I am currently trying to sell a brand new DDR5 6000 64GB CL 28-36-36-96 kit for 100€ below market prices with warranty (I purchased it 3 months ago, and never opened it as I figured I don't need 128GB in my PC.) But it's just not selling. I guess most people don't even check ebay, and go straight to hardware online retailers.
personally, i always check ebay. but i know general sentiment around "used/like new" items is fairly poor. just ask grand pap sitting in florida, buying half the computer new, because "he would never buy used", aka some returned tower.
> Right now demand for DRAM is extremely high bordering on endless Why is demand extremely high right now when it wasn't a couple of months ago? What changed since then that caused it to triple overnight?
I've heard it was Sam Altman and OpenAI basically buying every wafer available from both Samsung and SKHynix at the start of October. Neither company know of the other purchase until it was a done deal.
Kind of funny to see manufacturers get screwed by their own opaque pricing policies for once.
All well and good when you're dictating terms with dozens of buyers, but probably not so much when a single buyer is dictating terms to a couple of sellers.
What's happening right now is very different than what happened back during the dot com crash. When they were doing price fixing it was because there was a glut of supply and demand was tanking. Prices were falling and they coordinated to keep prices from falling less. Right now demand for DRAM is extremely high bordering on endless. Prices are going up . The incentive for one of the big players to undercut the other…
I am currently trying to sell a brand new DDR5 6000 64GB CL 28-36-36-96 kit for 100€ below market prices with warranty (I purchased it 3 months ago, and never opened it as I figured I don't need 128GB in my PC.) But it's just not selling. I guess most people don't even check ebay, and go straight to hardware online retailers.
The question is how much of this consumer memory is selling either. It may well be that not many people are actually buying DRAM right now, given how much prices have spiked.
I also have a lot more luck selling PC hardware on bespoke forums than on ebay etc.
I do not have any particular insight into the market, I was just extremely confused reading this in particular > Right now demand for DRAM is extremely high bordering on endless. Prices are going up. The incentive for one of the big players to undercut the other on cost even just a little bit to pick up market share is extremely lucrative. Given this first statement, the last one makes no sense. Either the demand is…
If demand is high and supply is fixed (generally the case) you can also pull a DeBeers, grab everyone by the balls, and charge 3x (or more) the already high prices everyone would already get when you sell out your inventory.
To the extent that demand is price inelastic, which in practice means a lack of substitutes and the product serving an essential need.
Yep, it doubled in the last 4 months https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5Zc-FsUDCM I upgraded my PC by adding 64GB.. two Fridays ago I sold the 32 GB I took out for the same amount of what I paid for the 64 GB in July... insane
And I'm beating myself for not preemptively ordering that 128G kit for $500 a couple of months ago, thinking about upgrading soon. Last week it went to $1300 and now it's not available anymore. Guess I'll just skip AM5 and wait for AM6 at this rate...
Same situation. I looked up the previous RAM boom and bust cycles (thanks Gemini) and we are looking at over a year of waiting potentially.
Samsung and SK Hynix. OpenAI made deals to buy almost half of manufactured DRAM in the world. There's speculation that after this was announced, other companies started making their own deals in a panic, further driving demand.
> after this was announced, other companies started making their own deals in a panic, further driving demand.
Oh ffs it's like the toilet paper thing. I was amazed how long that continued despite credible sources saying there is no shortage, just insane demand from the loonies that don't believe it would return to normal instantly if they would just stop buying more and more extras because "see, it's out again!"
> The incentive for one of the big players to undercut the other on cost even just a little bit to pick up market share is extremely lucrative. I would argue that the DRAM price fixing scandal actually demonstrates that the industry operates like a cartel. During times of low demand and high supply, they will coordinate to protect prices, and then during spikes in demand (or alleged spikes in demand) they coordinate…
> then during spikes in demand (or alleged spikes in demand) they coordinate to keep the price from dropping. Why would they need to coordinate to keep the price from dropping during a spike in demand? a spike in demand will obviously not be expected to lower prices regardless of collusion
To keep someone from undercutting others’ prices and causing a competitive pricing war.
Realistically, it wouldn’t be a meaningful drop to the consumer. But it’ll affect some executive’s ability to buy another unnecessary trinket.
Samsung and SK Hynix. OpenAI made deals to buy almost half of manufactured DRAM in the world. There's speculation that after this was announced, other companies started making their own deals in a panic, further driving demand.
> after this was announced, other companies started making their own deals in a panic, further driving demand. Oh ffs it's like the toilet paper thing. I was amazed how long that continued despite credible sources saying there is no shortage, just insane demand from the loonies that don't believe it would return to normal instantly if they would just stop buying more and more extras because "see, it's out again!"
This is almost certainly what's going on right now in the retail market. OTOH it's also a semi-rational response to volatility and uncertainty as to future wholesale prices, due to, e.g. the projected build-out of future AI datacenters. As with any durable good, whenever the price might be expected to rise in the future, people will want to hoard stockpiles and the expected price rise will be brought forward to the present.
> Right now demand for DRAM is extremely high bordering on endless Why is demand extremely high right now when it wasn't a couple of months ago? What changed since then that caused it to triple overnight?
Maybe Some nerds joked at lunch that if we hoard all the RAM we cut it off from competitors. They saw what COVID did to supply chains and thought they’d be so smart if they could simulate it.
DRAM 2025 as toilet paper from 2020. Seems plausible.