Yikes, I hadn’t realized this was that big of a problem. The same exact G.skill z5 64Gb ram I bought 4 years ago is well on its way to being double the price. Does this have more to do with Crucial ending consumer product lines or tariffs?
The end of Crucial is a symptom, not a cause. Crucial is merely Micron's factory brand. Nothing is stopping OEMs like G.Skill or Kingston from buying DRAM chips from Micron and putting them on consumer RAM sticks.
Well, that's the theory at least. In practice it's more accurate to say that Micron had cut down their consumer allocation that not even their factory brand can get enough chips to survive.
I just last week sold some DDR5 I bought in April for triple what I paid for it.
> The same exact G.skill z5 64Gb ram I bought 4 years ago is well on its way to being double the price.
The RAM I bought last year has more than tripled. 2x32 DDR5 kits, $240/kit, now $820.
Crucial was shut down so they could focus on selling more ram to hyperscalers. That happened because of the state of things.
Prices are not expected to recover until 2028.
It is because OpenAI bought 40% of the world’s production capacity overnight. RAM is like toilet paper during Covid now.