: post #69

Better stock up with used laptops. I'm going to buy another one this year. Those used ones usually don't last very long. What if in the near future it is simply too expensive to own "personal" computers? What if you can no longer buy used computers from official channels but have to find local shops or sharpen up on soldering skills and find parts from dumps? The big techs will conveniently "rent out" cloud computer…

I no longer feel obligated to apologize for holding on to older devices for a long time. I have several desktops and laptops that are all still usable.

Re: Thanks a lot, AI: Hard drives are sold out for the year, says WD

#133

Post by blibble »

bluGill wrote: post #91
high_na_euv wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what? Why gamers must be the most important group?

Gamers are important because they are consistent customers. Crypto buying of GPUs is done (anyone still in this area is buying ASICs). Meanwhile gamers are still buying GPUs - they do sometimes hold off when the economy doesn't allow, but you can trust that gamers will continue to buy GPUs to play their games and thus they are a safe investment. It is rational to sell CPUs to a gamer for much less than someone in cry…

the "value" of nvidia to the "AI" companies is their tsmc fab contract

they don't need CUDA, they don't need the 10 years of weird game support, even the networking tech

they need none of nvidia's technology moats

exactly same as the crypto, where they just needed to make an ASIC to pump out sha1 as quickly as possible

which is really, really easy if you have a fab contract

at which point their use of nvidia dropped to zero

Re: Thanks a lot, AI: Hard drives are sold out for the year, says WD

#134

Post by aurareturn »

geerlingguy wrote: post #126
aurareturn wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My post argues that the demand has permanently shifted. By the way, plenty of people on HN and Reddit ask if the demand is real or not. They all think there's some collusion to keep the AI bubble going by all the companies. They don't believe AI is that useful today.

AI can be useful today, while also being insanely overvalued, and a bubble.

There will be a bubble. It's inevitable.

The most important question is are we in 1994 or 2000 of the bubble for investors and suppliers like Samsung, WD, SK Hynix, TSMC.

What about 10 years from now? 15 years? Will AI provide more value in 2040 than in 2026? The internet ultimately provided far more value than even peak dotcom bubble thought.

Re: Thanks a lot, AI: Hard drives are sold out for the year, says WD

#135

Post by cosmic_cheese »

shimman wrote: post #109
Ekaros wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have heard that you can get used laptops. But they do not come with memory or SSD anymore... As even used components are now valuable enough to be removed and sold.

Damn really? One of my go to moves when helping small political campaigns is to buy like a 2015 MBP and turn it into a locally hosted server to run all their stuff on the cheap.

Older MacBooks with socketed storage may actually be exempted because they use a proprietary connector instead of standard m.2.

Re: Thanks a lot, AI: Hard drives are sold out for the year, says WD

#136

Post by theragra »

markus_zhang wrote: post #69

Better stock up with used laptops. I'm going to buy another one this year. Those used ones usually don't last very long. What if in the near future it is simply too expensive to own "personal" computers? What if you can no longer buy used computers from official channels but have to find local shops or sharpen up on soldering skills and find parts from dumps? The big techs will conveniently "rent out" cloud computer…

I have 3 old employer laptops and my personal gaming laptop, which I use for work now. I'm happy about this now ;)

I probably will only need to return newest laptop if I leave the company.

Re: Thanks a lot, AI: Hard drives are sold out for the year, says WD

#137

Post by aurareturn »

runjake wrote: post #127
robinwhg wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the TSMC CEO said that in a recent interview. They're aware that their now biggest customer Nvidia has a less broad product portfolio than Apple and the high volumes they buy propably won't last. It's too much of a risk to plan more Fabs based on that.

They are indeed planning for more fabs, in order to meet volumes. Last week: “TSMC's board approves $45 billion spending package on new fabs” https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/ts...

Silicon Valley is arguing that TSMC isn't investing enough. They should be investing hundreds of billions to build fabs, like how big tech is investing in the AI buildout.

$45 billion for new fabs is peanuts compared to Amazon's $200b and Google's $180b investment in 2026.

Can't really blame TSMC though. It takes years for fabs to go from plan to first wafer. By the time new fabs go online, demand might not be there. Who knows?

Re: Thanks a lot, AI: Hard drives are sold out for the year, says WD

#138

Post by nickjj »

My machine was built up from parts in 2014.

6-7 years ago when GPU prices went up, I hoped nothing would break. Last year when RAM prices went up I did the same. Now with drive prices going up, it's the same thing.

It's interesting because I've always built mid-tier machines over the years and it was in the neighborhood of ~$700 at the time. Now the same thing is almost double that but the performance is no where near twice as good for general computer usage.

Re: Thanks a lot, AI: Hard drives are sold out for the year, says WD

#139

Post by zozbot234 »

antonyh wrote: post #19
Jyaif wrote: post #9

does that only include SSDs, or does it include HDDs as well?

I read it as both, but UK suppliers have stock of various SATA HDDs available in large and small sizes. It's hard to say if prices will rocket or availability decline, or both. I don't normally advocate panic-buying, but if it's needed now is the time. I have one NAS spare on hand, I don't want or need a drawer full of them, but it'll be a royal pain if I do and can't get parts.

Lower performance/capacity consumer drives might be comparatively safe because there's Chinese end-to-end production capacity for those. Of course the price can still increase, but probably not that much.

Re: Thanks a lot, AI: Hard drives are sold out for the year, says WD

#140

Post by soulofmischief »

xpe wrote: post #106
arbuge wrote: post #68

I console myself with knowledge of the economics maxim that every supply shortage is usually, eventually, followed by a supply glut. One can only hope that that's the principle at work here, anyway. It could also be a critically damped system for all I know. Unfortunately I studied control systems too...

People with a control theory background are welcome in economics; the field is more diverse than some would recognize. Certain professions and subfields are more open than others. There are plenty of economists who care about things like resilience and dampening shocks. I would love if more non-traditional economists got involved in the public sphere by which I mean: writing about economic trends, public policy, regu…

As an engineer with a passing control theory background and a breadth of general knowledge, I'd love to explore this space more and find a way to apply my knowledge and share the results. Are there any particular problems you think well-suited to this treatment?
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