At this point I’m just assuming we’re looking at a greedflation scenario again. They’re jacking up prices for an assumed increase in demand due to AI. It’s bullshit market manipulation for profit. Also fuck AI I’m fucking sick of this shit already.
This whole “America First” and interfering foreign imports/exports is really working out great. /s
He interferes with the economy like some communist government.
Part of the problem is lack of interference, they are not regulating the cartels behind this and with Trump they won’t be because all it takes is a bribe.
communist government
Socialist government, sure, but communism describes a stateless society. “Communist government” is an oxymoron.
Yes, I am that guy. Sorry ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yeah, but history wouldn’t agree with you in the literal sense.
I am intensely lucky and smart to gave gotten my new computer and a 14TB HDD right before this insanity happened. I am thinking of buying another 8TB HDD just for the hell of it.
I feel similarly. I pretty much maxed the RAM on my DDR5 gaming/daily driving desktop before this. I wish I had also maxed the RAM on my DDR4 server, though I did acquire significant storage space and a new SSD while it was more affordable. If we see a reasonable dip in storage prices or RAM, I’m buying spare drives in the sizes I use so I can be a bit more insulated from market swings and will have spares on-site immediately if needed.
I got 64gb of DDR5 ram. I got my computer from Dell and maxed out all what was available on their option. I have zero regrets.
Yeehaw! Sounds like you are set for a while. If you get replaced by AI, you could sell 32 gigs and live off that for a couple of years while still being able to run a zillion tabs at once!
This is about driving us nuts into cloud computing. Just as people are forced to upgrade their computers for Windows 11. First the drought then the saving tech bros emerge with their offerings.
You don’t need the latest Nvidea GPU to self host your own computing. You don’t even need ssds. You arguably don’t even need that much RAM. A ten year old Dell work fine. Are you self hosting your own AI? Probably not. So what? AI is not mature enough that it is a necessity.
Are computing prices coming down? Unlikely before the AI bubble pops. I think we have taken for granted that computing will perpetually improve price/performance. This is not sustainable.
old computers eventually break.
And new computers can break.
Might as well never buy anything because everything can break!
that’s not my point. relying on old hardware as the de facto solution for a long term drought will eventually see them fail without replacement.
we will eventually not have old computers we can turn back to, and no new ones at a good price. sticking to old stuff is not the solution.
Is there a shortage or is it just price gouging? We should be using the right terms.
I can go on Newegg right now and see tons of listings for Ram.
And the prices?
Fully gouged.
You would think that RAM manufacturers would ramp up production. Hopefully the fact that they aren’t means the bubble is going to burst within a couple of years.
I doubt it will take a couple years. They’re burning through so much cash right now that they’ll be bankrupt in a couple years and despite sunk cost fallacy they won’t let it get that bad. At some point they’ll cut their losses and pivot to some other new fad. The small handful of uses that make sense will stick around and a few companies will be in just the right place to make it turn a profit but the vast majority won’t. Some will go bankrupt (if we’re lucky Meta and/or X will be one of them) and some will just write it off as a failed experiment. Either way just as hard as prices spiked we’ll see them cratering before they rebound back to normal. Six months would be highly optimistic, but a year probably isn’t out of the question.
Of course all of this might be moot if Shitler manages to start WW3 by attacking Greenland. If that happens RAM prices will be the least of everyone’s worries.
They are ramping up production. But it all goes to AI data centers.
Why can’t anyone go against the current and sell to individual customers only?
Because consumer sales is slow and expensive.
What do you think costs more? Building RAM sticks for individual users who’ll pay $200-300 per 8/16 DRAM modules, or building sticks for enterprise customers who in one single order will spend millions of USD? Also latter requires no fancy packaging, marketing, or variations in the product.
If I as a customer pay, idk, 10€ per gb of RAM and an AI data center pays 20, do you really think they are going to consider how they are feeding a bubble that in the not-so-long term will burst and fuck them up too?
Nah, mate, they are capitalists, they only care about the money they can make in the extremely short term.
But bulk orders typically cost less
Oh look, American tech is just to completely implode all at once, neat.
So far they are sustaining each other in a giant circle jerk of investments. It is only going to implode when they run out of money, and the problem is they have a mindbogglingly huge amount of money.







