[JollySharp0]

There are ups and downs in the prices of components. Often people forget that during COVID prices were high for SBCs because of supply chain issues. Video cards just were not available in the UK and afterwards (every supplier had long lead times) and are still relatively expensive (at least there are now lower priced options). Raspberry Pis you couldn't get hold of and many people (Jeff Included) was using a website checking for availability which was non-existent for anything other than low end models.

I remember 15-20 years ago when hard drive prices went up through the roof because there was a flood in Thailand and it too years for prices to come down.

There is going to be supply chain issues due to the current Geopolitical situation (Helium comes out of the Gulf and that is need in chip manufacture) is also going to affect the price of components.

Eventually in a few years (as the article states) the situation will change. It just sucks at the moment.

TBH I am more worried about my ability to fill up the tank on my car as both Petrol and Diesel is unavailable locally. I can make do with whatever computer equipment I have.

[zozbot234]

> People are quick to forget that during COVID prices were high for SBCs because of supply chain issues.

inb4 AI has the same supply chain effects as a worldwide pandemic. I guess those AI doomers that talked about it being the end of the world had it right!

[JollySharp0]

Doomers IMO are just click baiting.

There is a saying that is often trotted out my economists "That the cure for high prices, is high prices".

There is a consumer market and business need for DRAM outside of AI. Someone will fulfil the need as there is a high incentive to. It just going to take a bit of time for this to happen. My equipment is going to be fine for another few years. So I am going to just hang tight and make do with what I got for now.

[Chyzwar]

Main producers actually reduced dram output in 2026. When you have few players with very high capital cost you will end up with cartels like light bulb cartel.

[JollySharp0]

Someone will come in when the price goes up enough. It will take time, but it will happen. What people are complaining about is that the time for this to happen is too long.

Oh look, there is a player coming into the market it seems:

https://economy.ac/news/2026/02/202602288291#:~:text=If%20eq...

EDIT: In fact many other chinese companies are now expanding into DRAM because of the high prices. Which confirms exactly what I said.

[andrekandre]

  > chinese companies are now expanding into DRAM because of the high prices

a good sign, but im guessing at some point these companies are gonna be tariffed heavily...

[jeromegv]

Reminder the whole world is not the United States of America. While you make the choice of voting for someone who thinks tariffs are good for the local market, no other country joined your bandwagon.

[FpUser]

>"a good sign, but im guessing at some point these companies are gonna be tariffed heavily..."

In the US. The rest might do the other way. The US of course will try to do some arm twisting. Hopefully the world can learn to fight back.

[JollySharp0]

Maybe they will. However people often claim that there won't be anyone to want to enter the market to take advantage of high DRAM prices when if they spent two minutes doing a web search they would discover that isn't true.

[dwattttt]

> Someone will fulfil the need as there is a high incentive to

And those uses which fall short of the new threshold, e.g. hobbyist SBCs, slowly fall away.

[JollySharp0]

In reality were they going to survive anyway? I would wager likely not.

Raspberry PI is the defacto standard for SBCs. Almost all the other SBCs had significant problems usually around software support and also third party support e.g. Hats, cases etc.

[bee_rider]

I’m just going to try and hang tight as well. But I do wonder if DRAM companies should or should not respond to this pricing situation. The actual AI model training companies buying all the RAM aren’t profitable yet, right? It’s all investment, which can dry up at the drop of a hat.

[Forgeties79]

So are AI evangelists to be fair.

[JollySharp0]

It is almost as if two or more things can be true at the same time.

[Forgeties79]

I’m not going to argue my comment was particularly substantive but these kinds of rude, canned meme-responses are not really appropriate here.

[xenadu02]

> Someone will fulfil the need as there is a high incentive to.

Unless the capital cost to compete is too high and the risk of the existing manufacturers undercutting you is very real. Plus it can take 5-10 years or more to build a new fab, debug/iterate your process, then start shipping product.

Markets are prone to natural distortions. This is one form of that. It can be perfectly natural for all potential competitors to choose not to compete no matter how much demand exists.

Frankly I'd expect nationalization of some of the DRAM makers before we see the rise of useful competitors. The more likely scenario is government pressure, up to and including arresting executives, to rattle the cages of the existing players who are way better placed to expand production quickly for relatively low capex. Not that I think any action is likely in the short term. My guess is the existing players are betting on an AI bubble pop so they don't see the use in really expanding capacity only to be left with idle fabs later. None of us really knows.

[ttul]

This time is different. https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/#ram.ddr5.60...

The price for a couple of 32GB sticks is now over $1200 after being stable at about $200 for several years until last September. That's not a blip; that's 6-fold hike and there is no sign it is slowing down any time soon.

[KPGv2]

I am not a hardware guy, so I am asking this in good faith: excluding people with corporate backing, who actually needs DDR5 RAM? Gamers? Why is DDR4 or DDR3 not good enough?

[HDBaseT]

Because modern CPUs are on platforms that support only DDR5.

If you are a gamer, chances are you want one of the AMD X3D CPUs. Whilst AMD did produce 5600X3D, 5700X3D and the highly sought after 5800X3D, these are effectively unobtainable now (outside of the Used Market, which is already about 2X MSRP).

You are effectively forced into AM5 (or whatever Intel is doing) and they require DDR5. You don't have the "choice" to use DDR4 anymore in most circumstances.

If your question is more of a hypothetical (assuming we could use newer CPUs with DDR4 or even DDR3) the answer is a bit more blurred, but at least in a lot of gaming workloads, you aren't memory speed bound. There is some performance regressions, sometimes up to 15%, but a lot of this is negated with the X3D chips anyways (:

[KPGv2]

Gotcha. So it's really just because of a failure of interop.

CPUs don't support previous generation, so even if you don't need the RAM, you don't have a choice (assuming you need the latest CPU).

[nnevatie]

Who really needs more than warmth, shelter and something to eat and drink?

[KPGv2]

That's an illogical analogy, and I'm confident you can do better but were just being disrespectful.

A more apt analogy is "do you really need a 28 SEER rated air conditioning system when there's a much cheaper 21 SEER available?"

[zozbot234]

If you only need DDR3-like throughput you can keep a minimum of RAM for booting and caching, and set up swap on an Intel Optane drive: they're widely available and cheap (at least cheaper than RAM) on the second-hand market.

(For read only workloads (no writes or only very rare writes) any ordinary SSD would suffice; the point of resorting to Optane is its unique wearout resistance.)

[polishdude20]

https://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX00115488

[Dylan16807]

Let's see, this is a low speed 2x16GB DDR4 kit for $300.

The closest option on the pcpartpicker chart was about $75 as a stable price. So that one's only a 4x increase.

Versus DDR5 where... it looks like a 5x increase to me? I'm seeing a jump from 200USD up to 1000USD. Edit: Oh there's an extra jump in the last month on the CAD version but not the USD version.

[kasabali]

that was like $80 last year.

[JollySharp0]

Did you not read what I said? I couldn't even get a replacement video card at any price during the height of COVID and believe you I had the money to pay for one. I couldn't even get a Raspberry PI (any model) for about a year. They were constantly out of stock.

> That's not a blip; that's 6-fold hike and there is no sign it is slowing down any time soon.

How does that invalidate anything I said? As states in the article this will change, it will take years but it isn't forever.

I find it hard to believe that people here cannot make do with whatever hardware they already have.

I also don't believe those small SBCs would have survived long term anyway. Most people just use a Raspberry PI. It is either a MiniPC or a Raspberry PI.

[meroes]

Ya I mean gfx card was pretty bad during Covid.

Discord groups that had real-time line counts and pictures of the line at most best buys across the country (US).

The only way I got one was overpaying and a lottery system that bundled it with other hardware because they knew everyone would still buy it. It was impossible to buy online normally as you needed some kind of automated way to buy it before stock zeroed the minute it was posted.

You could pay a scalper for a gfx card, but stores had none. Now, stores have RAM at least.

[Dylan16807]

> Did you not read what I said? I couldn't even get a replacement video card at any price during the height of COVID and believe you I had the money to pay for one.

You're comparing to memory sticks that went up 6x. If you were offering anywhere near 6x MSRP and you couldn't get a video card... I don't believe you.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/scalpers-have-sold-50000-nvidia-r...

https://www.pcmag.com/news/read-it-and-weep-heres-how-bad-nv...

These show GPUs available for 1.5-2.5x price, which fits what I remember.

> I couldn't even get a Raspberry PI (any model) for about a year.

https://picockpit.com/raspberry-pi/why-are-raspberry-pi-pric...

I didn't look into Pi prices a whole lot, but this suggests they were continuously available for 2-3x price.

[JollySharp0]

I am in the UK. Not the US!

> If you were offering 5x MSRP and you couldn't get a video card... I don't believe you.

My 1080Ti had died. I had to use a 8800GTS from the late 2000s for about a year. As that was the only GPU I had. I have no iGPU on my CPU.

There was at one time, no stock available. Not on Amazon, Not on Overclockers, Not on Scan. They had some weird lotto system taking place on most sites.

Scalpers claimed to have cards. But I wouldn't risk sending a lot of money to some random seller on ebay.

> Unless this article is massively misleading, sure it was out of stock at 1x price but it wasn't out of stock at 2-3x price.

Again I am in the UK. You could not buy any PI other than 1GB model and maybe the zero. Both of which were useless to me.

[kelnos]

> Scalpers claimed to have cards. But I wouldn't risk sending a lot of money to some random seller on ebay.

Ah, so you could have bought one, but you judged the available suppliers to be too risky.

Completely fair, but then it's not true that you couldn't buy one "at any price". It was just not a price+risk that you were willing to take.

Also, re: Raspberry Pis, you couldn't always get the exact RAM configuration you wanted, but they were pretty continuously available during COVID on Aliexpress. You did have to pay 3-5x normal price, but you could do it. I really needed one after one at home died, and paid the 3x markup, and it was annoying but fine. Not sure if Aliexpress is equally as available in the UK as it is here in the US, though.

[JollySharp0]

> Completely fair, but then it's not true that you couldn't buy one "at any price". It was just not a price+risk that you were willing to take.

You are being pedantic. I find this type of discussion very tiresome. I've explained why in other forks of this thread. Quite honestly it pisses me off.

> Also, re: Raspberry Pis, you couldn't always get the exact RAM configuration you wanted, but they were pretty continuously available during COVID on Aliexpress. You did have to pay 3-5x normal price, but you could do it. I really needed one after one at home died, and paid the 3x markup, and it was annoying but fine. Not sure if Aliexpress is equally as available in the UK as it is here in the US, though.

Not in the UK. Someone was running a site with all the places that you could buy from. I was checking most days. Stock was extremely limited other than a few models.

[Dylan16807]

Okay, UK, maybe that changes things more than I expected. But what about ebay and the sites that replaced classified ads? And is it unreasonable for me to say that you could have bought a US listing and had it reshipped?

Edit since you added: Scalpers claimed to have cards. But I wouldn't risk sending a lot of money to some random seller on ebay.

Even with ebay's buyer protection?

Well not to be mean but I think "I refused to use ebay" invalidates your claim that you couldn't buy a card.

[JollySharp0]

> Even with ebay's buyer protection?

I've had problems with it before (I can't remember specifics as it was a while ago). I'd rather not going through the hassle and/or risk in the first place.

There are still plenty of scams on ebay. During this era there were people scamming. e.g the box for a GPU. Listing the entire specs and then putting right at the bottom of the listing it was only the box and not the card.

> Well not to be mean but I think "I refused to use ebay" invalidates your claim that you couldn't buy a card.

What you are doing is being hyper-pedantic. It is fucking tiresome when people do this online.

If you are going to be a smart arse, I will modify my statement to say "I could not get a card from a reputable online store as they were all out of stock and did not wish to risk buying from a less reputable one".

I would be foolish to trust some overpriced (or underpriced) listing on ebay. I've had an ebay/paypal account now for 25+ years, I've learned to never do this because I got screwed every time I did.

[gtowey]

I remember that literally everything, including basic necessities like food and housing jumped 30% higher overnight and never really returned to pre COVID prices. It erased about a decade worth of wage increases for most people.

I think the doomers are probably anticipating another round of that and they're probably right.