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DRAM prices are spiking, but I don't trust the industry's why

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151–158 of 158 posts

Re: DRAM prices are spiking, but I don't trust the industry's why

#151

Hey, at least a fab didn't have to burn down this time. That's progress. I've maxed out the RAM on every (consumer mobo) build I've ever done, and have always ended up appreciating it. I did a Ryzen build with 192GB back in January, so despite the questionable signal integrity of DDR5 especially on AM5 (more than one DIMM on each channel means lower speed) this time turned out to be no exception. I also stocked up on…

What do you do with 192GB RAM?

My main desktop has 256GB, and my "router" has 128GB. Mostly used for software builds (I use NixOS as a source distribution) and VMs (which themselves are mostly used for web browsing, surprise surprise). The desktop had been fine at 112GB because that was the max that coreboot could train, but the coreboot code has been updated and used DDR3 sticks are cheap. The goals of the new 192GB machine are more of that existing usage, plus LLM experimentation and possible VFX rendering/video work. It's speculative of course, but as I've said I've never regretted bulking up on RAM. If it ends up feeling too vacant and echoey, I can always grab another motherboard and processor and make two 96GB machines.

Re: DRAM prices are spiking, but I don't trust the industry's why

#152

I don't understand when people blame AI for buying DDR5 DRAM - aren't they mostly interested in HBM? Or is the fab space being diverted to manufacture more HBM than DDR DRAM previously?

Inference, don't need gpu's for inference. Frontier labs are eking out progress by scaling up inference-time compute. Pre-training scaling has kind of stalled / giving diminishing returns (for now).

Re: DRAM prices are spiking, but I don't trust the industry's why

#153

I work in the refurb division of an ewaste recycling company. I was tipped off to these insane prices about two months ago, and switched focus from laptops to drives and RAM, and I'm starting to make bank. Roughly a petabyte of hard drives showed up two weeks ago, and I'm almost halfway through preparing all the drives. Hopefully I'll be able to finish and sell them in time to have a very merry Christmas.

I'm curious what industry knew / tipped you off.

Re: DRAM prices are spiking, but I don't trust the industry's why

#154

I’m sad the mid to late 2010s alt reality era has come for HN the last 6 months, after 16 years here. This was my last respite for intellectual argumentation. Now, every day there’s multiple stories where you have to be caught up on this cinematic universe where AI is fake and doesn’t work and no one uses it and anyone who does is a grifter and or amateur and or embarrassing and any data centers they build will be a…

(I agree on the DRAM price-fixing hypothesis being wrong.)

We (people writing code) are the ones using it more than anyone else to directly aid in / do our work, we probably more closely understand the limitations of LLM's than people working in other industries that just get fearmongering pseudo-technical babble whispered through streams about the power of the technology while using it as a substitute for Google search (which committed suicide a few years ago).

I also think part of what you're observing is the reddit/hive-mind effect, fear drives the crowd so its consensus will tend to emerge as "Nothing works, nothing will ever work, nothing is even being attempted!"

Re: DRAM prices are spiking, but I don't trust the industry's why

#155

I am currently trying to sell a brand new DDR5 6000 64GB CL 28-36-36-96 kit for 100€ below market prices with warranty (I purchased it 3 months ago, and never opened it as I figured I don't need 128GB in my PC.) But it's just not selling. I guess most people don't even check ebay, and go straight to hardware online retailers.

I looked at sold listings on eBay recently, very little was actually going for the crazy market rate. Plenty had sold at the old prices from sellers who hadn't gotten the memo though.

I have some ram I could live without if it's worth its weight in gold, but if you're going to get ripped off I think people want to avoid the used market and its extra risk.

Re: DRAM prices are spiking, but I don't trust the industry's why

#156

I work in the refurb division of an ewaste recycling company. I was tipped off to these insane prices about two months ago, and switched focus from laptops to drives and RAM, and I'm starting to make bank. Roughly a petabyte of hard drives showed up two weeks ago, and I'm almost halfway through preparing all the drives. Hopefully I'll be able to finish and sell them in time to have a very merry Christmas.

I'm curious what industry knew / tipped you off.

It was coworkers or news articles, I forget which came first.

Could have been this one: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/hdds/ai-triggers-...

Re: DRAM prices are spiking, but I don't trust the industry's why

#157
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The incentive for one of the big players to undercut the other on cost even just a little bit to pick up market share is extremely lucrative. I would argue that the DRAM price fixing scandal actually demonstrates that the industry operates like a cartel. During times of low demand and high supply, they will coordinate to protect prices, and then during spikes in demand (or alleged spikes in demand) they coordinate…

The problem with citing cartels and greed is...when prices are low, is it because the industry is momentarily altruistic? Did the industry wake up in late 2025 and think "holy shit, I've been being nice, but it's time to turn over a new leaf and start gouging people?" I mean, don't get me wrong, they are greedy. But that's been true for years. What's changed is the market.

What has changed is for years they never had an excuse as good as AI , what they do isn't creating demand where it does not exist, it is making sure demand doesn't drop by colluding on prices and limiting production between all the companies

Re: DRAM prices are spiking, but I don't trust the industry's why

#158

I’m sad the mid to late 2010s alt reality era has come for HN the last 6 months, after 16 years here. This was my last respite for intellectual argumentation. Now, every day there’s multiple stories where you have to be caught up on this cinematic universe where AI is fake and doesn’t work and no one uses it and anyone who does is a grifter and or amateur and or embarrassing and any data centers they build will be a…

> As my MD friend noted wisely a couple weeks ago: it’s noteworthy how this became a culture after LLMs became ubiquitous and user friendly. It was tons of fun and happy times when we were going to reduce # of radiologists, not software engineers.

You want intellectual argumentation and then make an asinine claim like this.

First, HN was never a place for intellectual argumentation. It's reddit level dunning kruger with the pseudo-intellectual snobbery of a college philosophy courses. If you don't follow the zeitgeist you dont get to argue anything anyway. This is a terrible place for actual debate and those that do enjoy "debate" here are generally on the same side with a marginal (Second,

> Now, every day there’s multiple stories where you have to be caught up on this cinematic universe where AI is fake and doesn’t work and no one uses it

"AI" doesn't work well. I've been a professional software engineer for a long time. The best use case for "AI" is mild code review, writing comments, and stubbing out boring work like initial database table schemas. It absolutely hallucinates to hell with any sufficiently complex problem and if you're not aware of context windows you will walk yourself into a trap. The average person is not smart enough to recognize this. Thus, "AI" doesn't only fail to deliver, it is also dangerous due to it's sychophantic nature. I quote AI, particularly, because LLMs are not artificial intelligence. At least, not anymore than least squares analysis is artificial intelligence.

> data centers they build will be a waste and they’re probably not even being built and OpenAI is JUST like pets.com so this is basically the web bubble from 1999

Your rant provides no evidence it is not a bubble. An entirely unprofitable industry attempting to scale to make pennies is not sustainable. The amount of capital pouring into a literal wish is not similar to 1999.

It's similar to the 2008 economic crisis where, when the chickens come home to roost, the government will be bailing out big tech companies with taxpayer money because their infrastructure has parasitically attached itself (via the "cloud") to almost everything we use.

> In this case, X = RAM supply shortage is fake and actually just coordinated price gouging

There have been two DRAM price fixing scandals. If it quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck... well it might be a duck. People are right to infer price fixing. The only difference now is it's "legal" because they announced it via a quarterly report. Every 5 or so years there's always something going on with DRAM. One wonders why.

> It was tons of fun and happy times when we were going to reduce # of radiologists, not software engineers.

Your MD friend should stay in his lane and not weigh in on topics he can't hope to understand. His biggest problem is India, not AI. Just like software engineers. Radiology is outsourced at levels similar to software with the only difference he probably made his nut 10 years ago and software engineers aren't paid anywhere near as much as a good non-outsourced radiologist.

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