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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

#241

Post by mschuster91 »

Aurornis wrote: post #197
pjc50 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It is hard to overstate the damage that the infinite money being poured into AI is doing to the wider economy I know it's an unpopular opinion on Hacker News but I think most people are overstating the damage to the economy. Increased demand starts to pull more advancements forward and increase spending on production, which benefits everyone. Transformer demand is real, but what percentage of your electricity bill…

> I know it's an unpopular opinion on Hacker News but I think most people are overstating the damage to the economy.

There are two issues... one being that an economy needs people to buy things to work, and people only can buy things if they have money, and people only have money when they have work - but everyone is laying off people left and right due to "AI".

The other issue is that there's trillions of dollars floating around between all the companies. It is likely that a significant chunk of these will fail and give us another 2007.

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

#242

Post by ashdksnndck »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #173
castlecrasher2 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>they're probably more than what most people are looking to spend on a technically second-hand computer (even if they are like new and still under warranty) Some people need to buy at these inflated prices anyway, and are ultimately willing to spend. Maybe it differs in your area but there's no risk in listing these on Facebook Marketplace or similar platforms and see the interest.

I've had them listed on FB Marketplace for months. In that time, I've sold four (3 to one guy, one to myself), and still have 20-ish more. i5-13500E, 32GB DDR5, 512 GB NVMe, scratched and dinged a bit for $500 is practically a steal! Hardly anyone's biting or clicking, I don't get it... New open box models (not scratched and dinged), if anyone's interested: https://www.ebay.com/itm/188355326179 Edit: they're intended…

Why don’t you part them out? The market for the parts will be more liquid. You might sell faster and at a higher price. You could try doing it once and see how it goes.

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

#243

Post by b0rbb »

simonsarris wrote: post #167
pjc50 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It is hard to overstate the damage that the infinite money being poured into AI is doing to the wider economy. I get what you're saying but medium term this is an extremely funny sentiment. This money being poured is likely to end up being a huge boon for a lot of economic sectors, including in the US. Most commodity shortages like this end in a glut, with a medium term win for consumers, even if we have 1-2 (more)…

It's not odd at all to call this economic damage unless you're that disconnected from anything but AI/high-tech SV companies.

There's smaller businesses that I know _need_ data capacity (hard drives) that can't afford them and are facing serious CAPEX challenges.

I work for a start up that helps folks move off of existing on-prem virtualization solutions and every small to medium company across every sector you can think of aren't just able to not afford additional storage and memory, they can't find them either.

There isn't as much stock as you think. I can't wait for this AI bubble to pop. It's been absolutely terrible for 90% of the industry.

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

#244

Post by theandrewbailey »

ashdksnndck wrote: post #242
theandrewbailey wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had them listed on FB Marketplace for months. In that time, I've sold four (3 to one guy, one to myself), and still have 20-ish more. i5-13500E, 32GB DDR5, 512 GB NVMe, scratched and dinged a bit for $500 is practically a steal! Hardly anyone's biting or clicking, I don't get it... New open box models (not scratched and dinged), if anyone's interested: https://www.ebay.com/itm/188355326179 Edit: they're intended…

Why don’t you part them out? The market for the parts will be more liquid. You might sell faster and at a higher price. You could try doing it once and see how it goes.

I've seriously considered doing that. Since they're still under warranty for another year or two, I've decided not to... for the time being.

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

#245

Post by saltcured »

simonsarris wrote: post #167
pjc50 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It is hard to overstate the damage that the infinite money being poured into AI is doing to the wider economy. I get what you're saying but medium term this is an extremely funny sentiment. This money being poured is likely to end up being a huge boon for a lot of economic sectors, including in the US. Most commodity shortages like this end in a glut, with a medium term win for consumers, even if we have 1-2 (more)…

> I get what you're saying but medium term this is an extremely funny sentiment.

Sentiment is the right word here. None of us really know, and go by feeling. If you perceive the AI boom as approaching tulip craze levels of irrationality, it feels pretty dire.

The RAM is a commodity and may be repurposed afterward. This kind of thing is a bit like a debt jubilee when the dust clears and survivors scavenge the dead. But a lot of other build-out may essentially be waste. To me, apologists for this boom seem to be harboring a variant of the broken windows fallacy. Not all economic activity is productive.

The other kind of damage is opportunity cost. How many players in other industries are being strategically harmed by this situation? We can't all just live on AI token output if these other industries retract too far.

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

#246

Post by icedchai »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #154

As an ancient person, and considering my sense of inflation of other things I actually buy, This doesnt sound that high to me. At some point in my life CPU Ghz stopped rising and cores was the only thing to grow, and that seemed to be more slowly than clock rate did. So I guess I fully expected that asymptote to apply to RAM too. If you plot price per GB of ram across last 25 years the memory prices growth is barely…

Yeah, I'm pretty ancient myself. If we look back ~30 years, we're still getting a good value at even these inflated prices for electronics. Food, housing, transportation has skyrocketed, but TVs and computers are comparatively cheap, even with RAM and storage being up 100+%.

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

#247

Post by JohnTHaller »

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 constrained. AI bought up so much that we're seeing wafer shortages. Absurd US tariffs messed with stuff. And we're just getting started.

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

#248

Post by andriy_koval »

elAhmo wrote: post #97
whizzter wrote: post #35

My bet is that the prices will crash once OpenAI (and/or Antrophic) IPO's have happened. Right now the biggest threat to their IPO's is that people realize that local models are good enough for whatever they're peddling, what's the most important factor to even running good enough models? RAM since you want the models in memory to not be total slogs.

You are saying there will be even more demand for RAM and that will cause the prices to crash?

The chance is that they cache out during IPO, and will lose interest to increase capacity, some/many contracts will be canceled, and demand being reduced.

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

#249

Post by drnick1 »

functionmouse wrote: post #32

I'm playing the newest games on ddr3 with a 2080 and a 4790k. It's a simple life.

Presumably, this is at 1080p, which looks terrible after you experienced 4K. It's better than nothing, and I probably wouldn't build a 4K rig in this market, but let's not pretend you can get a modern gaming experience out of that old hardware.
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