[pipes]

Google says sdram in 1997 was 7 to 10 dollars per megabyte. So 384 would be 3840 not 40,000 am I missing something here?

[eptcyka]

Buyim higher density memory is almost always more expensive. Ye, you could buy 100s of the cheapest modules at that price, but ehat is the point if you can only stick 8 of them in any given machine?

[ErroneousBosh]

I had a desktop PC that I bought (as a pile of bits!) with 512MB of RAM in 1999 and I sure as hell didn't pay more than a couple of hundred for memory. That might have been EDO rather than SDRAM though but I can't see the price difference being that much!

[rasz]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47551166

>128MB DIMM: May 1997 $300. July 1998 $150. July 1999 $99. September 1999 Jiji earthquake happens. September-December 1999 $300. May 2000 $89.

>Then overproduction combined with dot-com boom liquidations started flooding the market and Feb 2001 $59, by Aug 2001 _256MB_ module was $49. Feb 2002 256MB $34. Finally April 2003 hit the absolute bottom with $39 _512MB_ DIMMs

In 1999 512MB could cost $400, but it could also cost $1200 :)

[cyberax]

My computer had 16Mb in 1997, and it was lower-range but not the absolute bottom.

It looks like Anandtech listed 128Mb for $300 (not inflation adjusted) in 1997. It fell to $150 in 1998 and by 1999 you could buy it for $100.

So 512Mb RAM by the end of 1999 for ~$200 was plausible.

[p_l]

Possibly inflation adjusted?

[debugnik]

That would be around $7,900 USD.