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RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung

pcworld.com

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Re: RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung

#411

Post by AnthonyMouse »

array_key_first wrote: post #405
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But in that case they are successful; they're just not paying very much relative to the cost of living as a result of someone else's imposition of artificial scarcity

Which thereby leads them to not have employees, which destroys their business, therefore they're not successful. If your business relies on X, and you can't afford X, your business sucks.

> Which thereby leads them to not have employees

But they do have employees. Their employees are just unhappy because now they're barely scraping by, but most employers can't afford to pay them more because the employers are in the same boat paying the high real estate costs themselves.

Re: RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung

#412

Post by h2zizzle »

sneak wrote: post #378
macNchz wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the actual return on that investment, though? This is self indulgence justified as « investment ». I built a pretty beefy PC in 2020 and have made a couple of upgrades since (Ryzen 5950x, 64GB RAM, Radeon 6900XT, a few TB of NVMe) for like $2k all-in. Less than $40/month over that time. It was game changing upgrade from an aging laptop for my purposes of being able to run multiple VMs and a complex dev enviro…

The logistics of upgrading a Mac are: 1) rsync home directory over to new machine 2) generate new SE keys in secretive 3) push new authorized_keys out to all servers and test (scripted) 4) start using new machine 5) wipe old machine It takes a few hours and most of it is waiting on 10GE rsync which only goes at like 3000Mbit and you can still use the source machine while it runs.

Disclosing that you spend half the median income on top-spec Apple hardware every year is a confession, dude. There's no justifying that spend, past, "I like having the newest toys." Happy for you and whatever sales rep whose performance review you're making a slam dunk. It's still not good advice for the vast majority of people who use their computers for work.

You're an economic elite living in what is commonly known as a "bubble"; consider the response to your initial post a momentary popping of it.

Re: RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung

#413

Post by h2zizzle »

jfindper wrote: post #92
sneak wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I crazy for thinking that anyone using computers for doing their job and making their income should have a $5k/year computer hardware budget at a minimum ? I’m not saying to do what I do and buy a $7k laptop and a $15k desktop every year but compared to revenue it seems silly to be worrying about a few thousand dollars per year delta. I buy the best phones and desktops money can buy, and upgrade them often, becaus…

> I’m not saying to do what I do and buy a $7k laptop and a $15k desktop every year > I buy the best phones and desktops money can buy Sick man! Awesome, you spend 1/3 of the median US salary on a laptop and desktop every year. That's super fucking cool! Love that for you. Anyways, please go brag somewhere else. You're rich, you shouldn't need extra validation from an online forum.

It's worse. 1/3 median household, 1/2 median individul.

Re: RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung

#414

Post by sneak »

jcalvinowens wrote: post #383
sneak wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not $22k/year, as the hardware still has great resale value when it’s replaced in 14-18 months. It’s less than $8-10k/year when all is said and done. I pay more for my car+insurance.

Look at it a different way: if you'd invested that $10K/year you've been blowing on hardware, how much more money would you have today? How about that $800/month car payment too?

I don’t understand a world where spending $1k/mo on business equipment that is used to earn dozens of times more than that is crazy. It’s barely more than my minuscule office space costs.

My insurance is the vast majority of that $800, fwiw.

Re: RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung

#415

Post by sneak »

iberator wrote: post #267
sneak wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I crazy for thinking that anyone using computers for doing their job and making their income should have a $5k/year computer hardware budget at a minimum ? I’m not saying to do what I do and buy a $7k laptop and a $15k desktop every year but compared to revenue it seems silly to be worrying about a few thousand dollars per year delta. I buy the best phones and desktops money can buy, and upgrade them often, becaus…

Extremist point of view, and NOT optimal. Diminishing performance per $... Proper calculation is: cost/ performance ratio. Then buy a second from the list:)

Entirely suboptimal, granted. Massively reduced ROI for each dollar spent above maybe $2000 per year. But when the maximum extreme end of the spectrum (without going to 0 ROI) is still less than $1000 per month, why is it even a question?

People who make a fraction of what I do spend more than that on their shiny pickup truck with a perpetually empty bed. These are my work tools.

Re: RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung

#416

Post by sneak »

h2zizzle wrote: post #412
sneak wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The logistics of upgrading a Mac are: 1) rsync home directory over to new machine 2) generate new SE keys in secretive 3) push new authorized_keys out to all servers and test (scripted) 4) start using new machine 5) wipe old machine It takes a few hours and most of it is waiting on 10GE rsync which only goes at like 3000Mbit and you can still use the source machine while it runs.

Disclosing that you spend half the median income on top-spec Apple hardware every year is a confession , dude. There's no justifying that spend, past, "I like having the newest toys." Happy for you and whatever sales rep whose performance review you're making a slam dunk. It's still not good advice for the vast majority of people who use their computers for work. You're an economic elite living in what is commonly kn…

I don’t spend anywhere near that. It resells for 60-80% when I replace it a year or two later. That offsets the cost drastically.

Spending $700 per month on your work tools (where that represents 2-3% of revenue) is not unreasonable. My minuscule office space in the shitty part of town costs as much.

I think anyone running their small business that depends on high performance computers should have an annual budget of at least 1% of revenue for hardware.

Re: RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung

#417

Post by sneak »

crazygringo wrote: post #107
macNchz wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the actual return on that investment, though? This is self indulgence justified as « investment ». I built a pretty beefy PC in 2020 and have made a couple of upgrades since (Ryzen 5950x, 64GB RAM, Radeon 6900XT, a few TB of NVMe) for like $2k all-in. Less than $40/month over that time. It was game changing upgrade from an aging laptop for my purposes of being able to run multiple VMs and a complex dev enviro…

> This is self indulgence justified as « investment ». Exactly that. There's zero way that level of spending is paying for itself in increased productivity, considering they'll still be 99% as productive spending something like a tenth of that. It's their luxury spending. Fine. Just don't pretend it's something else, or tell others they ought to be doing the same, right?

I think my point was lost, then. I agree with you there is a HUGE falloff in productivity ROI above maybe $2k/year.

My point is that the extreme right end of the slider, where you go from “diminishing returns” to “no return whatsoever”, still costs less than leasing a Kia. It costs less than my minsicule shabby office in the sketchy part of town. Compared to serious computer business revenues, it isn’t even worth spending the time to talk about. I spend more on housekeepers or car insurance.

Given that, why not just smash the slider to the right and stop worrying about it? For serious computer professionals the difference between a $2k/year hardware budget and a $7k/year hardware budget does not matter.

Re: RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung

#418

Post by microtonal »

sejje wrote: post #279
microtonal wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's kinda like saying the mid-20s were pretty scary too, minimum wage was AMOUNT and a MacBook M4 Max was $3000. . In the mid-90s me and my brother were around 14 and 10, earning nothing but a small amount of monthly pocket money. We were fighting so much over our family PC, that we decided to save and put together a machine from second-hands parts we could get our hands on. We built him a 386 DX 40 or 486SX2 50 o…

Linux notoriously runs on worse hardware than almost anything, especially in the 90s

It was kind of the opposite in the early 90s. In 93 I got Slackware Linux on a CD-ROM that was included, but I couldn’t get it to run because our system only had 2MB RAM. At the same time, what was common in the day (MS-DOS and Windows 3.1) ran fine.

Re: RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung

#419

Post by jcalvinowens »

sneak wrote: post #414
jcalvinowens wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at it a different way: if you'd invested that $10K/year you've been blowing on hardware, how much more money would you have today? How about that $800/month car payment too?

I don’t understand a world where spending $1k/mo on business equipment that is used to earn dozens of times more than that is crazy. It’s barely more than my minuscule office space costs. My insurance is the vast majority of that $800, fwiw.

Having a 10% faster laptop does not enhance your ability to earn money in any meaningful way. Just like driving around in a luxury car doesn't enhance your ability to travel from point A to point B in any meaningful way.

It's okay to like spending money on nice things, it's your money and you get to decide what matters to you. What you're getting hate for here is claiming it's justified in some way.

Re: RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung

#420

Post by araes »

time4tea wrote: post #121

Dec 2023: 96GB (2x48) DDR5 5x00 £260 today £1050 128GB (4x32 ) DDR5 5x00 £350 today £1500 Wut? Edit: formatting

Somebody had PC Part Picker [1] on a different thread. Found it kind of helpful. 3x, 3.5x, and 4x is relatively common across most memory types. DDR4-3200 2x32GB is one of the few that appears to have flattened slightly at 2.5x, although most DDR4-3200 is not as severe as other DDR4 or DDR5. None of the other lines appear to have flattened significantly yet.

[1] https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/

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