6 ms·

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. D

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?

adastra22 10mo ago
It is because OpenAI bought 40% of the world’s production capacity overnight. RAM is like toilet paper during Covid now.
- embedding-shape 10mo ago
  And also because Korean companies apparently fear US retribution if they start producing DDR4. I don't feel like "OpenAI bought half the supply" tells the entire story when the companies that used to produce DDR4 with the left over machines no longer dare to do so. Probably the prices wouldn't spike as they're doing right now if the ones who used to produce the older RAM generations actually continued doing so.
  - officeplant 10mo ago
    What do you mean by this? From everything I can find points towards other companies winding down DDR4 production because of China's cheaper DDR4 production lines.
    - embedding-shape 10mo ago
      It was brought up in a different HN submission about a week ago, here's the specific quote from the article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46169499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46169499 > Budget brands normally buy older DRAM fabrication equipment from mega-producers like Samsung when Samsung upgrades their DRAM lines to the latest and greatest equipment. This allows the DRAM market to expand more than it would otherwise because it makes any upgrading of the fanciest production lines to still be additive change to the market. However, Korean memory firms have been terrified that reselling old equipment to China-adjacent OEMs might trigger U.S. retaliation…and so those machines have been sitting idle in warehouses since early spring. - https://www.mooreslawisdead.com/post/sam-altman-s-dirty-dram-deal https://www.mooreslawisdead.com/post/sam-altman-s-dirty-dram... Every one seems so focused on that one company supposedly had "fake demand" just to ruin it for competitors, while the supply also seemingly is being suppressed, and no one seems to be talking about that. To me that seems like a much bigger deal, because then the market can't even restore the supply...
  - tick_tock_tick 10mo ago
    Why would the USA care if Korean makes legacy DDR? You're going to have to give some kind of context to this completely wild statement.
    - _lvbh 10mo ago
      Korea wouldn't make them. They'd sell the machines to China & China would. At least that's what I've seen people say
    - embedding-shape 10mo ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46253185 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46253185
- prmoustache 10mo ago
  The toilet paper thing didn't really happen though because there is so much shit people can produce at a time and the demand never increased if you scaled it to a 2 weeks period. There was enough stock in warehouses that 3 days later every store had a full stock again and the prices never increased.
  - mc32 10mo ago
    True but office TP isn’t Charmin. So the demand for Scott would go down, but demand for northern quilted and Charmin would go up!
  - adastra22 10mo ago
    Did we live through the same pandemic? At least where I live, there was shortages for weeks, and scarce for months. There was a real manufacturing shift that had to happen in the transition from commercial toilet paper to residential, which is made by totally different machines. The problem was real. It’s just that someone, seeing that real problem, triggered a panic buy that resulted in cleared shelves and a misallocation of the actual supply, making everything worse for everyone. In the present case, OpenAI just took 40% of the world’s supply off the market. That is massive, and will have implications for RAM availability for many industries. As a result, every other company immediately bought up as much supply as they could. Cars during Covid is probably the closer comparison, actually. A combined supply-drop followed by demand-shock resulting in skyrocketing prices and empty inventory.
    - asa400 10mo ago
      How much RAM should they be allowed to buy? Who should decide that?
      - redserk 10mo ago
        Perhaps a quantity below "a single company causes enough of a spike in global demand that it'll have demonstrable impact in nearly every single industry" And usually trade regulators would be the entity to start being concerned. I assume you're on a quest to assert a "let a completely unregulated free market roar" position, but do recognize that global supply issues of critical components have negative market effects, especially when it'll have some impact on nearly every industry except perhaps lawn care.
nancyminusone 10mo ago
I just last week sold some DDR5 I bought in April for triple what I paid for it.
- TacticalCoder 10mo ago
  You should look into 0 DTEs options. They 3x more often than RAM do 3x!
esseph 10mo ago
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.
- CryptoBanker 10mo ago
  The state of things...meaning AI companies buying up the world's supply of RAM
  - embedding-shape 10mo ago
    I think maybe long-term the effect of Korean companies no longer daring to reuse old machines to produce DDR4 because of US retribution is the bigger cause of that.
    - wtallis 10mo ago
      Repeating this weird claim won't make it true. DDR4 isn't going to come back into fashion, even during a DRAM shortage. Demand for DDR4 can't increase meaningfully when no current-generation processors can use it, and older-generation processors aren't seeing any increase in production or sales. DDR4 is not a substitute good for the RAM that's in short supply.
      - deleted 10mo ago
        [deleted]
      - kasabali 10mo ago
        He's kinda right even though he's kinda wrong. He's confused about the retribution thing. Korean manufacturers aren't afraid of US to restart DDR4 manufacturing. They don't want to restart it anyway. But I'm pretty sure I've recently read it somewhere credible that they'd normally sell their old machinery but now they can't because they're afraid China would be the eventual buyer (via proxies) and they'd be inadvertently in violation of US sanctions , so instead of selling they just locked down the old machinery to gather dust instead. And about DDR4 not being relevant, even though DDR4 manufacturing stopped earlier this year and DDR4 prices have been slowly but steadily increasing long before this crisis, after the crisis DDR4 prices have also tripled just like DDR5 prices, even in the used market. So regardless of whether it's a real demand or panic response, the effect is still real on people wanting to upgrade their DDR4 systems. These people who probably just wants to update RAM in their systems in the hope that it'd help them delay their switch to DDR5 systems for a few years while bracing the impact. Had Chinese manufacturers continued to manufacture DDR4 at least this wouldn't be that bad for the existing system upgrades of DDR4 systems.
Sohcahtoa82 10mo ago
> 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.
crote 10mo ago
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.

adastra22 10mo ago

It is because OpenAI bought 40% of the world’s production capacity overnight. RAM is like toilet paper during Covid now.

embedding-shape 10mo ago
And also because Korean companies apparently fear US retribution if they start producing DDR4. I don't feel like "OpenAI bought half the supply" tells the entire story when the companies that used to produce DDR4 with the left over machines no longer dare to do so. Probably the prices wouldn't spike as they're doing right now if the ones who used to produce the older RAM generations actually continued doing so.
- officeplant 10mo ago
  What do you mean by this? From everything I can find points towards other companies winding down DDR4 production because of China's cheaper DDR4 production lines.
  - embedding-shape 10mo ago
    It was brought up in a different HN submission about a week ago, here's the specific quote from the article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46169499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46169499 > Budget brands normally buy older DRAM fabrication equipment from mega-producers like Samsung when Samsung upgrades their DRAM lines to the latest and greatest equipment. This allows the DRAM market to expand more than it would otherwise because it makes any upgrading of the fanciest production lines to still be additive change to the market. However, Korean memory firms have been terrified that reselling old equipment to China-adjacent OEMs might trigger U.S. retaliation…and so those machines have been sitting idle in warehouses since early spring. - https://www.mooreslawisdead.com/post/sam-altman-s-dirty-dram-deal https://www.mooreslawisdead.com/post/sam-altman-s-dirty-dram... Every one seems so focused on that one company supposedly had "fake demand" just to ruin it for competitors, while the supply also seemingly is being suppressed, and no one seems to be talking about that. To me that seems like a much bigger deal, because then the market can't even restore the supply...
- tick_tock_tick 10mo ago
  Why would the USA care if Korean makes legacy DDR? You're going to have to give some kind of context to this completely wild statement.
  - _lvbh 10mo ago
    Korea wouldn't make them. They'd sell the machines to China & China would. At least that's what I've seen people say
  - embedding-shape 10mo ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46253185 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46253185
prmoustache 10mo ago
The toilet paper thing didn't really happen though because there is so much shit people can produce at a time and the demand never increased if you scaled it to a 2 weeks period. There was enough stock in warehouses that 3 days later every store had a full stock again and the prices never increased.
- mc32 10mo ago
  True but office TP isn’t Charmin. So the demand for Scott would go down, but demand for northern quilted and Charmin would go up!
- adastra22 10mo ago
  Did we live through the same pandemic? At least where I live, there was shortages for weeks, and scarce for months. There was a real manufacturing shift that had to happen in the transition from commercial toilet paper to residential, which is made by totally different machines. The problem was real. It’s just that someone, seeing that real problem, triggered a panic buy that resulted in cleared shelves and a misallocation of the actual supply, making everything worse for everyone. In the present case, OpenAI just took 40% of the world’s supply off the market. That is massive, and will have implications for RAM availability for many industries. As a result, every other company immediately bought up as much supply as they could. Cars during Covid is probably the closer comparison, actually. A combined supply-drop followed by demand-shock resulting in skyrocketing prices and empty inventory.
  - asa400 10mo ago
    How much RAM should they be allowed to buy? Who should decide that?
    - redserk 10mo ago
      Perhaps a quantity below "a single company causes enough of a spike in global demand that it'll have demonstrable impact in nearly every single industry" And usually trade regulators would be the entity to start being concerned. I assume you're on a quest to assert a "let a completely unregulated free market roar" position, but do recognize that global supply issues of critical components have negative market effects, especially when it'll have some impact on nearly every industry except perhaps lawn care.

nancyminusone 10mo ago

I just last week sold some DDR5 I bought in April for triple what I paid for it.

TacticalCoder 10mo ago
You should look into 0 DTEs options. They 3x more often than RAM do 3x!

esseph 10mo ago

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.

CryptoBanker 10mo ago
The state of things...meaning AI companies buying up the world's supply of RAM
- embedding-shape 10mo ago
  I think maybe long-term the effect of Korean companies no longer daring to reuse old machines to produce DDR4 because of US retribution is the bigger cause of that.
  - wtallis 10mo ago
    Repeating this weird claim won't make it true. DDR4 isn't going to come back into fashion, even during a DRAM shortage. Demand for DDR4 can't increase meaningfully when no current-generation processors can use it, and older-generation processors aren't seeing any increase in production or sales. DDR4 is not a substitute good for the RAM that's in short supply.
    - deleted 10mo ago
      [deleted]
    - kasabali 10mo ago
      He's kinda right even though he's kinda wrong. He's confused about the retribution thing. Korean manufacturers aren't afraid of US to restart DDR4 manufacturing. They don't want to restart it anyway. But I'm pretty sure I've recently read it somewhere credible that they'd normally sell their old machinery but now they can't because they're afraid China would be the eventual buyer (via proxies) and they'd be inadvertently in violation of US sanctions , so instead of selling they just locked down the old machinery to gather dust instead. And about DDR4 not being relevant, even though DDR4 manufacturing stopped earlier this year and DDR4 prices have been slowly but steadily increasing long before this crisis, after the crisis DDR4 prices have also tripled just like DDR5 prices, even in the used market. So regardless of whether it's a real demand or panic response, the effect is still real on people wanting to upgrade their DDR4 systems. These people who probably just wants to update RAM in their systems in the hope that it'd help them delay their switch to DDR5 systems for a few years while bracing the impact. Had Chinese manufacturers continued to manufacture DDR4 at least this wouldn't be that bad for the existing system upgrades of DDR4 systems.

Sohcahtoa82 10mo ago

> 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.

crote 10mo ago

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.