Live data from Hacker News

Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

investors.micron.com

321–330 of 407 posts

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These suggestions seem to me part of an absurd struggle against basic market economics. This isn’t antitrust because the companies aren’t reselling it to you at a much higher price after cornering the market (cough cough Ticketmaster & scalpers).

> These suggestions seem to me part of an absurd struggle against basic market economics Perhaps the limited competition caused by 25+ memory manufacturers consolidating down to a 3-member cartel is a sign of market failure. I use "cartel" deservedly, as the RAM manufacturers were found guilty of price-fixing in multiple times in the past.

"The market is always right"

-Thoughtless, deluded, Homo economicus religion, idiot

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not my experience. I've been able to go to a local store to buy PC components for more than 35 years now and last did to upgrade the RAM in the laptop to be eligible for Win11. Online only was not cheaper and local store had it available same day. Local store does have online presence and is a chain tho. Mouse replacement on a weekend coz old one broke same story (button smashed in and not usable at all any longer).…

You're lucky then. Hardware availability has increased by orders of magnitude for me — not an exaggeration. Even 10-15 years ago I'd be happy to have access to two motherboards, three CPUs, three video cards — all of them at least a generation old, and Intel + nvidia, nothing else — and cheap noname RAM/SSDs. Over the past 5-8 years I've mostly been able to get access to the same hardware y'all are buying, thanks onl…

Online shopping is almost 30 years old itself. Before that there was mail order; I have a couple of mid 80s PC mags which are almost entirely adverts for parts.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#323

Crucial was always a brand that I associated with quality, and I used their memory to upgrade several MacBooks back when it was still possible to upgrade the memory on MacBooks. That being said, the only SSD I’ve ever had fail on me was from Crucial. In recent builds I have been using less expensive memory from other companies with varying degrees of brand recognizability, and never had a problem. And the days of bei…

That's because the SSD business was little more than a carbon copy of most other consumer non Samsung or SK/Solidigm brands. They've been phison controller with some cheap NAND flash with a different coat of paint for generations now, or in the case of the portable/external ones, that plus a 3rd party enclosure and IO module that they'd contracted out. In terms of hardware, this sub-business-unit was no more "Micron"…

All the higher margin non consumer markets are moving away from socketed ram for integrated ram for performance and manufacturing cost reasons. It’s hard to see what the motivation for spending some of their limited foundry time on products that are only of interest to lower margin direct consumers if this keeps up

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a couple reasons why Jensen won't take off the gaming leather jacket just yet: 1. Gaming cards are their R&D pipeline for data center cards. Lots of innovation came from gaming cards. 2. Its a market defense to keep other players down and keep them from growing their way into data centers. 3. Its profitable (probably the main reason but boring) 4. Hedge against data center volatility (10 key customers vs mil…

> 1. Gaming cards are their R&D pipeline for data center cards. Lots of innovation came from gaming cards. No way that is true any more. Five years ago, maybe. https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1izlt9w/nvidi...

on the contrary. this is the place they can try out new tech, new cores, new drivers, new everything with very little risk. driver crash? the gamer will just restart their game. the AI workload will stall and cost a lot of money.

basically, the gaming segment is the beta-test ground for the datacenter segment. and you have beta testers eager to pay high prices!

we see the same in CPUs by the way, where the datacenter lineup of both intel and amd lags behind the consumer lineup. gives time to iron out bios, microcode and optimizations.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a couple reasons why Jensen won't take off the gaming leather jacket just yet: 1. Gaming cards are their R&D pipeline for data center cards. Lots of innovation came from gaming cards. 2. Its a market defense to keep other players down and keep them from growing their way into data centers. 3. Its profitable (probably the main reason but boring) 4. Hedge against data center volatility (10 key customers vs mil…

6. Techies who use NVidia GPUs in their PCs are more likely to play with AI and ultimately contribute to the space as either a developer or a user

They'll access GPUs through their company VPN

If they're unemployed, they'll just rent from the cloud

How many of you still manage your own home server?

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#326
post #128

Their MX500 series SSDs were just king of price, performance and reliability. I even installed them in industrial PCs with intense vibrations and large temperature cycles, they're still chugging along like it's nothing.

Agreed, the first gen MX500 with M3CR023 fw proved IMHO to be the second most reliable SATA SSD 2.5" form factor with the Samsung 860 range SSDs (860 Evo / Pro). Sadly, the MX500 is now difficult to find in western europe. Only lower grade BX500, still quite reliable but not as fast as the MX500 with cache + DRAM. Had quite a lot of controller issues (become sluggish for periods of time) with the sandisk/WD ones like…

Huh, I've had the opposite experience with the BX500. Hit a bit hard on them and the SSD drops off the bus. Or fill them up to 80% and witness them crawl to a stop. Dirt cheap drives, but don't ask too much of them.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#327
post #255
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don't know why you are getting downvoted, as power planning is a real problem right now when planning new data center builds.

Because it's a meme response, which generally don't go over well on HN.

Well the best kind of meme, the one that's so entrenched in reality that's it's not a joke.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#328
post #28

I'm half joking but if this AI boom continues we're going to see Nvidia exit from consumer GPU business. But Jensen Huang will never do that to us... (I hope)

Jensen is to paranoid to do it. But whoever comes after him will do it ASAP.

They did get burned when crypto switched to dedicated hardware and nvida were left with for them huge surpluses of 10xx series hardware. But what they’re selling to AI companies now is a lot more different from their consumer gear

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#329
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious where you live. Anecdotally, this is the opposite to the experience of everyone I know.

Not OP. But Microcenter is in many US cities and prides itself on 18 minute pickup. I buy most of my tech that way.

I love Microcenter. Built my current gaming rig with all parts purchased there. It's been about 8 years, so not sure if they still operate this way... but when I built my PC, I:

- Went online, ordered everything for pickup (didn't pay yet)

- Drove there, they had it all bagged and ready

- I showed them online prices for some of the parts

- For the ones they could verify (I think it was all of them) by going to the website and checking, they matched the prices

- Then I paid and took my stuff home

I also got my M1 MBP there (it was 25% off when the M2 models came out).

Please, if you have a Microcenter near you, give them your business. I don't want them to go away. Once all this memory madness dies down, I'm going to go there to build a new gaming rig.

Post reply on HN