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32GB of DDR5 now costs $375 – AI shortage continues to squeeze PC building

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Re: 32GB of DDR5 now costs $375 – AI shortage continues to squeeze PC building

#141

Post by christoph »

ChiperSoft wrote: post #77
Scene_Cast2 wrote: post #5

This is the PCPartPicker chart that I monitor: https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/#ram.ddr5.5600.... - $900 for 2x32GB, used to be $200 a year ago.

Yesterday I did a price check on the PC I built two years ago. It went from $2300 to $3650. The bulk of that increase was that the ram went from $210 to $940. Its now more expensive than when DDR5 was new.

I bought a 5090 12 months ago, just checked - that’s basically up 50%! I used to joke i’d retire on all the old tech in my loft, everyday now it feels less like a joke!

Re: 32GB of DDR5 now costs $375 – AI shortage continues to squeeze PC building

#142

Post by pezgrande »

vablings wrote: post #124
qingcharles wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone re-releasing their old crap. Nvidia is remaking the 3060 too I believe because they can use cheaper older RAM on it.

It's not even "old crap" the PC consumer market has basically died in less than year due to your average person getting priced out, I cannot imagine how catastrophic of an impact this is going to have on younger folk and the barrier to entry to desktop computing

A laptop with a 226v/256v cost around the same than the "cheap" Mac Neo and can play most games (old games native/new games with AI scaling)

Re: 32GB of DDR5 now costs $375 – AI shortage continues to squeeze PC building

#143

Post by pjc50 »

randusername wrote: post #93

I want a more complete picture of why prices are so high from articles like this. Is supply actively constrained, or is this mostly in anticipation of future shortages? How much of this is a mix of panic buying and price gouging on bad news? I care more about the secondhand market. Prices are nuts for old used gear, but that also tracks with patterns I've been seeing since roughly the pandemic where more and more sec…

Supply is both already constrained and AI companies have pre-purchased enough HBM at enough of a premium that most of the wafers are allocated to them. All the intermediaries are jacking up their prices so their inventory doesn't empty too quickly, because they may not be able to refill it.

It is hard to overstate the damage that the infinite money being poured into AI is doing to the wider economy. Anything involved in datacenters is going to experience shortages/price rises. A pre-existing problem is power transformers: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-power-transformer...

The impact on domestic electricity prices in a year just after high oil prices is not going to be popular either.

Re: 32GB of DDR5 now costs $375 – AI shortage continues to squeeze PC building

#144

Post by zouhair »

ecshafer wrote: post #30
thijson wrote: post #14

Price should send a signal to manufacturers to build more capacity. I wonder if they will though, it takes quite a bit of time, and it's not certain that the demand will continue to exist once built.

Government needs to get out of the way. Micron announced a memory fab in Syracuse in 2023. It took 3 years, 20,000 pages of "environmental review", deals with the government on amount of union contracts during building, etc. for them to break ground in 2026 for a 2030 opening date. In any reasonable world, a 2023 announcement should have broke ground in 2023.

Oh, yeah, we are in this calamity because of government interference, not unbridled capitalism. Sure.

Re: 32GB of DDR5 now costs $375 – AI shortage continues to squeeze PC building

#145

Post by 9cb14c1ec0 »

wahern wrote: post #40
thijson wrote: post #14

Price should send a signal to manufacturers to build more capacity. I wonder if they will though, it takes quite a bit of time, and it's not certain that the demand will continue to exist once built.

Several Chinese manufacturers are doing just that, and have already expanded production: https://techwireasia.com/2026/04/chinese-memory-chips-ymtc-c... But because of tech trade barriers their primary focus is on the domestic market and only secondarily global markets.

Fortunately RAM is largely a commodity and more for sale only in China means more for sale elsewhere.

Re: 32GB of DDR5 now costs $375 – AI shortage continues to squeeze PC building

#146

Post by keynha »

randusername wrote: post #93

I want a more complete picture of why prices are so high from articles like this. Is supply actively constrained, or is this mostly in anticipation of future shortages? How much of this is a mix of panic buying and price gouging on bad news? I care more about the secondhand market. Prices are nuts for old used gear, but that also tracks with patterns I've been seeing since roughly the pandemic where more and more sec…

[flagged]

Re: 32GB of DDR5 now costs $375 – AI shortage continues to squeeze PC building

#147

Post by Permit »

z2 wrote: post #23
Keyframe wrote: post #9

Can we just go back to pre-AI world?

This is textbook negative externalities, of the AI buildout on everyone who isn't using RAM/GPUs for AI, of the use of electricity and water on anyone who isn't using it for AI. The cynic in me thinks this will go down in history alongside asbestos, leaded gasoline/paint, and the opioid crisis.

>The cynic in me thinks this will go down in history alongside asbestos, leaded gasoline/paint, and the opioid crisis.

Can you elaborate? Leaded gasoline is estimated to have contributed to the deaths of like tens (hundreds?) of millions of people. Asbestos probably millions.

Why would high RAM prices be remembered alongside these events?

Re: 32GB of DDR5 now costs $375 – AI shortage continues to squeeze PC building

#149

Post by logotype »

I bought a server with 768GB RAM a couple of years ago, for cheap. Today just the RAM itself is worth more than I paid for the entire server. DDR4... Same thing with SSD, two years ago you could buy 4TB SSDs for like 250 USD, and today its more than $700. Madness!

Re: 32GB of DDR5 now costs $375 – AI shortage continues to squeeze PC building

#150

Post by dawnerd »

alecsm wrote: post #21

Same thing with storage. I wanted to upgrade my SSD but prices are more than at the end of 2025. I refuse to pay 500 euro for a 4TB SSD. I rather go outside and play with my bike like when I was 5.

Even spinning metal has gone through the roof even on refurb and server pulls.
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