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PS5 now costs less than 64GB of DDR5 memory. RAM jumps to $600 due to shortage
- radicality 1y agoI just checked how much I paid around 12 months ago for Crucial 96GB kit (2x48GB ddr5 5600 so-dimm). Was $224, same kit today I see listed at $592, wild :/
- NewsaHackO 1y agoI bought 2x 32 GB DDR5 in august for $150, Now its $440. I dodged a HUGE bullet.
- ThatMedicIsASpy 1y ago96GB 6400, 380€ 2023-11
- pmdr 1y agoSame, bought in August for $250 (EU), now it's ~$840. I ended up returning the laptop I'd bought it for and thought 'why hold on to the RAM, it'll only depreciate in value,' so I returned that too. Better hold on to my PS5, I guess.
- tucnak 1y agoI did buy 384 GB worth of Samsung DDR5-4800 sticks for my homelab a few months ago. I was wondering at the time if I really needed it, well ended up using it anyway, and turns out, dodged a bullet big time.
- skwee357 1y agoThis is insane! I got 2 sticks of 16GB DDR4 SODIMM for €65.98 back in February. The same two sticks in the same store now cost €186
- justinram11 1y agoJust bought that exact kit for my Minisforum 790S7 build at the eye watering $592... Kicking myself as I was just starting to contemplate it early Oct but not yet seriously looking
- geerlingguy 1y agoOuch. Wondering if homelabs will be scavenged for unused RAM as even DDR4 is going up in price :(
- StableAlkyne 1y agoIt's crazy how much RAM has inflated in the last month. I checked the price history of a few DDR5 kits and most have tripled since September.
- georgefrowny 1y agoWhy specifically just now? It doesn't seem that much has materially changed very recently.
- debazel 1y agoIt's due to every hyperscalar building out new AI datacenters. For example you have Google recently saying things like "Google tells employees it must double capacity every 6 months to meet AI demand", and that they need to increase capacity by 1000x within 4-5 years.
- lousken 1y agoEveryone should unsub from this AI frenzy, this is ridiculous
- more_corn 1y agoSign me up. Where do I turn it off?
- pseudosavant 1y agoBuilt my son's first gaming PC 2 months ago. Figured it would be cheaper around Black Friday, but the prices were reasonable enough that we didn't wait. Turned out to be a huge savings to buy that fast DDR5 in September.
- EddieB 1y agoJust went through this today for my daughter- struggled to find an i5 not on pre-order, and the RAM was crippling- ended up going Ryzen 7 for a first time and 2x8Gb DDR5 6000 @ £119 - looking forward to building it with her!
- cwbriscoe 1y agoI wish I would have done what you did. Especially since I wanted 128GB. Now I am probably going to settle for 64GB or maybe 96GB.
- venturecruelty 1y agoThe better play would've been to buy Bay Area real estate in the 1970s, but what're you gonna do? lights cigarette
- vkou 1y agoI bought 64GB of DDR5 two weeks ago. That same RAM is now twice the price.
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- dawnerd 1y agoNoticed SSDs went up too. There's a "black friday" sales price for a 4TB crucial external drive that's at its highest price in 90 days. Bad time if you need to build a computer.
- rkagerer 1y agoArticle says: Looking at it optimistically, you're probably going to find DDR5 at bargain prices again in 2027. When do you think prices will recede again?
- dathinab 1y agonever fully, like with GPU, it a semi-cartel, it's in everything including you high performance SSD (as cache) they have a reason for them being supper high for ~2 years then they will go down but only "somewhat", lets say if the peak it >2x pricing the price in 2027 will be ~1.5x-1.8x price. And because everything needs prices expect all electronics to be ~20%-80% more expensive in 2027 compared to today, naturally this includes the profit margin. and naturally every regulation related companies don't like will supposedly be at fault for this (e.g. right to repair) at least that is a wild speculation on my side
- StopDisinfo910 1y agoRAM prices are cyclical. We are in the under supply part of the cycle. People just have to wait. As prices are sky high, production capacity will likely increase. Some AI companies will go bust. Demand will plummet and we will buy RAM for pennies while the market consolidates.
- bryanlarsen 1y agoThat's historically what happened when we had proper competition. Now we have a 3 party oligopoly and massive barriers to entry. Now at least 1 of the 3 is actively signalling than they're not going to not going to spend 100s of billions to expand fab capacity that will lower their profits because if one does it they'll all do it. It's a prisoner dilemma, and they're co-operating. When they co-operate we all lose.
- Someone1234 1y agoIt will be interesting to see the knock on effect of some upcoming consumer electronics; for example Apple was rumored to be working on a cheaper MacBook that uses an iPad CPU, and Valve is working on a SteamOS based gaming machine. Both will likely live/die based on price.
- dsiddharth 1y agoedit: looks like i had the wrong understanding, thanks to the comments below for explaining ~~~~~helps that Apple's SoC has the RAM on the main die itself. They're probably immune from these price hikes, but a lot of the PC/Windows vendors would, which would only make Apple's position even stronger~~~~
- arjie 1y agoHow does that make a difference? It's not like the price change is on DIMMs. The price change is on the DRAM, which is a commodity item. It's not like someone is going to discount it if you tell them "nah, I'm going to solder this one to my SoC". If Apple is insulated it is likely because Apple signs big contracts for large supply and manufacturers would prefer to be insulated from short-term demand shocks and have some reliability that their fabs can keep running and producing profitable chips.
- 201984 1y agoWhich Apple product is this? Memory dies and logic dies require entirely different factories to make, so I doubt this SoC exists.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- bryanlarsen 1y agoThey're probably immune for a while because they're probably using a long term contract, but when it comes time to renew they'll have to offer close to market price to convince the manufacturers not to use that fab space for more profitable memory.
- schmidtleonard 1y ago[flagged]
- koakuma-chan 1y agoDid Sam Altman buy out all gaming RAM?
- John23832 1y agoOpenAI bought 40% of all wafers. So yes.
- wkat4242 1y agoNo, but the factory capacity and raw materials needed to make that gaming dram is now under higher demand to make stuff like gddrx and hbm.
- schmidtleonard 1y agoIf a Bond villain bought all of the oil in the Middle East, would it affect prices in the US? (Yes, of course it would.)
- rtkwe 1y agoLLM models are voracious consumers of RAM for the top full power models so yes, not directly but they're all consuming massive amounts of the production capacity of memory makers it's impacting the 'gaming RAM' market too. They're not separate markets just because the end use is slightly different.
- Hamuko 1y agohttps://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/openais-stargate-project-to-consume-up-to-40-percent-of-global-dram-output-inks-deal-with-samsung-and-sk-hynix-to-the-tune-of-up-to-900-000-wafers-per-month https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/openais-star...
- forgetfulness 1y agoHe’ll have pissed off a lot of very rich and powerful people once they’re forced to accept that they’ll still need us plebes in the end, does he have a way out when that happens?
- Yokolos 1y agoI bought 32GB of DDR5 SODIMM last year for 108€ on Amazon. The exact same product that I bought back then is now 232€ on Amazon. I don't like this ride.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- tombert 1y agoYeah, similar for me. I bought 64 gigs of DDR5 laptop RAM about a year ago; it ended up costing about $190. Now the exact same listing is going for $470. https://a.co/d/fJH1GkW https://a.co/d/fJH1GkW I guess I'm glad I bought when I did; didn't realize how good of a deal I was getting.
- HacklesRaised 1y agoAI is a net negative fnyor anyone not in on the grift.
- pmdr 1y agoHang in there, abundance is on its way! /s
- ares623 1y agoAbundance of PRs waiting for reviewers!
- nathanaldensr 1y agoI've been calling it "the last great bubble" whenever discussing it with my family and friends. This is Peak Grift.
- s5300 1y ago[dead]
- theginger 1y agoWhen did a PS5 become a unit of cost? For reference seems to be about 0.002 London buses
- Yokolos 1y agoGive it a month or two and it might be cheaper to get the bus.
- jkingsman 1y agoI think it's intended as a comparison of cost when building a gaming-capable computer vs. a console of somewhat equivalent power. It used to be a general rule of thumb that you could build a computer of roughly equivalent power for the cost of a game console, or a little more — now the memory costs more than the whole console.
- AuthAuth 1y agoIt still is a rule of thumb, you dont need DDR5 for a gaming computer let alone 64gb. A low end am4 cpu + 16gb of DD4 3600 and a decent gpu will beat a ps5 in performance and cost. I dont understand why the headline made this strange comparison.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- nottorp 1y agoThe thing is, on a ps5 you just open the game and it runs fine. On a PC you may have the bright idea to open a browser along with the game for walkthroughs/hints. Or Discord to chat with your friends while gaming. Due to javascript bloat, your working set size goes from 16 to 48-64 Gb in a jiffy.
- kaszanka 1y agoThat's still not a fair comparison, because on a console you don't have the option to do any of that.
- timschmidt 1y agoPotentially unpopular take: memory manufacturers have been operating on the margins of profitability for quite a while now. Their products are essentially an indistinguishable commodity. Memory from Samsung or Micron or another manufacturer may have slight differences in overclockability, but that matters little to folks who just want a stable system. Hopefully the shortage leads large purchasers to engage in long-term contracts with the memory manufacturers which give them the confidence to invest in new fabs and increased capacity. That would be great for everyone. Additionally, we're likely to see Chinese fab'd DRAM now, which they've been attempting since the '70s but never been competitive at. With these margins, any new manufacturer could gain a foothold. If LLMs' utility continues to scale with size (which seems likely as we begin training embodied AI on a massive influx of robotic sensor data) then it will continue to gobble up memory for the near future. We may need both increased production capacity _and_ a period of more efficient software development techniques as was the case when a new 512kb upgrade cost $1,000.
- wkat4242 1y agoWell, what really prompted this crisis is AI, as well as Samsung shutting down some production (and I have to say I don't think they mind that the pricing has skyrocketed as a result!) But yes we're going to need more fabs for sure
- embedding-shape 1y ago> Well, what really prompted this crisis is AI, If the shortage of RAM is because of AI (so servers/data centers I presume?), wouldn't that mean the shortage should be localized to RDIMM rather than the much more common UDIMM that most gaming PCs use? But it seems to me like the pricing is going up more for UDIMM than RDIMM.
- bradfa 1y agoBecause manufacturers transitioned fab and assembly lines from low margin dram to higher margin products like hbm, hence reducing dram supply. But the demand for consumer grade dram hasn’t changed much so prices for it go up.
- librasteve 1y agoI used to sell 64kbit (yes, bit) DRAM at $7 in 1982. 1 year later was <$0.50. The memory business is a pure commodity and brutally cyclic. Big profit => build a fab => wait 2 years => oh shit, everyone else did it => dump units at below cost. Repeat.
- dboreham 1y agoOld enough here to remember Intel exiting the DRAM business.
- timschmidt 1y agoSame! And then they made new eDRAM for a hot minute as part of Crystal Well. It'd be fun to see them get back into the game in a serious way, but their on-again-off-again attitude toward dGPUs does not give me confidence in their ability to execute on such long-term plans.
- kabdib 1y agoOld enough here to remember Intel entering the DRAM business :-)
- loloquwowndueo 1y agoThen you have “acts of God” like that time when a flood or fire or something caused the only factory in the world that produced some obscure part of memory chips to stop production and memory costs double almost overnight. I remember my 4 -> 32 MB back in the 90s cost a fortune because of this.
- huseyinkeles 1y agoA great example for the pork cycle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_cycle
- Cthulhu_ 1y agoI've often heard it refer to as the bullwhip effect, I think it was this one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullwhip_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullwhip_effect
- debo_ 1y agoThe oft-snickered-at "smuggling 3mb of hot RAM" line from Neuromancer may have been prophetic after all.
- retrac 1y agoIf you are a scifi author, it's a mistake to give any hard numbers in real-world units. You will, most likely, greatly underestimate. Even trying to greatly overestimate, you will underestimate. Commander Data's specifications in the Star Trek TNG episode The Measure of a Man from 1989: 800 quadrillion bits of storage, computing at 60 trillion operations per second. 100 petabytes. That's a big machine. A very big machine. But supercomputers now have memories measured in petabytes. They never used "bits" again in any Star Trek script. It was kiloquads and gigaquads from then on.
- teach 1y agoThat's fun! To further prove your point I saw this and thought "yeah maybe 100 PB is more common these days but 60 trillion ops / second seems like a lot" Then I did some googling and it turns out that a single 5090 GPU has a peak FP32 performance of over 100 TFLOPS!
- nottorp 1y agoPretty sure Commander Data's software wasn't written in Electron so the hardware was enough :)
- dboreham 1y agoQuick reminder that DRAM futures have existed since the 1980s so you all could have protected your price with calls.
- venturecruelty 1y agoCall me old-fashioned, but I shouldn't have to have a stock broker to buy a computer. Maybe we could re-organize society to be a bit less ridiculous. "Quick reminder that you could've been born rich instead of a povvo."
- nrhrjrjrjtntbt 1y agoMost of us would be better with a fixed rate mortgage given risk reward. You dont buy a computer every month (unless you do but then that is rare)
- f0rgot 1y agowhere?
- citizenpaul 1y agoi deeply hope this is /s
- 2WSSd-JzVM 1y agoWell the alternative is that GP solved the world hunger as people can just buy future food contracts to protect themselves from drought.
- compsciphd 1y agofrozen concentrated orange juice!
- merelysounds 1y agoIn case anyone else wanted to check, PS5 has[1]: > Memory: 16 GB GDDR6 SDRAM So unless the RAM price jumps to 4x the price of a PS5, getting a PS5 is not the most cost efficient way to get to 64 GB of RAM. In comparison, PS3 has been used to build cheap clusters[2]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_5 [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_cluster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_cluster
- kristianp 1y agoYes, stupid comparison really. Also 64GB is pretty high-end from a consumer perspective. Most would do just fine with 32 as 2x16GB.
- AngryData 1y agoMaybe if they expect to upgrade within a few years it would be fine. But when I built my current computer 11 years ago I also didn't expect to need 16 gb of ram and only bought 8. 5 years later 16 gb of memory was a requirement for both software and games I was playing. And now 11 years later 16 gigs is not enough for fairly "simple" 3d modelling and 32 gigs is pretty close to the minimum requirement to fully utilize other modern hardware.
- crims0n 1y agoSpeaking of 11 years old, I just put my 4790k out to pasture. It was a good CPU for a long time, but it got a little long in the tooth for modern workloads.
- kristianp 1y agoI bought a 16gb desktop for work in 2011, plenty for Visual Studio at the time. 8 is a bit skimpy for a desktop build even in 2014.
- fzeroracer 1y agoI bought 2x16gb for my home computer at $90 about three months ago. When I checked the price of the exact thing I bought just in the past day, it's now $270. The price increase is across the board whether it's a low end or high end build.
- nehal3m 1y agoI picked up a PS5 today on a Black Friday deal for 350EUR. 32GB DDR5 is at around 280EUR at the moment. I have a gaming PC, it runs Linux because (speaking as a Microsoft sysadmin with 10 years under my belt) I hate what Windows has become, but on commodity hardware it’s not quite there for me. Thought I’d play the PlayStation backlog while I wait for the Steam Machine.
- tapoxi 1y agoDon't forget to play Astro's Playroom, it comes with the system and it's a blast.
- nehal3m 1y agoThanks, will do!
- tylerflick 1y agoAlso, Spiderman 2 since it’s a Playstation exclusive. Incredible game worth every penny.
- pmdr 1y agoSo, like, we were already pretty much priced out of higher-end graphic cards, and now it's happening to RAM. All this while jobs are disappearing, layoffs are ongoing and CEOs are touting AI's 'capabilities' left and right. Next is probably CPUs, even if AIs don't use them that much, manufactures will shift production to something more profitable, then gouge prices so that only enterprises will pay for them. What's next? Electricity? Where the f*k is all the abundance that AI was supposed to bring into the world? /rant
- pfannkuchen 1y agoSounds like a business opportunity for someone to come in and scale better.
- tapoxi 1y agoElectricity prices are already skyrocketing, it's present - not next.
- imglorp 1y agoYes electricity by more short-sighted, dirty methods (remember when crypto clowns bought an old fossil plant just for coin mining?) but more alarming, fresh water. That can be a bigger problem for civilization.
- amarcheschi 1y agoThe abundance is there, it just isn't for you or other working class people
- smallmancontrov 1y agoIn the share prices. Hope you're rich, because that's the only thing the economy cares about.
- charcircuit 1y agoMany apps support buying fractional shares. You don't have to be rich to buy shares in public companies.
- lysace 1y agoI'm waiting for the Apple TV 4k 4th gen. I think it might might be one or two more years, on top of the now three years from 3rd gen (2022). AI/LLM companies will pay TSMC more than Apple is willing to further subsidize this neat little box.
- ck2 1y agofor anyone looking for a deal, thank me later, buy asap ebay .com /itm/ 256168320806 (no association, just trying to help, I am still using DDR4)
- gnarlouse 1y ago"2026: Cost of manufacturing PC cases increases 60% due to increased demand from Optimus production line" or some other dumb shit
- luxuryballs 1y agobut can 64GB of DDR5 memory run Crysis? …I’ll see myself out
- compumike 1y agoLots of people are speculating that the price spike is AI related. But it might be more mundane: I'd bet that a good chunk of the apparently sudden demand spike could be last month's Microsoft Windows 10 end-of-support finally happening, pushing companies and individuals to replace many years worth of older laptops and desktops all at once.
- ProllyInfamous 1y agoI worked in enterprise laptop repair two decades ago — I like your theory (and there's definitely meat there) but my experience was that if a system's OEM configuration wasn't enough to run modern software, we'd replace the entire system (to avoid bottlenecks elsewhere in the architecture).
- ErneX 1y agoIt’s not speculation, but it could also be both.
- RachelF 1y agoPerhaps the memory manufacturers have seen how much Apple gets away with charging for the memory on their laptops and have decided to copy them ;-)
- Marsymars 1y agoI have no idea about the number of people this has actually affected, but this is exactly my situation. Need a new workstation with a bunch of RAM to replace my Win10 machine, so I don't really have viable options than paying the going rate.
- mikepavone 1y agoWow, I only paid $265 for 96GB of DDR5 back in April. Same brand (G.SKILL) as the kit in the article too.
- TheRealPomax 1y agoIs it really a shortage, rather than unfair order fulfillment, when it's just four companies buying up everything? There's plenty of RAM, it's just getting sold to the people who yell the loudest instead of going "sorry we have more customers than just you" and fulfilling orders to everyone.
- blindriver 1y agoWill this affect the prices of Macbook Pros and Mac Studios, especially the 512 GB version?
- einsteinx2 1y agoProbably not at all since the RAM on Apple’s chips is on die, meaning they manufacture it themselves with the chip. They’re not beholden to RAM manufacturer pricing. Arguably they could raise prices just because RAM has gotten more expensive and they want to match, but I doubt it given the crazy high margins they already charge for it.
- blindriver 1y agoI researched this and you are not correct. Apple doesn't make their own memory chips.
- einsteinx2 1y agoInteresting, so it’s integrated in the SoC, but they don’t produce it themselves as part of the CPU die?
- iceboundrock 1y agoIn addition to the demand from AI data centres, I believe this also contributes to the high price. https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ssds/intel-samsung-and-sk-hynix-hit-by-another-abrupt-us-policy-change-government-revokes-waivers-for-advanced-chipmaking-tools-at-companies-china-based-fabs https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ssds/intel-samsun...
- christkv 1y agoThey have been sort of dumping the ps5 slim diskless over here in the EU at 349 EUR.
- tonymet 1y agoThe silver lining is that hopefully it’ll become too expensive to ship new Electron apps
- tombert 1y agoRAM has been cheap long enough and now no one remembers how to write efficient GUI apps. I'm joking, but only kind of. It's not a domain that I do a lot of, but I haven't touched Qt in so long that it would basically be starting from scratch if I tried to write an app with it; I could write an Election app in like an hour.
- tonymet 1y agoYou can learn how to build a gui in Xcode or Visual Studio in a few hours
- Narishma 1y agoYou have too much faith in the software industry.
- kasabali 1y agoWhy do you think developers would care if it's expensive to users?
- tonymet 1y agoThere was a time
- lvl155 1y agoThis is purely price gouging because these rams are not ECC and server grade.
- zamadatix 1y agoThe article references the original coverage which talks to this: > Despite server-grade RDIMM memory and HBM being the main attractions for hardware manufacturers building AI servers, the entire memory industry, including DDR5, is being affected by price increases. The problem for consumers is that memory manufacturers are shifting production prioritization toward datacenter-focused memory types and producing less consumer-focused DDR5 memory as a result. But I'm sure the hysteria around that isn't helping prices come back down either.
- nubinetwork 1y agoExcept when you have datacenters also building racks with desktop hardware. I believe that was hetzner?
- AstroBen 1y agoHoly shit the 32GB DDR5 I bought late october for $110 is now $300 Felt like I overpaid at the time too. Wow
- ares623 1y agoI thought a big factor with the AI hype is that hardware costs always go down. Is this not a huge red flag to investors?!
- cyberjunkie 1y agoCrypto: GPUs AI: RAM Thanks for taking away years of affordable computing from people. Time is more valuable; there's no getting it back.
- prmoustache 1y agoI don't understand using a game console as a price comparison.
- Joyfield 1y agoCan't be using the standard banana measurement for everything.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ekropotin 1y agoWho could think that high end PC can be an appreciating asset, huh
- sylware 1y agoWhy this shortage? Sudden demand increase? Issues with the supply of refined rare earth metals ?
- leo_e 1y agoHardware is faster, but the "abstraction tax" is higher than ever. As someone currently fighting to shave megabytes off a C++ engine, it hurts my soul to see a simple chat app (Electron) consume 800MB just to idle. We spent the last decade using Moore's Law to subsidize lazy garbage collection, five layers of virtualization, and shipping entire web browsers as application runtimes. The computer is fast, but the software is drowning it.
- itopaloglu83 1y agoAt least the price hikes will put some emphasis on RAM usage. Safari is still leaking memory where a single tab managed to use 50GB regardless of which website it is.
- Velocifyer 1y agoThey actually mean 64GiB.
- BizarroLand 1y agoHoly crap. I bought right after this curve hit, like the day after. I went into Microcenter for a new PC w/64gb ddr5. The day before, their kits were ~$189. The day I bought they were $360. Now the same kit on Newegg is $530. It's been 2 weeks.
- einsteinx2 1y agoOuch that’s painful. At least you didn’t buy it 2 weeks later!
- tabs_or_spaces 1y agoIt started with GPUs, then hard drives and now RAM. It will probably take a while, but is the general public going to be priced out of computers eventually?
- zombot 1y agoShush, AI is good for all of us, don't you dare sow doubt about that.
- mkornaukhov 1y agoSad for all of us =(
- poemxo 1y agoUnless they stop making DDR5 and come out with DDR6, I think prices should return to normal next year.
- compsciphd 1y agohmm, I have a 64GB 32GB*2 6400/cl32 kit I bought from newegg last year for $127 - 20% cashback.
- tracker1 1y agoI'm just glad I pulled the trigger on an upgrade cycle earlier this year instead of waiting another year on the coming spring. the memory kid that was $329 a few months ago is now close to $1200 (2x48gb @ 6000 CL30).