The reason RAM prices went up 4x is that a massive amount of not-yet-manufactured memory was bought with money that doesn’t really exist to be put into GPUs that haven’t been made yet, to be installed in data centers that haven’t been built, powered by infrastructure that may never exist, to satisfy demand that isn’t actually there, in order to generate profits that are mathematically impossible.
😎
All that to create Artificial Intelligence that isn’t really intelligent.
Did you use ChatGPT to write this?
I think calling it a RAM shortage is a bit incorrect. It is not like we are running out of raw materials or something else in the supply chain is broken. It’s shitty AI companies buying RAM that is not existing yet with money they don’t have. Unfortunately there’s no good term for that, I guess.
Supply monopolization?
Consumer fraud?
Sherman Act cartel market manipulation.
Section 1 of the Sherman Act prohibits price fixing and the operation of cartels, and prohibits other collusive practices that unreasonably restrain trade.
Frustratingly this is not just affecting the current generation of devices, but the previous one too. DDR4 RAM (which I use in my desktop) has gone up 300% since I bought it a few years ago.
Here’s hoping that nobody needs to replace current or previous gen hardware if it breaks in the next 2 years…
I overbuilt my system when I bought it and am glad I did. I also prioritize heat management.
Yeah so glad I went with 32GB when ram was cheap.
Same. Spent about 65 € I think, now it’s looking like > 200 €
I bought some expensive ram back when i bought my current CPU to maximize Factorio and that was about 200 €. Don’t even want to know how much it would be today. Also cheaped out and bought 16Gb ram for my home automation server last summer for less than 50€. Regrets hits me now as more would totally be better.
I, too, am glad that I added two more RAMs when they were cheap. Hopefully if one of them died, I can still have a decent machine in the foreseeable future.
Looking at me 2 x 32GB DDR4 systems 😌
. . . And then the market will be flooded with RAM that companies preordered and can’t pay for, because the AI bubble burst before it could be manufactured.
Hey, I can dream, right? And seriously, I would be quite happy if this causes an increase in dumb appliances, devices, and cars in the meanwhile.
When the bubble bursts it will play out exactly the same as it always does. The government will use money it doesn’t have to bail out the too-big-to-fail companies causing runaway inflation, rates will be jacked up to bring inflation down causing a recession, we will all get laid off, and by the time everything starts to stabilize and we have disposable income something will happen to make prices untenable again.
And they told me I was crazy for putting 64 gigs into my machine back in early 2021. I “only” paid about 200 USD
I knew somehow similar thing would happen in coming years. Alas, I had neither money nor requirement for that.
I bought a netbook (GPD Win Max 2) with 64GB of RAM last year. It was really expensive, by 2025 standards.
But now I feel like I have the power of the universe in my jacket pocket. Best irresponsible buying decision I ever made.
Fuck Sam Altman
I was supposed to get a device with 64 gigs of RAM later this year. I just got an email telling me that due to the RAM shortage they’ve cancelled the 64 gig version.
I’m aware, thanks.
Now I’m just contemplating whether I should upgrade from 32 GB DDR4 to 64 or 128 while it’s still within the realm of possibility, or bet on memory prices coming back down within the next few years, and upgrade to an entirely new platform with DDR5 then.
At least I’m not planning on buying a brand new car anytime soon, or even a nearly new one. And my phone’s fine for a few more years.
What do you need all that ram for?
Since you asked: some games or if running heavy processors for simulated projects
Not everyone just uses their box for writing emails and surfing TikTok.
Or for things like video editing. Video editors tend to be quite RAM heavy.
fr. huge war is going on and people worry about playing the latest games on their pcs lol
Don’t be fooled: if RAM had the chance it would kill everyone and everything you’ve ever loved.
My most recent hobby has been an old Suzuki Samurai that I dragged out of the woods a few years ago. It doesn’t use much RAM. It doesn’t even have fuel injection.
I’ve also been getting back into archery with my kid.
Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I think that making it harder to get a computer and play games is a huge miscalculation. If everyone is distracted by Call of Battle: Dutyfield then you have fewer bored assholes casting about for something to do, and if people can still play Factorio, you don’t end up with bored, autistic, organized assholes casting about for something to do.
Back in my day, we downloaded ram. 8GB at a time.
I downloaded a gallon of cum and my parents got really mad
Kids these days don’t know the pain of LimeWire
no I never had to use that crap
Nutsack doesn’t know the pain of downloading gallon-of_jizz.vid.exe and completely fragging the family pc
no i never did this one time even because i am a genius
Guess it’s time for everybody to find some grass to touch.
When RAM becomes an AI tax, “touch grass” means that labs stall, ICUs postpone upgrades, schools ration PCs. But Altmann buys a new yacht.
I wish Altman would meet a French crowd like in the good old times.
Which was absolutely great, ideal almost. Just look at the exemplary equal and fair society that’s France.
Imperfect as it may be it sure as hell is better than the US.
So we agree that the guillotine failed completely. At least you can think.
Going to be fucking hilarious when all the western companies get fucked by China taking over the market they don’t seem to care about.
They’re wealthy but absolute fucking morons. The people who fall for the “they have money so they must be smart” are such gullible buffoons. CCP is much more competent than American oligarchs, running what could’ve been great with better policy into the ground.
It’s almost as if socialism makes for a better capitalistic system. It’s a lot better when the oligarchs fear the government rather than the government fearing the oligarchs.
I agree
Don’t count on China. They are going to invade Taiwan next year and the global trade embargo will be a rounding error to the destruction of the tmsc factories during that war. Or they will capture the fabs and prohibit export to the US. Loose loose for us.
“China, a country that hasn’t invaded another country in 50 years, is going to invade this country” said the country that invades a country once a decade.
China claiming Taiwan is its territory and threatening invasion, the regular military “training exercises”, even including the specific goal of Taiwan landing operations, and continuous hybrid attacks for years already, like invasion of Taiwan waters with fishing vessels, and cyber attacks, and you’re sitting here claiming China isn’t a country that would invade others. What do you make of these kinds of activities, then?
The what-aboutism deflection doesn’t work very well on an international comment section, either.
I’m not an expert on Chinese military policy. I just know that all of us living in the West have been told by our media and our government that China is bad for us. I know we see the world through the lens of war.
I know you think it’s impossible other countries could be bad because the U.S. is held under a microscope and intensely critiqued both by foreign interests and specific groups here. The U.S. is far from perfect but pretending other countries like China would never do bad is absolutely comical.
You don’t have to be so defensive. I’m not criticizing you personally.
I didn’t read their comment as defensive at all. Their comment ended not in defense but in questioning your original claim/original assessment. The sentence before that serves as reasoning for that.
yes, because what happened in the past can perfectly predict what’s going to happen next.
not saying you are definitely wrong, but if someone wants to have a bet i wouldn’t bet on the side of China not invading.
Spoken like an American
China a country that has been trying to unify Taiwan since the civil war they couldn’t quite finish.
When you live in the imperial core of one of the most militaristic nations in the history of the world, everything seems like a provocation.
Ironic considering much of the world was constantly in conflict prior to Pax Americana.
America has engaged in war the majority of the post world war 2 era. Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan twice, Iraq twice. And that’s not including all the proxy wars they’ve funded.
Don’t forget Africa!
Yes every instance was totally bad. The U.S. should’ve done nothing to counter USSR and their dominoes across the world. US should’ve just let every country fall into an authoritarian USSR influenced country.
Obviously, I don’t blindly think every war was good, such as Bush era Iraq. However, defending Kuwait was 100% defensible in Gulf War.
The issue is not black and white like you people that barely got by high school make it out.
What is loose, certainly not your anus right? Or, maybe it is!
What’s your source for that. China has no more reason to invade Taiwan next year than they have at any point in the last 30 years
Why would they need to invade Taiwan? They already have their own companies making RAM.
they have more than practical reasons.
It’s called unfinished business. Xi is not going to give up on reunifying all of china. They got their Hong Kong now they need the Taiwan
It’s not about recent tech, it’s about historical territorial claims, and broader territorial strategy. Of course, while ignoring history/historic context at the same time.
It’s well known that Taiwan has all strategic factories mined. If a single Chinese soldier steps on the island, anything industrial of value will be blown to bits. China is interested in the land.
China has been wanting to reunite with Taiwan ever since the founding of the PRC. the reason has always been there, and right now they are more ready than ever.
keep a close eye on what Chinese military is doing.
Why are they more ready now than they were 2 years ago? Politically nothing has really changed I know Americans like to think that Trump is a big factor but he isn’t, since even he is just as bullish on China as any other US president has been and it’s not as if the military is left.
What I’m surprised hasn’t happened yet is RAM ICs being recycled at the retail level. As in, you could bring in an old laptop or phone with 32GB of soldered RAM and it would be desoldered and sold for cash or possibly even soldered into a new device you buy from that retailer.
I wonder how close we are to that business model arriving.
32GB of RAM from old hardware might as well be trash compared to 32GB of RAM made today.
What good is all that (slow) RAM if you’re stuck with an equally slow CPU?
Its not an equally slow CPU. These boards support Xeon CPUs that first launched 11 years after DDR3.
The implication is that there are users needing large RAM footprints that aren’t CPU bound. The hit in performance on the RAM isn’t significant enough to justify spending orders of magnitude more for modern DDR5 which is in short supply.
In computing history there’s precedent for this. Amiga computers had a small amount of “Fast RAM” which was extremely expensive, but the CPU could address a second bank of “Chip RAM” which was significantly slower but much much cheaper.
We could see this idea return in modern computers.
