Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months, up to 10x the lowest ever tracked prices

The situation is absolutely awful for anybody who needs significant memory or storage (or devices incorporating such).

Even people who think they have enough for the next few years already could end up with an unpleasant surprise if they e.g. have a stick or two of RAM go bad or a GPU fry. I have a few machines with aging sticks that I'm hoping will manage to hold out until when/if things improve.

Any new fabs on the horizon or do the powers that be expect the music to stop sooner than that?

I still hope all this will come crashing down, there will be an oversupply of components and RAM will be cheaper than paper.

I noticed that resellers on ebay of used server equipment that I keep an eye on in Germany pulled all their DDR4 from surplus and used server racks and now list it separately for sale, at jacked up prices. Where you used to be able to see a used Gigabyte server listed with "128GB" "256GB" etc listed in the title, they now all say "0GB". They took extra effort, to pull used ram from older servers, and list it separate, just out of the greed of potentially capitalizing on this market.

The problem is... now for anyone looking to pickup a slightly older used/surplus server rack - you have the go and buy the (now marked up) RAM separate.

So... did they list the "0GB" racks with removed ram cheaper you ask? Nope. Many of them seem to be basically the same price as they were or even higher than they were, except now you're paying for RAM separate.

I bought a surplus Gigabyte server about 2 years ago off ebay for a home project, and I just went and the same seller still has some for sale, even older now than they were when I grabbed one, but they are 2x the price, and they don't come with any RAM, whereas I got one already populated as they were from the factory. Once you add that back in literally looking at 150-200% markup in the last 2 years on what was just surplus computer equipment that is 5+ years old.

I’m even more confused by the economics of the frontier model businesses. Even if they got preferential prices, they are still paying an inordinate amount for their infrastructure.

If it wasn’t economically feasible without VC/Nvidia money 3 years ago, how is it possibly economically feasible now at 10x prices for things like memory?

Even with AI pressure I'm willing to bet there's no need for prices to be this high. There has to be some price gouging/fixing going on. Same thing for nand and GPUs. Or else they're doing it to try to pressure people not to use local compute instead of the "cloud"

I bought an RX 6600 for $450 during the GPU shortage a few years ago. I know the AI boom is different than the crypto/COVID boom, but still. Don't be me.

Storage has more than doubled as well. The same SSD (4TB M.2) I bought in September 2025 for £229 is now £500.

I also had another order where I paid £30 for a 1TB SSD (sata though) and it is now more than £100...

I hate that I am no longer certain I don’t need to buy a new machine just in case.

The fake economics of the AI sector are damaging the real economy. This is madness.

I guess it's high time to stop using memory inefficient programming languages for any serious work.

Good. The more expensive memory is, the more everyone will be pushed into using cloud AI from hyperscalars.

They should each buy out a RAM manufacture, and make this the new normal.

It really is the best thing for AI adoption and the shareholders.