I'm not saying it's not insane, but everyone seems to have forgotten that time in the early 90s when RAM prices shot up and you would spend hundreds of dollars for four megabytes.

OpenAI has negotiated with Samsung and SK Hynix to secure 40% of the entire world's DRAM production (!). Apparently even Samsung's own mobile division is struggling to get DRAM for phone production as selling the RAM to AI companies seems to be much more profitable.

Micron, the other remaining large DRAM manufacturer, has decided to stop selling RAM to consumers and is closing the Crucial business to go all in on AI as well.

But don't worry, just a few trillions more and we'll get AGI soon thanks to our AI techbro overlords. It's definitely not a bubble, and even if it fails you can count on the government (i.e. tax payers) bailing them out so they can go hide in their own private islands with their hard earned billions. But hey, why do you want a healthy economy when you can have Copilot on your toaster (and every other device in your home)?

AI is a disease

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A-eeJP0J7c

I cant wait for this shit to collapse.

Yeah its crazy, I purchased 2x32GB DDR5 6000MT CL30 Ram in Sept 2023 for $AU389, its ~3 times that now, over 2 years later!

Just build a PC to use as an emulator box with TV, intended to get parts from sales as I saw them during black friday and after holidays, but then things started getting wacky and bought all I needed mostly at normal prices.

The very next day that memory kit I bought was 2.5x the price I paid the previous day.

I wonder if I'll reach a decade on AM4 as I just upgraded with some more DDR4 hehe.

Way ahead of you guys, rocking that E3-1230 with 32 GB DDR3. 😁 Post-2015 woke era games are shit anyway.

Lutsoad wrote on Today, 06:08:

Way ahead of you guys, rocking that E3-1230 with 32 GB DDR3. 😁 Post-2015 woke era games are shit anyway.

Ehhh, there are some newer games that are good but some of them have pretty low requirements.

My main game is Warframe, which was originally released in 2013 but has shown no signs of slowing down and they are constantly releasing new content and have kept updating the graphics capabilities.

World of Warships is also pretty decent.

There are some racing games, such as the Dirt series that is quite amazing and fun.

There are also a ton of indy games that are quite good.

You just have to look for what is good in the genres you like. Not everything is woke.

That being said, it looks like I will be on AM4 for quite a while though I will probably upgrade to a faster CPU at some point.

It seems DDR4 has also gone up to as much as how it used to be many years ago, when it was still mainstream and DDR5 wasn't even out yet.

I even heard words about how DDR4 has become more expensive than DDR5 lately, though I can't really verify such, as I don't have any DDR5 systems yet so I haven't really checked about current and historical price levels of DDR5.

At present I've a DDR4 system on which one of the modules installed have gone faulty and needs replacement... only to find out the price has skyrocketed... so I have to postpone any plan for getting spare modules for now...

Yeah, tech YouTube channels like Gamers Nexus and Hardware Unboxed have been covering this extensively. Supposedly, GPU prices might also rise, due to VRAM costs going up too. It may also affect console prices for similar reasons.

By chance, I built my latest PC a few months before this went down. Doesn't look like I'll be upgrading it any time soon.

Bought some more for AI use when it was still cheaper, wouldn't have bothered otherwise then and for sure wouldn't bother now. Next after that is flash drives, not just for storing the models but for running them out of swap when you run out of RAM, which is still marginally better than nothing. No doubt plenty of this is also due to people hoarding the stuff, like they hoarded toilet paper some years back and that shit is still 2x more expensive than it used to.

TheMobRules wrote on Today, 04:32:

It's definitely not a bubble

The industry seems prone to these fads. A decade ago it was blockchain.

I'm not surprised either, as the amount of RAM has been stagnant for years. Back in 2010, I installed 16GB of DDR3 for the Phenom II 1100T because it was cheap. Nowadays, 64 GB is considered a lot, but in my opinion, that's ridiculous. 64 GB should be considered the minimum today, 128 GB should be acceptable, 256 GB should be standard, and 512 GB should be for enthusiasts. The same goes for consumer SSDs, which have been pretty much stagnant at a maximum of 4 TB in general.
In these respects, hardware has been very stagnant. It is normal for such a strong software advance as AI to suffer from this stagnation. And to show a great imbalance.

Jarvis post the norwood eagle

DDR4 production was ramped down earlier this year, to transition SDRAM production lines to DDR5 and the transition to Windows 11 means that many consumers and businesses are required to replace their Windows 10 DDR4 machines with Windows 11 DDR5 machines, due to the Windows 11 CPU hardware compatibility requirements that essentially turn the incompatible and blacklisted Windows 10 machines into e-waste, unless you put Linux on them. The next few years are not going to be kind to gamers and consumers in general. Businesses will just carry on as usual, but consumers will definitely be suffering. I do need to build a new gaming PC, but I can squeeze several more years out of what I have laying around, because I picked up a DDR4 RAM kit before it got crazy and I can upgrade the GPU with a 16GB GeForce 5060 TI, if supplies hold out. Right now, there are rumors that many GPU offerings in the low-end and mid-range will be nixed, to preserve the VRAM supplies for the high-end and pro cards.

i'm just going to have to emulate 64gb of DDR5 and ryzen 7900x on my Pentium! Pentium MMX that is, the mmx should handle it...

But in practical terms, every time i'm thinking about buying a new machine (everything i have is now at least > 10 years old) there's another reason to hold off 😀

I had been using 16GB of Crucial Ballistix DDR4-3000 in my X570 system since 2019, but in July of 2023 I saw a really good price on a 64GB (2x32GB) kit of Mushkin Redline Stiletto DDR4-3600 CL18 and grabbed that for $109 including tax. I figured at the time that my 5800X3D would last me a very long time, so why not get a big pile of RAM to finish the system off while the prices were low? That ended up being quite a good decision!

Looking at sold listings now, I see that same kit just sold for $325 on ebay a couple weeks ago. That is absolutely ridiculous for a previous-gen RAM kit.

I built two PCs for relatives this year too. One was a kind of entry level system with DDR4, the other was a solid upper mid range gaming PC with a Ryzen 7 7700X, Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB and 32GB of DDR5. I'm so glad I built them when I did, because they'd have both been considerably more expensive now due to RAM and SSD prices skyrocketing.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on Today, 07:05:

By chance, I built my latest PC a few months before this went down. Doesn't look like I'll be upgrading it any time soon.

Same. Really glad I upgraded when I did.