I hate this. PC gaming is my hobby, the only one that’s lasted my whole life. It’s always been there. It’s how I met my wife. It’s how I relax after a long day. It’s how I’ve participated in so many stories that stick with me and given me so many memories.
All of it is being murdered by the AI bros. Before them it was the crypto bros. It’s one thing after the other and I hate it so much.
On October 1st OpenAI signed two simultaneous deals with Samsung and SK Hynix for 40% of the worlds DRAM supply... the shock wasn’t that OpenAI made a big deal, no, it was that they made two massive deals this big, at the same time, with Samsung and SK Hynix simultaneously! In fact, according to our sources - both companies had no idea how big each other's deal was, nor how close to simultaneous they were. And this secrecy mattered. It mattered a lot.
Had Samsung known SK Hynix was about to commit a similar chunk of supply — or vice-versa — the pricing and terms would have likely been different. It’s entirely conceivable they wouldn’t have both agreed to supply such a substantial part of global supply if they had known more...but at the end of the day - OpenAI did succeed in keeping the circles tight, locking down the NDAs, and leveraging the fact that these companies assumed the other wasn’t giving up this much wafer volume simultaneously…in order to make a surgical strike on the global RAM supply chain…and it's worked so far...
OpenAI isn’t even bothering to buy finished memory modules! No, their deals are unprecedentedly only for raw wafers — uncut, unfinished, and not even allocated to a specific DRAM standard yet. It’s not even clear if they have decided yet on how or when they will finish them into RAM sticks or HBM! Right now it seems like these wafers will just be stockpiled in warehouses – like a kid who hides the toybox because they’re afraid nobody wants to play with them, and thus selfishly feels nobody but them should get the toys!
I upgraded my pc about this time last year (new CPU, RAM, and motherboard).
I was originally going to just get 64GB of DDR5-6000, with the option of adding another 64GB later, thinking the price might drop even further. At the last minute, I decided to get the whole 128GB instead. Glad I did.
I don't understand this. I'm looking at prices on some Asian store fronts and it's nowhere even remotely near these. I'm looking at DDR5-6000 2x16 for about $130, with no apparent limits.
Even with tariffs, transport, and other fees, you could get this to the US for way less than $400. I doubt the market could be this inefficient - in other words I don't think I just found a get rich quick scheme. So, what gives?
I just checked my go-to stores in Europe. Holy shit. I bought a 5200-speed 16GB DDR5 kit in October for 55 eur. Now it's selling for 240 eur. The 6000-speed model is now 390 eur.
Got real lucky. I was trying to negotiate a guy down on RAM. I wanted a server without as much RAM. In the end, I had to take the 768 GB. It only cost $1k more than 192 GB at the time. Unfortunately I can’t really sell off the excess because I need to substitute down the RAM modules to fill all 12. Ah well.
Maybe it's time we make a simple web page 100KB again?
Is there some kind of CDN minification, adblocking and compression service?
Maybe even server side rendering of websites?
Then a smartphone would work fine with 1GB of RAM and everyone could be happy.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 55.7 ms ] threadEven current DDR4 3200 DIMM prices are at an all time high.
These are 6+ year old chip specs now!
I even thought stuff was overpriced four years ago in mid-2021 already, but this is a whole new level.
Some sample long term data for those:
https://geizhals.eu/?phist=2151624&age=9999
All of it is being murdered by the AI bros. Before them it was the crypto bros. It’s one thing after the other and I hate it so much.
Today - G.SKILL Ripjaws S5 Series 64GB (2 x 32GB) 288-Pin PC RAM DDR5 5600 (PC5 44800) Desktop Memory Model F5-5600J3636D32GX2-RS5W - $620.
Prices from Newegg.
I was originally going to just get 64GB of DDR5-6000, with the option of adding another 64GB later, thinking the price might drop even further. At the last minute, I decided to get the whole 128GB instead. Glad I did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_price_fixing_scandal
Even with tariffs, transport, and other fees, you could get this to the US for way less than $400. I doubt the market could be this inefficient - in other words I don't think I just found a get rich quick scheme. So, what gives?
Then a smartphone would work fine with 1GB of RAM and everyone could be happy.