Live data from Hacker News

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

pcworld.com

231–240 of 427 posts

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

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> maybe $250/month (...) which you can then use to go and earn 100x that. 25k/month? Most people will never come close to earn that much. Most developers in the third world don't make that in a full year, but are affected by raises in PC parts' prices. I agree with the general principle of having savings for emergencies. For a Software Engineer, that should probably include buying a good enough computer for them, in…

> But the figures themselves seem skewed towards the reality of very well-paid SV engineers. The soon to be unemployed SV engineers when LLM's mean anyone can design an app and backend with no coding knowledge.

and you can code from an rpi / cellphone and use a cloud computer to run it so you actually don't really need an expensive PC at all

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

#232
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can make $11-$13 at what are considered bad jobs, like flipping pizzas at Little Caesars. Holy moly! 11 whole dollars an hour!? Okay, so we went from $4.25 to $11.00. That's a 159% change. Awesome! Now, lets look at... School, perhaps? So I can maybe skill-up out of Little Caesars and start building a slightly more comfortable life. Median in-state tuition in 1995: $2,681. Median in-state tuation in 2025: $11,6…

The BBQ place across the street from me pays $19/hour to be a cashier in Austin. Or the sign says it does anyways

Does the sign happen to have the words "up to" before the dollar amount?

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

#233
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…

If I needed a budget build, I'd probably look in the direction of used parts on AliExpress, you can sometimes find good deals on AM4 CPUs (that platform had a lot of longevity, even now my main PC has a Ryzen 7 5800X) and for whatever reason RX 580 GPUs were really, really widespread (though typically the 2048SP units). Not amazing by any means, but a significant upgrade from your current setup and if you don't get particularly unlucky, it might last for years with no issues.

Ofc there's also the alternate strategy of going for a mid/high end rig and hoping it lasts a decade, but the current DDR5 prices make me depressed so yeah maybe not.

I genuinely hope that at some point the market will get flooded with good components with a lot of longevity and reasonable prices again in the next gens: like AM4 CPUs, like that RX 580, or GTX 1080 Ti but I fear that Nvidia has learnt their lesson in releasing stuff that pushes you in the direction of incremental upgrades rather than making something really good for the time, same with Intel's LGA1851 being basically dead on arrival, after the reviews started rolling in (who knows, maybe at least mobos and Core Ultra chips will eventually be cheap as old stock). On the other hand, at least something like the Arc B580 GPUs were a step in the right direction - competent and not horribly overpriced (at least when it came to MSRP, unfortunately the merchants were scumbags and often ignored it).

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

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except nobody earns the minimum wage today, it's less than 1/2 of 1% of US labor. The median full-time wage is now $62,000. You can start at $13 at almost any national retailer, and $15 or above at CVS / Walgreens / Costco. The cashier positions require zero work background, zero skill, zero education. You can make $11-$13 at what are considered bad jobs, like flipping pizzas at Little Caesars.

> You can make $11-$13 at what are considered bad jobs, like flipping pizzas at Little Caesars. Holy moly! 11 whole dollars an hour!? Okay, so we went from $4.25 to $11.00. That's a 159% change. Awesome! Now, lets look at... School, perhaps? So I can maybe skill-up out of Little Caesars and start building a slightly more comfortable life. Median in-state tuition in 1995: $2,681. Median in-state tuation in 2025: $11,6…

You're identifying the right problem (school and housing costs are completely out of hand) but then resorting to an ineffective solution (minimum wage) when what you actually need is to get those costs back down.

The easy way to realize this is to notice that the median wage has increased by proportionally less than the federal minimum wage has. The people in the middle can't afford school or housing either. And what happens if you increase the minimum wage faster than overall wages? Costs go up even more, and so does unemployment when small businesses who are also paying those high real estate costs now also have to pay a higher minimum wage. You're basically requesting the annihilation of the middle class.

Whereas you make housing cost less and that helps the people at the bottom and the people in the middle.

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

#237

Apple is going to be even more profitable in the consumer space because of RAM prices ? I feel like they are the only player to have the supply chain locked down enough to not get caught off guard, have good prices locked in enough in advance and suppliers not willing to antagonize such a big customer by backing out of a deal.

Apple software typically seems to give a better user experience in less RAM in both desktop and mobile. For the last 10+ years apples iPhones have shipped with about half the ram of a flagship android for example.

People always make this argument. But could you please expand on what you think is actually in memory?

code:data, by and large I bet that content held in ram takes up the majority of space. And people have complained about the lack of ram in iPhones for ages now, particularly with how it affects browsers.

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

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a business can't pay a living wage, it's not really a successful business. I, too, could become fabulously wealthy selling shoes if someone just have me shoes for $1 so I could resell them for $50.

Classically, not all jobs are considered "living wage" jobs. That whole notion is something some people made up very recently. A teenager in his/her first job at McDonald's doesn't need a "living wage." As a result of forcing the issue, now the job doesn't exist at all in many instances... and if it does, the owner has a strong incentive to automate it away.

> A teenager in his/her first job at McDonald's doesn't need a "living wage." As a result of forcing the issue, now the job doesn't exist at all in many instances

The majority of minimum wage workers are adults, not teenagers. This is also true for McDonald's employees. The idea that these jobs are staffed by children working summer jobs is simply not reality.

Anyone working for someone else, doing literally anything for 40 hours a week, should be entitled to enough compensation to support themselves at a minimum. Any employer offering less than that is either a failed business that should die off and make room for one that's better managed or a corporation that is just using public taxpayer money to subsidize their private labor expenses.

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

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can make $11-$13 at what are considered bad jobs, like flipping pizzas at Little Caesars. Holy moly! 11 whole dollars an hour!? Okay, so we went from $4.25 to $11.00. That's a 159% change. Awesome! Now, lets look at... School, perhaps? So I can maybe skill-up out of Little Caesars and start building a slightly more comfortable life. Median in-state tuition in 1995: $2,681. Median in-state tuation in 2025: $11,6…

You're identifying the right problem (school and housing costs are completely out of hand) but then resorting to an ineffective solution (minimum wage) when what you actually need is to get those costs back down. The easy way to realize this is to notice that the median wage has increased by proportionally less than the federal minimum wage has. The people in the middle can't afford school or housing either. And what…

>resorting to an ineffective solution (minimum wage) when what you actually need is to get those costs back down.

I'm not really resorting to any solution.

My comment is pointing out that when you only do one side of the equation (income) without considering the other side (expenses), it's worthless. Especially when you are trying to make a comparison across years.

How we go about fixing the problem, if we ever do, is another conversation. But my original comment doesn't attempt to suggest any solution, especially not one that "requests the annihilation of the middle class". It's solely to point out that adventured's comment is a bunch of meaningless numbers.

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

#240
post #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.

The average person buys, what, 0 ram per month? Which cares.

The average person buys a phone amortized at 36 months minus trade-in value. So they do indeed buy ram every month but it's a line item on a phone bill.
Post reply on HN