alt Hacker NewsAverage DRAM price in USD over last 18 months
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To put this in long term relation.
Even current DDR4 3200 DIMM prices are at an all time high.
These are 6+ year old chip specs now!
I even thought stuff was overpriced four years ago in mid-2021 already, but this is a whole new level.
Some sample long term data for those:
I just checked my go-to stores in Europe. Holy shit. I bought a 5200-speed 16GB DDR5 kit in October for 55 eur. Now it's selling for 240 eur. The 6000-speed model is now 390 eur.
Maybe it's time we make a simple web page 100KB again? Is there some kind of CDN minification, adblocking and compression service? Maybe even server side rendering of websites?
Then a smartphone would work fine with 1GB of RAM and everyone could be happy.
https://www.mooreslawisdead.com/post/sam-altman-s-dirty-dram...
On October 1st OpenAI signed two simultaneous deals with Samsung and SK Hynix for 40% of the worlds DRAM supply... the shock wasn’t that OpenAI made a big deal, no, it was that they made two massive deals this big, at the same time, with Samsung and SK Hynix simultaneously! In fact, according to our sources - both companies had no idea how big each other's deal was, nor how close to simultaneous they were. And this secrecy mattered. It mattered a lot.
Had Samsung known SK Hynix was about to commit a similar chunk of supply — or vice-versa — the pricing and terms would have likely been different. It’s entirely conceivable they wouldn’t have both agreed to supply such a substantial part of global supply if they had known more...but at the end of the day - OpenAI did succeed in keeping the circles tight, locking down the NDAs, and leveraging the fact that these companies assumed the other wasn’t giving up this much wafer volume simultaneously…in order to make a surgical strike on the global RAM supply chain…and it's worked so far...
OpenAI isn’t even bothering to buy finished memory modules! No, their deals are unprecedentedly only for raw wafers — uncut, unfinished, and not even allocated to a specific DRAM standard yet. It’s not even clear if they have decided yet on how or when they will finish them into RAM sticks or HBM! Right now it seems like these wafers will just be stockpiled in warehouses – like a kid who hides the toybox because they’re afraid nobody wants to play with them, and thus selfishly feels nobody but them should get the toys!I don't understand this. I'm looking at prices on some Asian store fronts and it's nowhere even remotely near these. I'm looking at DDR5-6000 2x16 for about $130, with no apparent limits.
Even with tariffs, transport, and other fees, you could get this to the US for way less than $400. I doubt the market could be this inefficient - in other words I don't think I just found a get rich quick scheme. So, what gives?
I upgraded my pc about this time last year (new CPU, RAM, and motherboard).
I was originally going to just get 64GB of DDR5-6000, with the option of adding another 64GB later, thinking the price might drop even further. At the last minute, I decided to get the whole 128GB instead. Glad I did.
If these prices don't return back to normal I just don't see how Valves steam machine is less than $1,000 USD.
As I mentioned in a prior post 7/18/2023 - G.SKILL Trident Z5 RGB Series 64GB (2 x 32GB) 288-Pin PC RAM DDR5 6000 - $253.
Today - G.SKILL Ripjaws S5 Series 64GB (2 x 32GB) 288-Pin PC RAM DDR5 5600 (PC5 44800) Desktop Memory Model F5-5600J3636D32GX2-RS5W - $620.
Prices from Newegg.
A possible answer as to why this is happening. https://thememoryguy.com/some-clarity-on-2025s-ddr4-price-su...
Apple system config upgrades not looking so bad anymore
Really hoping this comes down again soonish. My desktop doesn’t have many years left :/
Well, I guess one way these AI companies can stop us meeting our needs with local models - make it so we just cant get the hardware to run them...
What specifically happened in June to set this off? It can't just be "waves hands AI/LLMs" because ChatGPT has existed for years.
How to get every tech enthusiast in the world to root for OpenAI to implode in order to release the RAM hostages.
I wonder who the "visionaries" were that set the marked increase trend of max prices near 2024-12-09 for DDR4-3600 2x32GB and DDR4-3600 2x16GB?
I think that acted as a dog whistle for the rest of the market signalling there'd be no consequences for ripping other people off.
Also relevant: https://youtu.be/B7sB1-8jKno
I think most of us came to the conclusion that the AI hype is heavily responsible for this.
I want my money back. There should be an extra-tax on all those AI companies - they are heavily responsible for DRAM costing more now.
Been planning to build my daughter a gaming PC for Xmas. Feel lucky I found a pre-built with 32GB RAM in a warehouse store on black Friday that hadn't been marked up yet. First pre-built desktop I've bought in decades and it was actually cheaper than I could build myself due to the crazy RAM prices.
Time for Intel to re-enter the memory market?
GPU prices never went down after the crypto rush replaced GPUs with ASICs. I hope this does not repeat with DRAM and AI.
It hasn't been long since this happened The price hasn't been rising all year For d4 it's June, d5 is September so what happens
So, RAM outperforms stocks, gold, bitcoin, NFTs, real estate?
Maybe this is a "strategic inflection point" for Intel... to get back into the DRAM business?
I asked ChatGPT if it can generate a bunch of RAM for me. He says this is some kind of famous joke or something.
(I’m sorry I couldn’t resist)
Why is it that consumers always get shafted here and we just keep going on like "it's just business"
Why isn't some consumer protection regulator going "actually no, OpenAI, you can't corner the market for the foreseeable future"
Hell, make OpenAI pay for this shit up front. You want to corner the market? Put up the money you don't have.
Man, fuck these AI (and crypto) companies causing the rise of prices in GPUs and now memory.
Who are the main players that make or benefit from these inflated DRAM prices?
the other side of the AI bubble are a huge amount of 2nd hand parts of all kinds going to come onto the market?
Stagflation!
Got real lucky. I was trying to negotiate a guy down on RAM. I wanted a server without as much RAM. In the end, I had to take the 768 GB. It only cost $1k more than 192 GB at the time. Unfortunately I can’t really sell off the excess because I need to substitute down the RAM modules to fill all 12. Ah well.
I hate this. PC gaming is my hobby, the only one that’s lasted my whole life. It’s always been there. It’s how I met my wife. It’s how I relax after a long day. It’s how I’ve participated in so many stories that stick with me and given me so many memories.
All of it is being murdered by the AI bros. Before them it was the crypto bros. It’s one thing after the other and I hate it so much.
Inflation metrics seem to fail to capture the increase in leading-edge tech products of the past 18 months.
Funny how many dot-com esq things are popping up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_price_fixing_scandal