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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

#321

Post by TheAmazingRace »

jmyeet wrote: post #262

I bought a prebuilt mid-2025: 32GB DDR5-6000, 2TB SSD, 9800X3D, 5070 Ti for $1900. This happened to be good timing but you can still get these specs for a similar price occasionally eg [1] was $1899 last week. Luckily for me I bought a DDR5-6000 64GB kit for $200 for no real reason. And yeah that same kit is almost $1000 today. Plus I still have the old 32GB kit. If you're building your own PC, your best bet is to bu…

Luckily, for gaming purposes in 2026, 32 GB of RAM is perfectly fine for the foreseeable future. I'd only consider 64 GB and up if you're using your system heavily for virtual machines or high end workstation level tasks.

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

#322

Post by amanaplanacanal »

varispeed wrote: post #49
thijson wrote: post #14

Price should send a signal to manufacturers to build more capacity. I wonder if they will though, it takes quite a bit of time, and it's not certain that the demand will continue to exist once built.

Why manufacturers would build more capacity to decrease the price (and profits)? This is similar situation to housing market. Prices are going up and supply is being restricted by whatever means. It will be a bit of Catch 22.

Theoretically if you can build more capacity you can take customers from your competitors. If you don't really have competitors that doesn't work so well.

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

#323

Post by cwmoore »

tosti wrote: post #263
shepherdjerred wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are rookie numbers https://stocks.sjer.red/

Well boo-hoo. It's about time more people got to know what it's like not to be on the bleeding edge. I've always had second-hand computers and only once bought myself a new laptop, the asus EeePC after the price dropped. Ten years from now I'll get to watch inception in 4K.

You’ll want 64K bro Inception is a very loud movie

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

#324

Post by tosti »

linker3000 wrote: post #271
tosti wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well boo-hoo. It's about time more people got to know what it's like not to be on the bleeding edge. I've always had second-hand computers and only once bought myself a new laptop, the asus EeePC after the price dropped. Ten years from now I'll get to watch inception in 4K.

A few weeks ago I needed a computer to be a Debian server for some at-home simple Web dev / learning stuff. I bought an HP Prodesk 400 G3 SFF PC with i5-6500, 8GB RAM and a 256GB off a popular auction site for £44. It'll do. I might upgrade to 16GB. An additional 8GB stick costs £19.

Good work. I bought an AMD Ryzen 3 3100 for €35 with shipping. A Radeon W5500 would set me back €150 at the moment. 16 GiB of RAM another €90. And that's on a relatively cheap site in my country.

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

#325

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

nekooooo wrote: post #311
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Sohcahtoa82/saved/n76zkL I think I paid a total of around $5,500 for the current components of my PC. Hard to say for sure since my PC has been a Ship of Theseus for over 30 years and started as a 486. The link merely reflects its current state. At one point, PCPartPicker was showing my PC as worth $11,000. It's now at $7,200 without including the RAM or PSU . That would put it at $9,000…

you've 'upgraded' the same pc since a 486? i really can't believe that unless you're counting your mouse and keyboard.

> you've 'upgraded' the same pc since a 486?

Yes.

The most I've ever replaced all at once is the CPU/mobo/RAM trifecta. But even when I do that, I still kept the same storage, case, GPU, PSU, mouse/keyboard, etc.

But otherwise, upgrades are piecemeal. New storage when my current storage is full or I want to upgrade to a new technology. New GPU when I feel like my current one is holding me back. New mouse or keyboard when my current one starts failing. The CPU/mobo/RAM trifecta when the performance gains make it worthwhile, which at this point is about every 5 years.

I'm not sure why this is hard to believe.

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

#326

Post by bigstrat2003 »

varispeed wrote: post #43
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.

> that local models are good enough for whatever they're peddling they are not. Unless you are satisfied with plausible, but mostly garbage output.

That's all LLMs can give you anyway.

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

#327

Post by overfeed »

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…

> Transformer demand is real, but what percentage of your electricity bill do you think goes to spending on those transformers

It's not just about the price of transformers (which have gone up!), lead times have gone up too - any infrastructure project involving transformers will be delayed by varying amounts - including grid-connected solar, at a time when energy prices are going insane.

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

#328

Post by bigstrat2003 »

ragequittah wrote: post #208
functionmouse wrote: post #32

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

Here I'm on a 5800x and a 4070ti super and it's woefully inadequate for some games. Though I suppose if you play at 1080p (which is hard to look at these days for me) you might be OK on low-medium settings in some newer games. I can't see you getting very far with something like Forza Horizon 6 or Death Stranding 2 though.

Brother, I'm on a 3070 Ti and I can play basically all games at full settings at 1900x1200 resolution. I've only found one game where I had to turn the settings down (Talos Principle 2). Most games aren't really demanding.

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

#329

Post by hinata08 »

butz wrote: post #123

Time to migrate all those electron "native" apps to actual native code. I bet with some decent optimizations 4GB will be more than enough for casual user, and still with some free memory to spare.

it's more than casual users used to have, and most still do the same activities even decades after 2GB were enough

weather forecast wasn't more rainy on a 2005 windows PC or an early smartphone in 2G to save battery

FHD streaming has worked for decades now

The plot of animes was still enjoyable on DVD

Progress is important, but some companies don't realise how customers don't need it when it's twice their pay

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

#330

Post by bigstrat2003 »

TheAmazingRace wrote: post #281
drnick1 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In my humble opinion, 4K gaming is rather overrated. I find high refresh rates at 1440p to be the sweet spot and you don't have to get a top-end GPU to drive it at ultra settings in games.

Not just "rather overrated", it's completely overrated. There just isn't a big difference in visual quality with 4k. It is primarily driven by companies trying to sell gear, not by it actually looking better.
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