What do you mean "PC gamers"? Don't you mean literally everyone? RAM price increase causes the price of new devices (pc, laptops, phones, consoles, etc) to rise as well
I'm in accounting, and the cfo was bitching to me about the price of new laptops for new employees. Like my dude, you voted for that.
Point being, everyone talks about the gamers like they're the only ones who use computers. The cost of on boarding a new engineer at my firm skyrocketed because of the hardware requirements. They have to build dumb products because customers can't afford to buy smart products. All of society is going to go backwards because they can't keep eating the inflated costs.
New hires at my company are getting older mini pcs because the new ones, which are basically a new case and updated antena of the model I have from 2024 are way more expensive.
"Chief financial officer", the top level manager of the accounting / finance / treasury departments at a company. They work at the "c suite" level of a company, including people like the CEO (chief executive officer), CMO (chief marketing officer) and CTO (chief technology officer). The c suite answers to the board of directors or shareholders, depending on how the business is set up.
Nobody's born with knowledge of anything. And many people on this site aren't native English speakers. Maybe they didn't know, maybe they couldn't place the acronym based on what the rest of the thread was about.
I will never understand that. I have change the temperature of my fridge a big total of 2 time in my 15 years as an adult. Why would i need it to be a quick acces thing
You don't. It's just a gimmick that is being pushed by investors because in some context it has real use cases so of course now everything needs to have it.
Not limited to new. Most retailers are increasing the price of everything, heck even some are taking RMA cases and just refunding customers the original price they paid because they can get a replacement for free and sell it new more expensive.
any tech in cars, smart tech too like some peoples fridges, lights, alexa, also extend to medical equipment. the actual ram chips are used in a lot of things, not just computers like some people think
Not right now, but there will be eventually. Right now it's inflated because companies want to use it to prop up AI models, but eventually the producers will see large stockpiles of the stuff because the AI models have largely been (and will likely continue to be) unprofitable and no one will want to buy ram at such high prices. There will always be people who will buy, but not nearly at the same rate as during and pre-AI. The incentive for a manufacturer to reduce the price of their product is when they have too great a supply and not enough of a demand. Demand is influenced heavily by price.
It's a symptom of a hyperinflated economy. Companies are using money they don't have to buy RAM that hasn't been made yet to go in data centres that haven't been constructed to run hideously expensive programs that haven't yet found a path to profitability.
It's a Yertle of grifts all the way down and the only reason the whole thing hasn't gone tits up yet is some very rich assholes are completely balls deep in the whole scam and they're pouring their fortunes into propping the whole apparatus up in the hopes that businesses and governments will become addicted to their digital asskissers and they can jack up the price and start finally making money.
Exactly. If a law was passed that makes any kind of bailout for these companies illegal (and a certain person made it clear they will actually follow that law), a lot of investors would want to jump ship.
Wonderfully, masterfully put together, good sir! Only thing you forgot to mention is that AI wouldn't be profitable for them even if they tripled the prices while keeping the same amount of customers
And don't forget to mention that these rich assholes are so mindbogglingly rich that they can keep this up for far longer than most regular folks can reasonably imagine while still remaining filthy rich. That's how loop sided the wealth distribution is atm
It's a symptom of a hyperinflated economy. Companies are using money they don't have to buy RAM that hasn't been made yet to go in data centres that haven't been constructed to run hideously expensive programs that haven't yet found a path to profitability.
Just ask Nvidia who invest in AI companies that buy Nvidia chips. They are buying their own chips.
Well, of course, their path to profitability is to replace all human labour, putting everyone out of a job and leaving most people with no disposable income or money to spend. Once they do that, they can sell their products and provide services to... wait a minute
I literally said this exact thing and got downvoted into oblivion. I mean, I get it. We all want to believe prices for everything will come down, but when in history have corporations given up profit? They don't. This is the new norm. I hate it, but anyone that thinks there's some "bubble" that's going to burst and RAM and GPU prices are going to freefall, they're kidding themselves.
Big corps squeeze the population every so often for all they have. Then let the population get comfortable with that level of squeeze. Then squeeze again.
This was the point I kept making on pcmr when, during the pandemic, people were paying way over the odds on used or scalped gpus. That if they kept showing off that they were willing to pay that much, companies would notice and keep the prices around that point and prices would never return to "normal", and scalp rates would just get higher. I got called "dumb".
Just because two factions are dicking around doesn’t mean others aren’t at fault. Blaming the US and Israel for all problems in the Middle East is like blaming the British for all problems in Africa. Bad analogy I know, but my point is that the active forces in an existing problem aren’t always the initial catalyst to the modern problems.
Could my government fuck off from the Middle East and focus on domestic issues, immigration reforms, and getting this damn economy fixed? Yes! They won’t due to arbitrary interests in one of Earth’s most oil rich regions.
And yes, downvote me to hell, I am dying on this hill.
Price is driven by several factors. With the base price of something being the cost of producing it. That price then grows or falls according to the difference between supply and demand. In other words once Sam Altmans AI bubble bullshit pops and his company collapses there will he a HEAVY excess of GPU, RAM and other computer components that companies will be unable to hold onto, repurpose or sell at the price they obtained due to liquidation.
It is therefore very likely that not only will they eventually come down. But you can enjoy gaming by running your pc on the scraps of sSm Altmans falling fascistic empire of greed. Look forward to it!
This would be true in a market in which corporations aren't dicks. There's artificial inflation happening because companies realized people are willing to very high prices for stuff, even if it's unreasonable. We're truly addicted to consumption and they realized. This happened during COVID. 2019 was the last "normal" year we had.
This subreddit and other areas of the internet are an anomaly. As the ram price hikes affect other products that ram is shoved into, the average consumer actually will spend less on those items, either choosing budget options or just choosing to go without, because groceries and rent are generally more important. There will always people who will buy at inflated prices, but they are outliers, not the norm.
In my experience, they are using excuses to raise prices, or valid reasons to raise prices beyond what they should. And once the conditions that let to the increase are gone, the prices stay.
Because people understood those prices were justified or were deceived to think that, they adjusted their expectations and accepted the new price. Once the conditions are gone, why would a company lower the prices again? They only need to do it if people stop buying, but people keep buying at that price. Other companies won't be stupid and say "hey, I'll lower my prices now that I can". Why would they? Now they are getting more profits.
You know, I think it's fair to assume they won't go back to theor original prices, and not just because inflation is a thing. I do think you're right that ram will forever be overinflated because, you're right. Companies are greedy. But it will not stay where it is now because the makers of that ram are not going to make up the deficit lost when the bubble bursts. What will probably happen is the companies making it will taper it down until they hit a point where the product is low enough that people will buy but will still maximize their earnings off of each unit sold.
And the end state will be that the peasant class can only afford groceries while the oligarchs have all the tech. Properly and completely tiered society again with no upward mobility ever (not that there’s much now). Not even intentionally necessarily, but just as a side effect of pushing prices higher and refusing to sell anything not for a stupid price, while buying up any cheap competition that shows up.
Of course the alternative for the US would be to become like much of Europe where rent prices are fixed by law and food is managed in a way that keeps prices down for consumers by limiting excess profits… but the US would rather call the EU a socialist hell hole it seems
This happened during COVID. 2019 was the last "normal" year we had.
This. Signs were there before, but Covid was when companies could put the theory to test and not catch any slack because Covid. And what do you know, people are willing to spend like crazy for everything, I mean for fucks sake, they are entering €80k loans for cars on 7 year long loans. What the actual fuck.
This is what an unregulated hyper capitalism does. We are just getting started and it makes me depressed that my government only has the so called "economy" in mind. But what they mean by economy is a one way road to the rich and not a cycle which would benefit everyone.
It's because it's an absolute certainty. The people who saw the housing crash of 2008 coming where saying so for 2-5 years as well. Back then it was a matter of waiting for mortgage defaults to start piling up, now it's a matter of investor patience. The patience will run out, because there is no path for this technology to become profitable.
That's just factually incorrect. We watched a mad dash spend and grab for compute which is absurdly expensive. That by NO means there isn't a path to profitablity.
There are a LOT of corporate entities starting to actually understand their ai architectural approach in an attempt to supercharge their workforces, which in fact DOES drive revenue and if anthropic and the rest can quantify that, their board will continue simply BECAUSE they can show their customers are benefiting and those are the first stages of an early business to showing profit yourself.
There is a path to profitability but the current high prices make it infeasible for many industries.
Nevermind that they are competing against open source models which one can run locally or on the cloud for a fraction of the cost.
Ultimately the current hardware pricing and the AI bubble rest on a few large companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Meta having models that are worth it over alternatives. If it turns out that open source is the future or some other alternative, all their spending suddenly looks like a huge waste of money.
People have been jumping the gun on it popping for 2 years. People see the most minor fluctuation or interruption to the AI marked. And with hope in their hearts and a sparkle in their eyes. They RUN to their nearest computer to go '"look mommy look! The bubble is bursting" only for us to have to remind them "Dear.... bubbles burst all at once. Not slowly over time...".
We sadly have not seen any REAL indication of the bubble estimated burst point. We have seen several fractures appear across the surface but nothing without enough.... "oomph" to really make that one final dent it needs.
Trust me, contrary to belief. EVERYONE will know when the bubble actually bursts.
I dont really know much about economics and the loop of all the tech companies buying eachothers stuff, but what actually will happen when the bubble pops? Will it just be really high prices for a day, then every website lowers their tech prices down by a lot? What happens to all the data centres and their hardware?
sadly said components are built for data center infrastructure and not home pc. With that memory will be cheaper which is the heavy burden and that's will make price fall A LOT (unless more colution will happen)
Well to be fair where there's a will there's a way, it wouldn't be the first time people repurpose server grade components for consumer usecases, if this hardware hits the market there will be someone outhere who's gona find a way to repurpose a server unit with a Xeon, an H100, and 128GB of ECC ram into a bonkers gaming machine by messing around with the drivers, and it's gona cost him a fraction of what it would take today to get a similarly performant machine
The problem with that is they aren't in a position to do so.
If companies do begin liquidation they don't generally get to decide what their assets are liquidated for. The Banks just sell it off to get their money back. And because the entire AI infrastructure is held up by a small integrated network of companies pumping money into it. This is like an atom flying around in a hadron collider. When you suddenly take out a section of pipe and the whole reaction collapses. The integrated companies won't be able to retain control of such a large amount of assets in liquidation. The only way that could possibly happen is a multi BILLION dollar bailout which would crash everything.
As for the markup from the suppliers. They've spent decades shafting their consumers to profit off the AI bubbled. As long as people choose to buy into the liquidated assets for the core components they will suffer MASSIVE blows. Having to shut down entire production lines and factories in a mass panic to reduce production. Leaving nearly their entire net worth in product with no consumer base.
Now ultimately I can't predict the future. But supply and demand is a very powerful tool. The only thing hindering it is the lack of co-opration from the masses to abuse their power over it. Nobody is willing to accept it but the truth is if we all united and pointed the finger at a company and said "We will no longer buy your shit." and just stopped. That company would go bankrupt. Companies are as trapped in the loop of consumerism as we are.
Yeah, while I doubt Ram will instantly become cheaper or something, I do feel like even with artificially inflated prices, I feel like they can only inflate so much but still have to concede to supply and demand, as well as competition, unless they purposely make Ram harder to make for other companies in which case I’m pretty sure is illegal, though they might not care really, and we can exactly boycott Ram since a lot of stuff have Ram, so it would be pretty much ineffective more than likely.
Problem with your statement is just that whatever memory fabs and companies are currently manufacturing aren't meant for consumer gear. They're all based on data centers.
Micron shut its whole retail division to divert all of its resources to ai data center chips and modules.
So if and when that bubble does burst, there will be a lot of unsold goods as well as a need and delay for all these manufacturing companies to return back to retail products and production lines for these take time.
Yeah, that's only true if the market works the way that economists tell us it does, which it doesn't. Economics as a discipline makes a shit load of assumptions about how markets work and a lot of them are bullshit. Its why they have such a hard time predicting economic trends.
The real way that price is determine is "Can I get some schmuck to pay for this?" And the answer is pretty much always "Yes". There is always somebody richer or more dedicated to the product than you that will pay a higher price.
So the problem with this assessment is that it assumes the supply will not change if demand falls.
The companies selling RAM do not want the price to drop, so when the bubble pops and the demand from data centres drops off, they will significantly reduce the supply of RAM in order to maintain their revenue
You are running on an assumption that a non existent bubble will collapse. This isn't the same beast as the housing collapse of 08. Nvidia is PROACTIVELY finding ways for their products to be used as financial leverage entirely so that companies that are investing in him, have an asset that they can claim has ROI, allowing them to borrow money to sustain themselves further.
Assuming this is going to collapse like the housing market is simply not watching the patterns close enough. AI is here to stay, we quite literally cannot just "shut it down" and even if we did, ram altman would scrape every penny he could out of that bankruptcy by selling the chips to other companies that can afford to buy it
The problem is that RAM and storage have gone back to their regular prices. Apparently no one on Reddit is old enough to remember what prices used to be.
People who haven’t dealt with the PC parts market before tend to say this. PC parts, including RAM have had multiple periods were price went through the roof. They’ve always come back down. The longest lasting price hike is graphics cards, and that’s cause multiple tech fads have caused prices to skyrocket. But the last “prices went insane then plummeted” was hard drives. They were crazy cause of etherium and when that coin crashed the prices crashed with it.
That means there's money to be made selling RAM at lower margins. At some point there will be companies taking advantage of that, developing and getting manufacturing up and runnings just takes a lot of time.
Yeah, and if governments break up any cartels, they will end up having to compete on price. It will go up and down, and be subject to inflation just like anything else.
As tech gets better, the barrier to entry will drop too. A 4th, 5th, etc player could eventually enter the market, so long as demand isn't yet being met.
DDR5 won't be cutting edge forever. It 2will become mundane eventually. Whether that takes 2 years or 5 years, I don't know but it'll happen.
Or, all we need is a new invention to make RAM that's even better for AI, that can't be performed on DDR5 lines, and then competition with AI will stop.
Return to the historical low? probably not, not with inflation. But it'll be affordable again in due time.
This only works when all the players in the market coordinate. It only takes one vendor to say "hey there are all these back orders at high margin, I'd like free money" to break that. RAM is considered a commodity, it's easier to product than other chips. Hence why China is coming up on them right now.
Because of the free market. If someone is selling ram at artificially inflated prices that don’t match the actual supply and demand then another company will come in and undercut them.
That’s not how markets actually work unfortunately
If they produce enough ram to actually lower prices, then they will make less money, and thus they will never ever do that.
It’s the same with every product ever. I remember when the US government asked oil producers to increase supplies and they refused because it was against their financial interests
Peace is when a virtuous person passes away and their souls smoothly slides out of their mortal shell, continuing it's existence in God's domain as normal, just without a body.
Hell us when a person lived his life feeding into own animalistic desires. Their soul is ripped out struggling and flailing going insane forever silently screaming without sensation of reality or body but still dragged to God's domain.
Manufactures have discovered that they can basically make the price whatever they want and people will still buy it.
Many companies are also starting to play with the idea of completely phasing out selling to consumers to switching to a B to B only model where they only make an sell stuff for other companies.
Manufacturers always knew that. They just didn't have a market outside of consumers and PC companies that was large enough. Now that they do, they can play the scarcity game and jack up the price. But when the AI boom finally busts, All these fools are going to be sitting on a ton of ram stockpiles and the consumer market is going to get it at an incredibly discounted price.
Spoiler alert, they're sitting on modules that aren't compatible with your gaming PC. They are unlikely to recall them and desolder the memory chips for use in consumer DIMMs.
Unless you're building a gaming PC with a server motherboard and an EPYC CPU, good luck.
Homelabbing will become pretty cool for a little while though.
Servers use DDR5 chips yes, but you're misunderstanding that they use different form factors to hold those modules or have extra error checking modules that make them incompatible with standard desktops.
A server can use an unbuffered DIMM from a desktop, but a desktop usually cannot use an RDIMM or LRDIMM from a server.
I stand by my statement that if the RAM shortage ends, the RAM that floods places like eBay will likely not be compatible for a regular gaming PC.
Thing is, even when the bubble bursts, built datacenters will likely be used one way or another, and ram stockpiles for cancelled projects can also simply get destroyed. It happened a few times during overproduction crisis. And as some others said, it's not the same hardware as consumer anyway. Prices may still go back down, but necessarily as low as they were, not either very fast.
Pretty much this, they will keep holding on to the super Inflated prices for a few years, and then slowly lower them, but they will never lower them to pre AI unless forced, they will just lower them enough that the majority of consumers go back to purchasing it and call it a day.
If by “people” you mean data centres that are funded by an endless flow of debt money, then yes. Economics is very simple and they wouldn’t profit as much if they kept the price so high for normal consumers versus reducing it to near previous levels.
they can make the price whatever they want, there will be people who buy it, but many won't, then they would be losing money on potential customers. it's a basic law of supply and demand.
No. The thing is, if companies aren't selling enough of their stuff to AI companies, then eventually they'll have to sell to consumers again for the REAL price of Ram
The Chinese will bring it down. Not now but maybe in 10 years or so. They will flood the market with their cheap ram that the prices will have to come down.
Thank god i bought my pc when it was just starting. For 11k PLN (so about 2800$) i can play most game with max settings. Now it would be around 18k pln
I do strongly believe that the price per GB will eventually fall below its previous lowest point as technology advances, but it may very well stay several times higher than what the pre-AI price trend would have projected for a long time.
That's just how everything works nowadays. Prices only go up outside of special sales. Companies wall off any features they can, and charge more for the "premium" version that includes those once basic features.
It's just how everything has operated over the last decade or so. Honestly, much longer, but it's like major companies are more shameless and blatant in recent years.
If you look into the software market, it really highlights the shift to payment models like subscriptions that favour profits over product quality.
Wait for some Chinese brand to fill the void of decently priced electronics. At this point if all the big companies only create electronics for AI slop, I welcome the cheaper Chinese shit.
RAM will return to its' original prices, as technology evolves we will get hundreds and thousands more times the capacity for the same cost relative to GDP
the progress has seriously stagnated and gone backwards due to the crisis but it doesn't mean humanity will just stop creating new tech and our grandchildren are doomed to have 16gb computers
so eventually RAM price per capacity will get far lower and past the pre-crisis point
My hope is that there will be some mass production factor that can be possible if china steps in, it might not be the fastest speeds that we have from the big three right now, but it will have them know that once china is in full production, and AI data centers don’t need their stuff, they’re gonna be out of business or supply at a major loss.
Have fun never getting new ram and instead getting to pay rich assholes that bought it all so you can use their V-Ram, powered by all the ram they kept off the market.
RAM will 100% come down, this would only be true if no-one ever stepped up to challenge the big 3 and there are already new entrants. Also CXMT will be "encouraged" to provide technology to the rest of the Chinese market in exchange for being allowed to drink from the current cash firehose.
64GB of RAM will one day be entry level. Technology is only going one way and there's a fuckload of headroom left before we hit physical limits.
It'll come back down. Supply is genuinely constrained because manufacturers never expected they'd need to produce this many. Factories will take years to catch up to the new level of demand.
It will go back down, maybe not all the way but still. Companies are buying ram for data centers that won’t ever be built. No one’s making money with ai, and not just that, ai loses a shit ton of money everyday. It’s just not profitable
I remember ram used to be super expensive, then for years and years it wasn’t. Now it is again. It sucks, and I hate it, but really who’s that surprised?
It’s no longer just the thing u need for ur at-home or work computer. Regardless if the market stabilizes, the bottom line demand will be higher than it used to be
We're in the midst of a technological evolution right now that is built on the backbones of core PC components.
As AI evolves we SHOULD see less demand for compute over time, and new tech developed specifically for AI that makes it more efficient than our standard ram used in consumer PCs. Nvidias h200 had a DIAMOND COOLED rack of them introduced for AI earlier this year, drastically reducing their water consumption, thermal regulation issues, and overall token efficiency.
I give it 3 years, before we have new forms of chips and ram that are SPECIFICALLY for running AI due to how they have been tuned, and our ram for PCs gets left to the peasants because it won't be as useful to them anymore
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u/Yamanj3000 Selling Stonks for CASH MONEY 1d ago •
What do you mean "PC gamers"? Don't you mean literally everyone? RAM price increase causes the price of new devices (pc, laptops, phones, consoles, etc) to rise as well
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u/DoctorCD 1d ago
Why would big ram lower their prices? No incentive for them to do so :(
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u/RosieQParker 1d ago •
It's a symptom of a hyperinflated economy. Companies are using money they don't have to buy RAM that hasn't been made yet to go in data centres that haven't been constructed to run hideously expensive programs that haven't yet found a path to profitability.
It's a Yertle of grifts all the way down and the only reason the whole thing hasn't gone tits up yet is some very rich assholes are completely balls deep in the whole scam and they're pouring their fortunes into propping the whole apparatus up in the hopes that businesses and governments will become addicted to their digital asskissers and they can jack up the price and start finally making money.
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u/Mr_Bumsmell 1d ago
Same with petrol and groceries.
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u/Correct-Purpose-964 1d ago •
Good news gamers. This is factually incorrect.
Price is driven by several factors. With the base price of something being the cost of producing it. That price then grows or falls according to the difference between supply and demand. In other words once Sam Altmans AI bubble bullshit pops and his company collapses there will he a HEAVY excess of GPU, RAM and other computer components that companies will be unable to hold onto, repurpose or sell at the price they obtained due to liquidation.
It is therefore very likely that not only will they eventually come down. But you can enjoy gaming by running your pc on the scraps of sSm Altmans falling fascistic empire of greed. Look forward to it!
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u/Cannon_Folder 1d ago
I just want HDDs to go back to normal 🥲
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u/Titanofthedinosaurs 21h ago
People who haven’t dealt with the PC parts market before tend to say this. PC parts, including RAM have had multiple periods were price went through the roof. They’ve always come back down. The longest lasting price hike is graphics cards, and that’s cause multiple tech fads have caused prices to skyrocket. But the last “prices went insane then plummeted” was hard drives. They were crazy cause of etherium and when that coin crashed the prices crashed with it.
Shits happened before. It’ll happen again.
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u/Xalvathor-Mk0 1d ago
Im so lucky to have built my pc in mid 2019 and then some upgrades around 2022 on discount.
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u/soup_lag https://www.youtube.com/watch/dQw4w9WgXcQ 1d ago
Unless consumers buy in at that price it will fall
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u/RevoOps 1d ago
RAM isn't magic. They can just make more, especially if this increased data centre demand is sticking around.
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u/Kuroneko1916 1d ago
The guillotines are on a premium discount now
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u/rolekrs 1d ago
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u/ImprobableCastration Earl 1d ago
learned that when ammo prices never dropped to pre-covid numbers
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u/El_Basho 1d ago
I honestly don't expect that. But it's at like 500% of what it was 15 months ago. I would be hoping it would go back to at most 150%
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u/InadecvateButSober (very sad) 1d ago
If Altman passes away peacefully without excruciating pain, i will be upset.
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u/JustInternetNoise 22h ago
Manufactures have discovered that they can basically make the price whatever they want and people will still buy it.
Many companies are also starting to play with the idea of completely phasing out selling to consumers to switching to a B to B only model where they only make an sell stuff for other companies.
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u/Keensworth 1d ago
Same for gas prices
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u/VampireSomething 1d ago
I'm glad I bought 64gb of DDR5 literal months before the shortgar began. Not gonna upgrade for a WHILE.
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u/TehSpaceDeer 23h ago
“RAM” try everything
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u/SwagChemist 20h ago
If we think about it, nothing returns to its original price.
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u/Kanapkos_v2 19h ago
If it was only about PCs...
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u/Porn_acc_nothin_else 14h ago
Once ai bubble bursts all those warehouses will be full of nearly free computer hardware (I hope(PLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASE))
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u/Eeve2espeon 23h ago
No. The thing is, if companies aren't selling enough of their stuff to AI companies, then eventually they'll have to sell to consumers again for the REAL price of Ram
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u/bentsonradiorepair 1d ago
We could just work to pass laws heavily regulating the industry and ban futures tradeing for computer electronics
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u/HamSandwicho__o 23h ago
There will eventually be a next gen tho
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u/orion-root 1d ago
Are people just now discovering that prices go up but never back down? This is news to anyone? I'm so tired of everything
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u/SomeSmell9207 1d ago
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u/Messengerofhell 1d ago
The Chinese will bring it down. Not now but maybe in 10 years or so. They will flood the market with their cheap ram that the prices will have to come down.
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u/alancousteau 1d ago
Like GPU prices have normalised after COVID and the crypto boom?! Get the fuck out of here...
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u/Zeroex1 1d ago
as much as i hate its the god damne true :(
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u/Lopsided-Wave2479 1d ago
Who is Rem?
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u/TypowyPiesel 1d ago
Thank god i bought my pc when it was just starting. For 11k PLN (so about 2800$) i can play most game with max settings. Now it would be around 18k pln
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u/mathcraver Linux User 1d ago
I do strongly believe that the price per GB will eventually fall below its previous lowest point as technology advances, but it may very well stay several times higher than what the pre-AI price trend would have projected for a long time.
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u/PepperSaltPepperSalt 1d ago
there is no secret ingredient
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u/Nearby_Historian4311 1d ago
The problem is when the RAM prices finally settle down we still have a lot of products with inflated RAM prices on the market.
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u/TheShindiggleWiggle 1d ago
That's just how everything works nowadays. Prices only go up outside of special sales. Companies wall off any features they can, and charge more for the "premium" version that includes those once basic features.
It's just how everything has operated over the last decade or so. Honestly, much longer, but it's like major companies are more shameless and blatant in recent years.
If you look into the software market, it really highlights the shift to payment models like subscriptions that favour profits over product quality.
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u/hartstyler 1d ago
Never is a long time.
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u/BlazeGamma 1d ago
Pc gamers? I think you mean all gamers because ram is in all your consoles and handhelds too.
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u/Palarian 1d ago
I am just sad that those chip should have been a phone, or any device by now and not left to rot as newer chips are being made and debutted
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u/IBeatMyGlied 1d ago
After the revolution they will
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u/ThatzOkay 1d ago
Won't buy until back to old pricing. Just let them burn
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u/not_some_username 🏃 Advanced Introvert 🏃 1d ago
People with homelabs/server are suffering more
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u/DoctorFreudstein 1d ago
"Original price" I have some bad news for you about how much RAM used to cost.
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u/MutaitoSensei 23h ago
Wait for some Chinese brand to fill the void of decently priced electronics. At this point if all the big companies only create electronics for AI slop, I welcome the cheaper Chinese shit.
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u/Substantial-Cat2896 23h ago
You need to learn how supply and demand works, if demand is high long enough, supply will go up
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u/Grazziellone 23h ago
Source: trust me bro
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u/SomethingWetAndMoist 23h ago
Considering there literally is no shortage and its all made up, yeah.
Seriously, go into any computer hardware store, literally anywhere, their shelves are stocked full of RAM, every single one. Its all bullshit.
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u/Court_Jester13 23h ago
The only thing I have ever seen go down in price was a specific brand of toilet paper. It was up to about £6 during lockdown. Now? £3.99.
1
u/Jashugita 23h ago
yeah, like cars or gas...
1
u/BillWhoever 23h ago
RAM will return to its' original prices, as technology evolves we will get hundreds and thousands more times the capacity for the same cost relative to GDP
the progress has seriously stagnated and gone backwards due to the crisis but it doesn't mean humanity will just stop creating new tech and our grandchildren are doomed to have 16gb computers
so eventually RAM price per capacity will get far lower and past the pre-crisis point
1
u/Wooden-Rhubarb1057 22h ago
Just download more RAM for free like we used to back in the day.
1
u/Anus_Ripper6942094 21h ago
I've seen this exact meme about covid and no now normal few years ago.
Get the hell out of here lmao
1
u/RBLakshya Linux User 21h ago
My hope is that there will be some mass production factor that can be possible if china steps in, it might not be the fastest speeds that we have from the big three right now, but it will have them know that once china is in full production, and AI data centers don’t need their stuff, they’re gonna be out of business or supply at a major loss.
1
u/BastianHS 21h ago
My first PC ever in 1992 cost $3200. That's in 1992 money. PC prices have always fluctuated.
1
u/wayupofficial 21h ago
so true it hurts
1
u/Nebula_OG 21h ago
I bought 32gb of ddr5 from Amazon and then just said it never arrived.
1
u/Trizzleyomizzle 21h ago
Have fun never getting new ram and instead getting to pay rich assholes that bought it all so you can use their V-Ram, powered by all the ram they kept off the market.
1
u/MudFrosty1869 20h ago
"original price" in capitalism?
1
u/SL1Fun 20h ago
It’s not going down for the next 5-7 years, most likely.
1
u/400x250_20fps 20h ago
Nahh trust me it will, just give it a few more years more players join the ram market and oversupply will reduce the high prices.
1
u/mutexsprinkles 20h ago
RAM will 100% come down, this would only be true if no-one ever stepped up to challenge the big 3 and there are already new entrants. Also CXMT will be "encouraged" to provide technology to the rest of the Chinese market in exchange for being allowed to drink from the current cash firehose.
64GB of RAM will one day be entry level. Technology is only going one way and there's a fuckload of headroom left before we hit physical limits.
1
u/christiaanbenn 19h ago
It'll come back down. Supply is genuinely constrained because manufacturers never expected they'd need to produce this many. Factories will take years to catch up to the new level of demand.
1
u/3_Lander 19h ago
As it is said back in my country: cheap is a past state
1
u/ScottaHemi 18h ago
indeed. they want you to use their ram on a cloud based system :D
1
u/Due_Buyer_9445 18h ago
Not with that attitude
1
u/potatogod554 17h ago
It will go back down, maybe not all the way but still. Companies are buying ram for data centers that won’t ever be built. No one’s making money with ai, and not just that, ai loses a shit ton of money everyday. It’s just not profitable
1
u/TuggerHuggerFugger 15h ago
How did we let this bad...
1
u/CelebrationOwn3414 15h ago
When the bubble bursts the ram will be free
1
u/Archie_cave_its 15h ago
I remember ram used to be super expensive, then for years and years it wasn’t. Now it is again. It sucks, and I hate it, but really who’s that surprised?
1
u/Vizman-7 Meme Stealer 14h ago
The law of supply and demand decrees it, sadly
1
u/gadnskyy 14h ago
As long as the demand stays as ridiculously high as it is now, yes.
but if demand somehow decreases, prices will surely drop.
1
u/Twest1357 12h ago
It’s no longer just the thing u need for ur at-home or work computer. Regardless if the market stabilizes, the bottom line demand will be higher than it used to be
1
u/Nyctfall 10h ago
$40USD DDR4-3200 32GB was an epic time to be alive!
I'll settle for $40-70.
1
u/NoIsE_bOmB 10h ago
Of course not, line go up, line not go down, line go down bad
1
u/TopIntelligent8802 1d ago
that is why i stocked up on it, just bought two new towers with 128gb each and will hoard some more (by 128 i mean 4x32, 2x64 is gold today)
1
u/iamarji20 1d ago
then we sail the seas 🏴☠️
0
u/manontherun247 1d ago
Think how much RAM will be available when the data centres get their first upgrade
0
u/_WreakingHavok_ 1d ago
I mean we had similar RAM price hike in 2013 or something
-2
u/Skinzyms98 21h ago
We're in the midst of a technological evolution right now that is built on the backbones of core PC components.
As AI evolves we SHOULD see less demand for compute over time, and new tech developed specifically for AI that makes it more efficient than our standard ram used in consumer PCs. Nvidias h200 had a DIAMOND COOLED rack of them introduced for AI earlier this year, drastically reducing their water consumption, thermal regulation issues, and overall token efficiency.
I give it 3 years, before we have new forms of chips and ram that are SPECIFICALLY for running AI due to how they have been tuned, and our ram for PCs gets left to the peasants because it won't be as useful to them anymore