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1GB Raspberry Pi 5, and memory-driven price rises

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31–40 of 124 posts

Re: 1GB Raspberry Pi 5, and memory-driven price rises

#32
post #25

What surprises me the most is the 1GB option is even viable though I can imagine this will be for IoT users who shove Pi's into things doing embedded stuff where a kernel with a few user space things along with maybe a container are doing all the work.

Probably but I fail to see what use case doesn't need more than 1Gb but can't be done already with a Pi 3b or 4.

I have a Pi3b in a 3D printer, and compiling the software, but also simply apt upgrade feels like it takes forever. Most day to day operations work just fine though.

At work we have a display with a Pi3 (not B) connected, just showing websites in rotation. Websites even with a simple animation are laggy, startup takes a few minutes.

Both of these usecases don't need more than 1 GB of ram, but I want to speed of a 4 or 5.

Re: 1GB Raspberry Pi 5, and memory-driven price rises

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ECC modules use the same chips as non ECC modules so it eats into the consumer market too.

Good point! But they are slightly more energy hungry. At these scales I wonder if Stargate could go with one less nuclear reactor simply by switching to non-ECC RAM

Penny-wise and pound foolish. Non-ECC RAM might save on the small amount of RAM power, but if a bit-flip causes a failed computation then an entire forwards/backwards step – possibly involving several nodes – might need to be redone.

Re: 1GB Raspberry Pi 5, and memory-driven price rises

#34
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently OpenAI locked down 40% of the global DRAM supply for their Stargate project, which then caused everyone else to start panic-buying, and now we're here: https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/

That DDR5-4800 2x16GB price tend is crazy. It tripled from August/September until now.

Even DDR4. Just checked, I bought a non-ECC 1x32go stick for my homelab on August 25th, priced 78€ on Amazon. Same offer is now at 229€. Yeah I guess I'll wait before updating to 64gig then

Re: 1GB Raspberry Pi 5, and memory-driven price rises

#35
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont even get this trend, wouldnt OpenAI be buying ECC RAM only anyway? Who in their right mind runs this much infrastructure on NON ECC RAM??? Makes no sense to me. Same with GPUs they aren't buying your 5090s. Peoples perception is wild to me.

OpenAI bought out Samsung and SK Hynixes DRAM wafers in advance, so they'll prioritize producing whatever OpenAI wants to deploy whether that's DDR/LPDDR/GDDR/HBM, with or without ECC. That means way less wafers for everything else so even if you want a different spec you're still shit out of luck.

You forgot to mention that everyone else also raised their price because, you know, who don't like free money.

Last year I brought two 8G DDR3L RAM stick made by Gloway for around $8 each, now the same stick is priced around $22, a 275% increase in price.

SSD makers are also increasing their prices, but that started one or two years ago, and they did it again recently (of course).

It looked like I'll not be buying any first-hand computers/parts before the price can go normal again.

Re: 1GB Raspberry Pi 5, and memory-driven price rises

#36
post #16

It’s sad to see the one area of life that has long resisted inflation (computing) now succumb to inflationary forces. Other than emergency situations such as COVID-19, I’m used to seeing prices going down over time for computers and their components. It’s one of the rare bright spots when everything else is escalating in price, and now that’s disappearing.

Memory price fluctuations due to market demand and monetary inflation - the increase in quantity of fiat money, diluting its value - are two separate and unrelated things.

Re: 1GB Raspberry Pi 5, and memory-driven price rises

#37
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That DDR5-4800 2x16GB price tend is crazy. It tripled from August/September until now.

Even DDR4. Just checked, I bought a non-ECC 1x32go stick for my homelab on August 25th, priced 78€ on Amazon. Same offer is now at 229€. Yeah I guess I'll wait before updating to 64gig then

I don't think DDR4 is even being manufactured anymore, so the rush is clearing out that inventory for good.

Re: 1GB Raspberry Pi 5, and memory-driven price rises

#38
post #16

It’s sad to see the one area of life that has long resisted inflation (computing) now succumb to inflationary forces. Other than emergency situations such as COVID-19, I’m used to seeing prices going down over time for computers and their components. It’s one of the rare bright spots when everything else is escalating in price, and now that’s disappearing.

It's not inflation tho ? It's just rise in demand.

Re: 1GB Raspberry Pi 5, and memory-driven price rises

#39
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That DDR5-4800 2x16GB price tend is crazy. It tripled from August/September until now.

Even DDR4. Just checked, I bought a non-ECC 1x32go stick for my homelab on August 25th, priced 78€ on Amazon. Same offer is now at 229€. Yeah I guess I'll wait before updating to 64gig then

It reminds me very much of the crypto mining craze, when there was a run on GPUs and one couldn't be had for any less than 5x it's MSRP. I know that eventually passed and so too will this but it still sucks if you had been planning to purchase RAM or anything needing it.

Re: 1GB Raspberry Pi 5, and memory-driven price rises

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got one of the Newegg circulars in my email advertising a sweet little uATX AMD server board and got to thinking that my home FreeBSD server could use a CPU bump and more memory. As soon as I saw how much 128GB of DDR5 ECC would cost my jaw dropped and noped the fuck out. The cheapest 32GB modules are around $300 and upwards of $500. Thought I was going to gift myself early this Christmas. Depressing indeed.

Indeed, it makes mini computers with soldered ram actually end up being quite cheap by comparison. HP will currently sell you 128GB AMD or Nvidia boxes for 1.7-2.8k depending on your flavor of choice. Not ECC though.

...till supplies last. Which won't be long when people do exactly that (hey, that mini PC is now cheaper than building similar setup)
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