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Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

investors.micron.com

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Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#391

Post by ssl-3 »

yareally wrote: post #387
ssl-3 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the small-town bits of Ohio I've lived in for most of my life, computer stores come and go from time to time. There used to be more of them but they still exist. The one that my first PC came from (in 1988) was open for something like 20 years. Another that still remains has been there for 33 years. Plus, I mean: Best Buy stocks some PC parts. So does Wal-Mart. They're not "local," but they're nearby and they have…

Microcenter is headquartered here in Ohio. Arguably the best PC focused "brick and mortar" store still in existence. I feel like I stepped back into my childhood every time I go into one of their stores

Yes. Microcenter was founded in Columbus, Ohio -- IIRC as a shop on High Street most of a lifetime ago. The present headquarters are, IIRC, just up the road in Hilliard. They maintain an excellent and enormous retail store in the area. There is an amazing (and not at all cheap) Greek restaurant across the street.

But after I drive to Microcenter and shop there and drive back, I'm fuckin' tired. I won't want to build a PC when I get home. I'll want to think about either getting a pizza or going to bed, and the bed will probably win.

So usually, I don't shop at Microcenter at all. I adore that place (and yeah, I'm impressionable: Keeping Raspberry Pi Zero W's in stock at every checkout register and selling them for $5 made an impression on me), but it's just too far away from where I live.

What usually happens instead, despite still having much more local alternatives, is this: I order the stuff. It shows up on my porch a day or two later. I build it at my leisure.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#393

Post by angoragoats »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #384
angoragoats wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, the GPUs sit in my basement and I can connect to them from anywhere in the world. My point was not that “it isn’t really that slow,” my point is that Macs are slower than dedicated GPUs, while being just as expensive (or more expensive, given the specific scenario) to purchase and operate. And I did my analysis using the Mac Studio, which is faster than the equivalent MBP at load (and is also not portable). So…

The whole point of having it local is not to use the network, or not need it, or not needing to jump the GFW when you are in China. Ultra is about 2X of the power of a Max, but the Max itself is pretty beefy, and it has more than enough GPU power for the models that you can fit into ~48GB of RAM (what you have available if you are running with 64GB of memory).

If you travel to China, sure, what I’m talking about probably won’t work for you.

In pretty much any other situation, using dedicated GPUs is 1) definitely faster, like 2x the speed or more depending on your use case, and 2) the same cost or possibly cheaper. That’s all I’m saying.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#395

Post by cdkmoose »

mh- wrote: post #176
tharkun__ wrote: post #162

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).…

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

I live in Central NJ, which is pretty densely populated and surrounded by tech firms. The nearest MicroCenter to me is 35 miles away in Brooklyn.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#396

Post by babypuncher »

snuxoll wrote: post #373
babypuncher wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well in the case of Doom: The Dark ages, it's not just about about fidelity but about scale and production. To make TDA's levels with the baked GI used in the previous game would have taken their artists considerably more time and resulted in a 2-3x growth in install size, all while providing lighting that is less dynamic. The only benefit would have been the ability to support a handful of GPUs slightly older than t…

I'm not even talking about RT, specifically, but overall production quality. Increased texture detail, higher-poly models, more shader effects, general environmental detail, the list goes on. These massive production budgets for huge, visually detailed games, are causing publishers to take fewer creative risks, and when products inevitably fail in the market the studios get shuttered. I'd much rather go back to small…

I can definitely agree with that. AAA game production has become bloated with out of control budgets and protracted development cycles, a lot of that due to needing to fill massive overbuilt game worlds with an endless supply of unique high quality assets.

Ray tracing is a hardware feature that can help cut down on a chunk of that bloat, but only when developers can rely on it as a baseline.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#397

Post by Ygg2 »

tianqi wrote: post #253
linguae wrote: post #139

I'm sad. I'm a software guy, not much of a hardware expert, so please bear with me if I"m too pessimistic. However, I feel that if trends like this continue, it might be the end of enthusiast-level personal computing as we know it. No more being able to head down to the electronics store and purchase RAM, motherboards, processors, GPUs, storage, and other components. We're going to be limited to locked-down terminals…

This is a classic slippery slope fallacy. Micron's reversible exit from one of its businesses is clearly does not signify the end of the PC era. As long as the demand for DIY PCs persists, there will be suppliers providing the products needed. If you follow the industrial memory market, you probably know that it is currently experiencing a severe supply shortage. I think Micron's decision simply reflects the current…

> Micron's reversible exit from one of its businesses is clearly does not signify the end of the PC era.

No one is saying that it's the sole culprit. But when average PCs start costing $3000+ from now on, it seems like the end of an era.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#398

Post by daft_pink »

0manrho wrote: post #369
daft_pink wrote: post #366

To be fair, the market has to be impacted by the Shift to non-upgradable devices. At least in my house, most of the computers can't be upgraded with Crucial parts, because they use Apple Silicon.

Disagree. has very little to do with it. Though it finally clicked why I keep seeing people repeat this, it's Apple users. (Not a dig btw, I can totally see why it'd feel that way from their POV). For starters, in the past, Crucial RAM wasn't really compatible with the Apple devices that did have socketable/upgradeable RAM. Technically some of their laptops/imacs did, but Apple really didn't want you servicing/upgrad…

But the Market has shifted, Mac is increasing in marketshare and that shift is even higher on expensive laptops, where people get expensive upgrades.

Two or three years ago, I bought an XPS 15 with minimum memory specs and immediately maxed the RAM to 64gb and threw in a 2tb nvme drive. Last year I purchased a M3 Macbook Pro and made no upgrades. I don’t expect to go back to PC, because the Mac performance is so great and the power managment actually works.

When I threw my XPS 15 in my bag, it often comes out of my bag with no battery. The Mac not only gets awesome battery life, but it doesn’t randomly discharge when closed and sleeps properly.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#399

Post by 0manrho »

daft_pink wrote: post #398
0manrho wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. has very little to do with it. Though it finally clicked why I keep seeing people repeat this, it's Apple users. (Not a dig btw, I can totally see why it'd feel that way from their POV). For starters, in the past, Crucial RAM wasn't really compatible with the Apple devices that did have socketable/upgradeable RAM. Technically some of their laptops/imacs did, but Apple really didn't want you servicing/upgrad…

But the Market has shifted, Mac is increasing in marketshare and that shift is even higher on expensive laptops, where people get expensive upgrades. Two or three years ago, I bought an XPS 15 with minimum memory specs and immediately maxed the RAM to 64gb and threw in a 2tb nvme drive. Last year I purchased a M3 Macbook Pro and made no upgrades. I don’t expect to go back to PC, because the Mac performance is so grea…

Indeed. The market is changing. The overall personal electronic (computational) device market (Desktop, Laptop, Mobile/Tablet) is growing year over year, and because of that, mac shares going up doesn't mean Desktop PC ownership/sales are being cannabilized. Desktop Market (in terms of yearly sales) is relatively stable, and in terms of ownership continues to grow, while laptop/mobile/tablet (regardless of Mac/Android/Windows/Arm/etc) is growing healthily.

Crucial didn't leave because no one was buying RAM, or even that less people were buying RAM. Or at least that was the situation prior to shit going sideways with pricing/availability in the past 2 months, but that's independent of Apple/Crucial/Micron. They left because there's been little margin in unbuffered DIMMs (aka consumer RAM) for years, and there's virtually no demand or opportunity for innovation in the space for Micron to leverage the brand to make their B2B/Enterprise sales look better, and what Does make them stand out (largely cosmetics these days) is not a core competency of crucial or Micron. There's even less demand for anything interesting/innovative/worth having a whole separate company/BU for in the markets that are growing (Apple, Mobile, Laptops).

Also, now is a prime opportunity to exit the market, but it's also clear this has been in the works for a while though. Look at their limited and frankly half-assed product offerings for DDR5, then compare to what they offered on DDR4. Substantially less SKU's, with very little offerings for the enthusiast market. This wind down started circa 2020.

As far as Crucial is concerned, Apple has never been relevant or a danger to their bottom line. And if Micron wanted in on that money, they're better served doing it as Micron, as opposed to Crucial, which was tantamount to operational overhead in that context.

Re: Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business

#400

Post by Sheriya »

linguae wrote: post #139

I'm sad. I'm a software guy, not much of a hardware expert, so please bear with me if I"m too pessimistic. However, I feel that if trends like this continue, it might be the end of enthusiast-level personal computing as we know it. No more being able to head down to the electronics store and purchase RAM, motherboards, processors, GPUs, storage, and other components. We're going to be limited to locked-down terminals…

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