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Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

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Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#341

Post by [deleted] »

cm2187 wrote: post #111
1saadcodes wrote: post #105

500% in a year is just insane. I knew RAM prices were going up, but $3k+ for 128GB of DDR5 makes me wonder how much of this is actually AI demand, and how much is this just manufacturers taking advantage of it. They have done this in the past after all

I don't understand the distinction you are making. If you have a massive excess of demand ready to pay any price, and a limited supply, of course the sellers will take advantage, that's how any market works. They can do that because of the lack of supply. Over the long term demand will rationalise and supply will adjust. But in between there is a squeeze, and the right price is the maximum price buyers are willing to…

[deleted]

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#342

Post by Jensson »

senderista wrote: post #199
kibwen wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

At a longer timescale than very temporary supply shocks, I believe what I said is correct. The basic point is that if supply contracts, demand must contract as well, which in a free market happens via price increases and in an unfree market happens via shortages (i.e., the inability of buyers to obtain a good at a market-clearing price). If high barriers to entry are relevant in this context (obviously they very much…

But currently we are in a very temporary supply shock, and its called a shortage.

> in a free market happens via price increases and in an unfree market happens via shortages

Since people have earmarked purchases in advance the market isn't free, I'm not allowed to buy the ram another person already bought. Its the same how the texas electricity market works, prices reach infinity since there are more consumers that have already bought electricity than there is electricity left to provide, and you get a shortage.

Free markets with contracts aren't free since contracts creates constraints that results in shortages like this.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#343

Post by nubg »

RickHull wrote: post #325
coldtea wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand the distinction you are making. If you have a massive excess of demand ready to pay any price, and a limited supply, of course the sellers will take advantage, that's how any market works. They can do that because of the lack of supply. The question is how much of this demand is actually based on AI, or just an excuse to fleece regular buyers (and AI is not really the actual demand driving such p…

> or just an excuse to fleece regular buyers In a market with healthy competition (no collusion), this generally can't happen. Every single vendor is incentivized to lower their prices slightly at all times, with a floor at cost plus margin.

why plus margin? the floor is cost

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#344

Post by e2le »

forinti wrote: post #6
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #3

The situation is absolutely awful for anybody who needs significant memory or storage (or devices incorporating such). Even people who think they have enough for the next few years already could end up with an unpleasant surprise if they e.g. have a stick or two of RAM go bad or a GPU fry. I have a few machines with aging sticks that I'm hoping will manage to hold out until when/if things improve.

I've been using computers for more than 40 years now and the one component I have never seen fail is RAM. All the other bits in a computer I've seen fail.

How do you know they weren't faulty? Blip flips are usually silent unless you have ECC memory or are actively testing for faulty cells.

Somewhat recently, Firefox implemented memory testing in their crash reporter and found 10% of reports were due to bit-flips[0].

If it weren't for reading that HN thread, I would never have being prompted to check and find the faulty memory in my laptop. It would have gone undetected and continued to corrupt whatever was stored in the affected cells. I did run memtest86 not long after I bought the laptop, so sometime between running that first memtest86 and the 12 months after, it developed the fault.

Non-ECC memory sometimes fails and there's a good chance you'll never know.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47252971

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#345

Post by TacticalCoder »

forinti wrote: post #6
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #3

The situation is absolutely awful for anybody who needs significant memory or storage (or devices incorporating such). Even people who think they have enough for the next few years already could end up with an unpleasant surprise if they e.g. have a stick or two of RAM go bad or a GPU fry. I have a few machines with aging sticks that I'm hoping will manage to hold out until when/if things improve.

I've been using computers for more than 40 years now and the one component I have never seen fail is RAM. All the other bits in a computer I've seen fail.

> I've been using computers for more than 40 years now and the one component I have never seen fail is RAM.

I think over the decades I got one RAM disk fail. And another one didn't fail but, although I bought a pack of four sticks (2x x2), was detected (by memtest, when building the rig), as having another model name than the three others: even the shop who sold me the RAM was confused (don't know how that happened).

The usual component that I've seen fail the most would be the PSU? (before I started buying quality ones). One NVMe drive (an "ADATA") died on me even though it was nearly new.

PC assembled with quality parts usually last a very long time.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#346

Post by stingraycharles »

arcfour wrote: post #327
WheatMillington wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>that the limited supply goes to the buyer who need it the most Everything else you said is accurate, but this is not. Supply will go to those most able to pay, not those who need it the most. It is not a moral allocation, which your language implies.

Nobody really "needs" RAM immediately though, like a heart or a lung or something.

What if it’s for the machines that support this surgery?

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#347

Post by stingraycharles »

elictronic wrote: post #245
z_rho_one wrote: post #175

After RAM prices climbed 200% between August and November of last year, a store associate at Micro Center encouraged me to buy some RAM sticks if I needed them because "prices might continue to rise for a few years". I told him that was ridiculous and nobody would tolerate it if prices got higher. How wrong I was...

If it makes you feel better. The US government looks like it might start removing some of the 28k troops that are stationed in South Korea over this. No reason to keep them in a country that enables this sort of behavior.

As opposed to the behavior the US enables?

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#348

Post by TapamN »

spudlyo wrote: post #241
dawnerd wrote: post #232

What’s dumb is even older tech has gone up. Look at microsd and usb thumb drives. There’s a lot of price gouging just because they can. There’s a real shortage and then there’s just “it’s memory so price go up”

Tried to buy old DDR4 memory recently? I've been revitalizing some old laptops, and I foolishly paid nearly $200 for a Crucial 32GB Kit of DDR4 PC4-19200.

I bought 32GB of DDR4 SODIMMs (16GBx2 Corsair 3200MHz) April last year for $50.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#349

Post by sva_ »

davkan wrote: post #274
sva_ wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had the EVGA 1000w fail on me. It did not fail dramatically though, rather it refused to output high power. Got a replacement under warranty

They just rebrand PSUs, not all of them are bomber. But they have 10yr warranties on PSUs and are good about honoring them. I wish they still sold gpus. I would only buy evga for every component if I could specifically for the painless warranty. Had to warranty an asus mobo and it was like pulling teeth.

Yeah I also had an EVGA 1080 Ti die on me, and got a better GPU as upgrade. Their warranty was worth the premium price for sure.

Overall I have made very good experiences with long hardware warranties. Soldered RAM on my ThinkPad died once and I got an entire new mainboard after almost 3 years (it died 2 months before warranty expired.) New one still works today but the hardware is just too old.

Re: Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months

#350

Post by stingraycharles »

I already decided I won’t be upgrading any hardware for a few years and I’m going to ride this out. As right now we’re seeing that all prices of everything electronics is going up, my biggest worry is that once memory prices go down, the rest of the electronics will stay high. Eg after the price hike of all Apple electronics, will they go down again in prices in a few years after RAM goes down?

If history can predict anything it’s that the price hikes are permanent.

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