Memory crisis is getting so bad that even retro RAM prices are going to the Moon

Worldwide chip pricing and it's effects on the overall economy are fascinating. I expected by now somebody with a gen -2 class VLSI plant would swing into action and make <thing> for 2/3 the cost of the majors, and clean up in volume as the market absorbs the price shock. But no, instead it suits everyone in the pipeline to whine about it, but mark up prices instead.

I am guessing the other side of this, the price drops will happen but slowly, and just like gas pricing, the profit is in rapid reaction to shortage and slow reaction to competition returning.

Chip pricing a sawtooth would make a LOT of money for somebody.

I work in e-waste recycling. Ever since the TurboQuant paper in March, I haven't been able to sell any DDR3. I'm guessing that the DDR2 and 3 this article is referring to is the actual memory chips, not modules/sticks that servers, desktops, laptops, etc. use, because the latter aren't moving.

DDR3 era processors are severely outdated today, with the strongest d3cpu 5th gen i7 unable to match performance of 6W TDP N100

The headline made me fear that I will need to shell out a few more bucks for 4164 DRAM chips, but fortunately this does not seem to be the case.

DDR3 is not "retro", for chrissakes.

Recently I had been struggling with a computer that kept crashing randomly. I finally figured out it was a bad stick of DDR4. I jokingly said to some friends I should put it on Facebook marketplace for free for repair. Maybe I should, who knows maybe someone can reflow the chips?

Added errata, homelabsales ddr4 2133/2400 16/32/64 prices are down from 3 months ago a decent amount.

People act like RAM is thousands of dollars now. I checked prices recently and while it’s pretty high, it’s not that bad for a component you just buy once and use for a long time. I’m still more concerned about the prices and availability of decent GPUs.

Still got 4x 128MB PC-133 Mosel-Vitelic. I'll be sooo rich soon!1!!

Does anybody have an understanding of when realistically there will be supply again? I've heard some positive sentiment about new developments in China, but that's not a market I am familiar with, and I haven't witnessed any effects of it thus far.

2016: OMG I found that old hard drive with bitcoin! 2026: OMG I found that old shoebox of SO-DIMMS! Lol

It trickles down.

[dead]