yea its getting pretty bad. i bought 32gb 3200mhz ddr4 ram like 3 years ago for like 50 dollars brand new on amazon, and i recently had to purchase that same amount for a server pc im building and it costed like $130 USED
Ah you crazy kids, we used to have to lock our computers in steel cases in the early 2000s.
Bought my first prebuilt 2 years ago and it’s now worth over twice what I spent on it. First time in my life I remember anything like that happening.
I could have bought a 16 GB DDR4 stick at 30, now they go for 150, I’m going to be stuck at 24 GB forever now.
I am infinitely grateful to my past self that I purchased an on-sale 64GB RAM upgrade for my Framework 13 in 2024 before prices skyrocketed. It was $119, and checking back right now… Holy crap the same thing is $1,079 now.
Yeah, I put 96GB of DDR4 in a PC just before prices went wild and my only regret is that I didn’t also do my server. Garage sales have been interesting this summer. Always hoping to find old PCs or TiVo devices so I can grab the hard drives and/or ram.
It seems the more this shit happens the less I need tech in my life (pulls notebook out of back pocket and writes this down for posterity).
I got some 16gb of DDR4 i found in a closet. You guys can start bidding.
i’m using an optiplex sff with 32gb ddr4 as a monitor stand right now. i just don’t know what the hell to do with it… so it sits, probably until the dietpi running on a jaguar soc keels over.
What I’d do is a little media center / HTPC so my TVs stay dumb.
already have a media ‘server’ and several things to watch ‘tv’ on or from.
this is what we were doing with it… trying out winpodx, but it’s not quite ‘usable’ like this (updated after this, does same). so it (and it’s hp cousin with similar specs) sit waiting for their next call-to-arms.
I feel so justified for doubling down on Zen 3, and replacing my dead R9 5900X with an R9 5900XT lol
I’m getting worried, 'cause I’ve got the same. What killed yours?
Bad luck. I started getting random reboots, the reboots started happening more and more frequently. I tried a few kits of spare RAM I had laying around, reboots kept happening. I replaced the PSU with a brand new one because mine was a decade old, reboots persisted. I replaced the CPU on a whim (with an upgrade if it was fine), problem went away entirely, not a single reboot since.
That’s strange - I had some of the same symptoms and it ended up being a completely different thing - a dying (and then eventually completely dead) SSD (the Phison controller fiasco).
Other than that the CPU itself seems fine and it’s only shown very minor degradation over the 4-5 years I’ve had it - i.e. it used to boost up to 4975 or 4950 single core, now it only goes up to about 4900 (no PBO, no CO); and I’ve also had to fix the SoC voltage because of the memory - but I haven’t touched that in like 3 years, so not sure it’s even degradation.
So I got this RAM in August 2025, for ~$400 according to the receipt:
…That is absolutely bonkers.
I got 64GB of ram for my laptop back in April, was close to 700, of is 829 today. I guess only desktop sizes are over 1k?
Like April this year?
Could be that it was DDR4 or something.
Ddr5, but the laptop size on amazon. I just checked and its still under 900
I ebay’ed my DDR5 RDIMM 5600 RAM sticks. 32gb was $606 some months ago, the remaining six sticks was about $3,600 bucks. I was originally planning on waiting for bubbles to burst and DDR6 to be released before switching to a DDR5 platform, but the whole war with Iran threw everything into doubt.
The US’s strategic oil reserve will likely run out within half a year, which means everything costing more. I wanted to be smart with my money and wait for a good time to buy, but this situation has ruined my planning. I bit the bullet and used a flex-pay to let me buy now.
Is it that my discipline sucks, or is the world certain to go into a hellish handbasket? I cannot tell anymore…
I honestly don’t know. Even setting Iran aside, it’s impossible to tell when the bubble will deflate, and even then, when memory supply will somewhat normalize.
But if you can afford it, it seems like a reasonable decision to me. Iran and the US could become allies tommorow, but DDR5 still isn’t coming down soon, and you get to use your server now instead of having to wait forever.
I fucking had to keep pushing back buying some more RAM. Yeah, that was a great move. Now I can only hope the bubble bursts and prices crash.
I mean, I get by fine with the RAM I have. I don’t need much. It’s the principle of the thing, you know? Sometimes being financially responsible and careful sucks.
The thing with the bubble bursting is it will still take time for it to come down, as they’ll need to start manufacturering consumer RAM again. The stuff they’re churning out now can’t be thrown into a PC or laptop.
And they’ll NEVER allow prices to drop back to reasonable levels. They’ve already learned people will pay a premium during a shortage, so they can still artificially control the supply to keep prices high.
If competitors ever emerge making RAM at reasonable prices, we need to boycott the current fuckwads even when they undercut the new players.
I dont… I am absolutely stressing the DDR3 I have. But no way I am going to pay 500% for some memory!
If my workstation goes up in value in 4 years, something is seriously going.
Another 500% and I’ll be recording my ram along with my other retirement assets.
The only rational choice right now is to wait to buy new ram.
Either production capacity catches up and this amount of silicon is the new normal and prices come down or the ai bubble does crash and prices come down.
It can’t go on at this price point forever.
It can there are only 3 producers and they can decide to not let the price drop
Except in my lifetime I’ve seen the prices of computer components swing wildly based on supply and demand.
Tech improvements tend to drive prices down not up, it’s less about supplier collusion in this particular market.
Maybe this time is different but I’m not betting on this.
Every DRAM manufacturer has pled guilty to price fixing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_industry_price_fixing
If we still have governments holding them accountable, then it will go down. If we don’t, it won’t
You’re acting like they are like they were less than 10 years ago. They aren’t. They think they won the game and are just consolidating.
This has been said before. Like I said maybe this time is different, but I’m not betting on it.
There has been consolidation among a few manufacturers for a long time. The silicon part isn’t the most expensive it’s the chip designs. If the prices say high we should see new startups emerge with new approaches and cheaper silicon. China is already making progress here, and nothing I’m seeing is telling me this time would be different from us chip designers. Also Europe is looking to get some us resilience and startups in chip design could happen there too.
It’s convenient to blame greed, and in some industries this is very relevant, but silicon is so much less defensible at least in the chip design industry that startups are likely to keep on coming as long as opportunity exists, which high prices are a pretty good indicator of high demand and limited supply.
I have worked in this industry for a long time, I’ve seen the cycles, and again I expect this time to cycle again.
I hope you are correct. I really do. But my fear is that they see how dependent we have become on this and what a tool of control it can be and simply make it illegal or otherwise very difficult for other start ups to get started.
I wonder if the fed gov cares that entire sectors of the tech economy are being threatened by one (AI).
They might get interested if people start talking about Epstein again.
On the plus side, all the game companies are going to finally start optimizing games and quit pushing out more and more demanding shit. A big win for smaller devs and creative\fun game developers too. My steam deck and old PC gonna keep on winning.
What do you expect? Few will be able to afford to play their whizbang-5000 games. We already saw it play out with VR.
You might be right. But charging them $15 a month to stream their whizbang-5000 games is still an option. Especially for Microsoft and Sony. (And Amazon wants in on that too.)
Dingaling! They will rent it to you and it will have latency issues, but who cares money.
I will say technologically my trials of both Google Stadia and Xbox Live Play Anywhere were both impressive and ran well for single player and co-op games. But the idea of actually paying an ongoing fee to play my games? Fuck that.
People said this about movies too, don’t be too optimistic
Do I want more memory or do I wait for two years…
I wait for two years. As long as the existing memory modules doesn’t break, Linux will continue to be happy with existing amount.
If you are on windows, good luck.
I built a PC for work (I’m going to take it with me when I leave) and I bought used adata ram (2x32gb) with a lifetime warranty on it. I immediately needed to send one of the sticks for warranty. I bought the initial set of ram in May, and yesterday I paid roughly the same for a used set of 2x16gb. The price of the 32gb sticks is prohibitively expensive now. I’m betting the price only goes up, just wish I would be at 128gb rather than 96gb.
We could have been so rich if we could have seen the future. Just buy tons of memory modules at low prices five years ago and sell them now. What a profit.
Its not like memory tech has changed so much either.
If you could see the future, buying nvda a few years ago would have done the trick.
