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Memory crisis is getting so bad that even retro RAM prices are going to the Moon
- theandrewbailey 5mo agoI 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.
- olavgg 5mo agoMaybe you have priced it wrong? I just checked Ebay, a 16GB 12800 Registered ECC module goes for 40-50USD ea. That is crazy! Last year they were like 5 USD each.
- Felger 5mo agoExcept almost nobody buys them, even last years for 10 bucks each. That's almost useless ECC Reg memory for HPE Gen 8 servers and workstations (from before late 2015 / start of 2016 with the introduction of the Gen9 using DDR4). ECC unbuffered DIMMs (9 memory chips per side, no reg buffer/controller) is less available, quite widely used on level entry systems and thus costs a lot more even second hand.
- qingcharles 5mo agoAgree. I was buying DDR3 16GB sticks for some laptops at $5/pop on eBay, now $60+ each.
- omgwtfbyobbq 5mo agoDo you have any links? I remember DDR3 sodimms being maybe $.25-$.50/gb for low capacity (4gb), but 8gb+ sticks were always $.80-1+/gb.
- qingcharles 5mo agoI misremembered, it was $5 for 16GB DDR4 (not DDR3) sticks that I was paying on eBay. That might change the pricing. Here's one I found in my email: https://imgur.com/a/YWYpuzp https://imgur.com/a/YWYpuzp
- omgwtfbyobbq 5mo agoThat's a great price for either, especially for DDR4. Only one stick though, right?
- qingcharles 5mo agoYeah, I only bought single sticks at a time as I saw good deals on them. I only needed six sticks for three laptops. Just stuck a bunch of low bids and grabbed whatever I could. At the time there were tons going for $5-10 every day. Trying to stick to ones with free postage otherwise the postage would cost as much as the RAM back then.
- devmor 5mo agoThat’s crazy, I bought a couple trays of DDR3 2 years ago for under $100 each.
- Felger 5mo agoYep. Don't expect to sell those sticks on ebay at great price. Those new chips will be likely soldered to appliances like low end routers/APs, set top boxes, various adapters, low end systems, PLCs, IPBX, NVRs and various embedded devices. I sold 7,2 Kg of DDR1/2/3 sticks two month ago, for gold recovery. As well as expansion cards, hdd PCBs and a few other things. Got about $600 from this.
- jollymonATX 5mo agoDid you cut the gold fingers off or "as-is"
- kjs3 5mo agoWild guess, but maybe China has something to do with that? They've got a huge "recover->break down/strip->recondition->sell refurbs to manufacturers" industry pipeline that doesn't seem to much exist outside of China.
- analog31 5mo agoIndeed, I was lucky that my PC is old enough to use DDR3 sticks, when I decided to upgrade a couple months ago. I think it's still cheaper to max out your RAM than to buy a new PC.
- port11 5mo agoI thought the same until I calculated the cost of running DDR3. We’re at 0.35€/kWh so it adds up fast. Upgrading the motherboard and getting LPDDR4 sticks would be a net positive before the RAM prices soared.
- illegalsmile 5mo agoIs it really that significant? We're talking watts difference and over a year maybe 100kWh difference? $35/year?
- port11 4mo agoI don’t recall the exact numbers, and it’s not apples-to-apples but: We have 4 sticks of DDR3 totalling 24GB. From what I remember, our home server uses about 70kWh/year to drive the memory. Buying 2 sticks of LPDDR4 would bring that down to about 5kWh (?). At the time, I remember that a new motherboard and a couple of sticks would’ve paid for itself in 3 or 4 years, IIRC.
- michalpleban 5mo agoThe 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.
- lexicality 5mo agoIt was introduced barely 20 years ago. By that rationale the PS3 is a retro console
- LeoPanthera 5mo agoThe PS3 is a retro console.
- wlesieutre 5mo agoIn 2000 when the PS2 came out was the NES a retro console? It was 17 years old, or 14 years since wide distribution in the USA. What counts as "retro" basically comes down to when the person you ask was born.
- holycrapwhodat 5mo agoNew NES were still available in the US through at least Christmas 1992, and in Europe deep into 1995, both selling alongside the SNES since 1991. The final new international games were released in 1994, but Europe still got new games into 1995. Japanese Famicoms were still being sold in Japan when the PS2 released. They sold more in Japan in 2001 than in 2000. So no, calling the NES "retro" in 2000 wouldn't have made all too much sense.
- cwillu 4mo agoExcept people definitely did call it retro back then, so clearly the facts you point out aren't the entire picture of what makes something retro.
- wlesieutre 4mo ago
- queeshonda 5mo ago[dead]
- leni536 5mo agoIt trickles down.
- ares623 5mo agoThe molten toxic sludge of all the ewaste
- ggm 5mo agoWorldwide 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.
- rwmj 5mo agoEven on previous gen nodes it takes a year or two to bring a chip to full production.
- ggm 5mo agoThats the kind of process issue I hadn't understood. I guess the dynamics here don't make operating a "2nd gen behind" system to make memory economic in the good times, and so nobody is ready to ramp up to meet market shortages in the short term. EU is paying to build out "lo fi" chips for car and other needs: They decided the impact on domestic industry of supply chain logistics to TSMC was bad. A lot of people are shouting "why aren't they doing extreme UV 1nm chip design" when the decision was pretty simple: its possible to source the machines, it's probably faster to get to high yield, the exposure to supply chain risk is real, the return is hopefully high in strategic terms, you can improve density as a follow-on. No matter what ASML is doing well.
- jononor 5mo agoNot only that, but such a node is fully booked with existing orders, many which are long term commitments with penalties if they fail to deliver.
- brennanpeterson 5mo agoWell, you are working from all sorts of misguided assumptions about how you convert, the yield, the efficiency, the shared capital, and history. Old gen logic barely exists, and won't convert. The tools are wrong so it wouldn't yield. And there isnt the expertise (on tool recipes and integration) to do it. Historically, memory is a sawtooth business. But history isn't a great guide here: 10 years ago, a new plant added meaningful capacity, as it came with a shrink of about 30%. Today....it doesn't. So it take huge capital to add a very small amount of capacity. You can dream that things like 3d dram and 4f cells will help, but they are unlikely to offer enough with demand. And finally, everyone running a dram plant has lived through these capacity boom bust cycles and the consequently layoffs and pay cuts. I suspect they are happy to take money this time. I would be in their place. I do hope we see a new dram or dram-like designs. And that there are more efficient dedicated ai processors. And that models themselves become more memory efficient. But I don't really believe any of these come soon.
- wolvoleo 5mo ago2016: OMG I found that old hard drive with bitcoin! 2026: OMG I found that old shoebox of SO-DIMMS! Lol
- u8080 4mo ago2016: harddrive with !!BITCOINS!! 2026: !!HARDDRIVE!! with bitcoins
- deadbabe 5mo agoPeople 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.
- sudoshred 5mo agoSame people complaining "no one wants to work these days".
- vitally3643 5mo agoRAM prices are so bad that my business couldn't launch our product this year. RAM increases completely obliterated our profit margin, and would have required raising prices 30%. For a small business, that just doesn't work. A lot of small businesses are getting absolutely wrecked by this.
- deadbabe 5mo agoJust raise the prices, it works sooner or later. We are not getting the old prices back.
- KetoManx64 4mo ago> Just raise prices Let me guess, you've never run a small business before who's existance is based around being small, nimble and inexpensive in order to compete with large corporations? Yours is the same answer that were given to hundreds of thousands of small businesses during COVID who ended up going out of business. Now you get to shop/eat at at soulless $BIGCORP which has the same slop as every other soulless $BIGCORP.
- deadbabe 4mo agoNo, but I have purchased from many small businesses who are all raising prices and I basically have no choice but to buy from them anyway.
- poly2it 5mo agoDoes 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.
- vitally3643 5mo agoTwo years at minimum. The manufacturing process simply takes that long to spool up. That is, unless the hyperscalers all drop dead overnight. Then we'll be swimming in more chips than anyone would care to buy
- jollymonATX 5mo agoAdded errata, homelabsales ddr4 2133/2400 16/32/64 prices are down from 3 months ago a decent amount.
- LargoLasskhyfv 5mo agoStill got 4x 128MB PC-133 Mosel-Vitelic. I'll be sooo rich soon!1!!
- VladVladikoff 5mo agoRecently 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?
- vitally3643 5mo agoSell it outright on eBay. Someone will pull off the good chips and put them in a product. It really is that bad out there for small businesses trying to make consumer goods. At work we had to recycle prototypes to salvage memory for a production run
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- linzhangrun 5mo agoDDR3 era processors are severely outdated today, with the strongest d3cpu 5th gen i7 unable to match performance of 6W TDP N100
- kasabali 5mo ago7th gen still supported DDR3L (with a suitable motherboard, obviously) and it's possible with 9th gen if you're willing to try "coffee time" mod.
- interloxia 5mo agoI would argue that my old 4790K with dual channel ddr3 19200, at 10x power, is similar or better. That box lasted way longer than was reasonable.
- madazz01 5mo agoI'm just imagining everyone counting memory usage in $ rather than GB now! hahaha
- p0w3n3d 5mo agoOkay, but... Are the new RAM players coming to the game? Or we'll be unable to afford a smartphone next year? There were news that China has set up a new line, but tbh it's really bad that only a few companies are buying the ram at low low prices while others suffer. Economy and the invisible hand of the free market are failing their purpose.