So glad I built my computer earlier this year. RAM prices now are triple what I paid for.
I’m in the exact opposite position… hoarding bits on the cheap, all I need is ram and psu but ram now costs more than I paid for everything else put together and scavenging sources have dried up completely
scavenging sources have dried up completely
Last I looked — which was, admittedly, a few days ago — Google Shopping still has some retailers that have stock and haven’t yet jacked their price up. Mostly dinky little companies.
searches
Never heard of these guys, can’t vouch for their reputability, but they have 2x32GB of DDR5 for $159.99 listed as being in stock.
The University of Virginia Bookstore — which I imagine is reputable — appears to be selling 2x32GB DDR5 for $245.95, and it looks like one can buy as a guest, so one presumably doesn’t need to be a University of Virginia student or staff.
https://www.uvabookstores.com/product/829320?quantity=1
EDIT: I would advise, though, that if you plan to get memory in the near future, that you’re probably better-off getting it ASAP, since I’m sure that there are going to be scalpers combing over all those small retailers before too long if they haven’t gotten to someone yet.
You are an absolute legend and I cannot overstate how much I appreciate this. Unfortunately I am broke as hell and scavenging was not hyperbole. My parts list so far is an intel 11700 from a Dell a hospital was throwing out, a b560 motherboard for ~$40, a friend’s old 1080ti, 2tb 2.5" ssd from a dead laptop, pretty nice wood paneled case for another ~$40 (this one was a steal). 16gb ddr4 was expensive to me at ~$40 and I was patiently waiting to either stumble across some or for some money to fall into my lap. At this point it seems like that’s increasingly unlikely, but hey! I found 10 bags of bagels and a nice coat yesterday, that’s a comeup :)
No kidding! I postponed replacing my old Sandybridge in 2020 because of pandemic prices and then jumped on building my new rig in early 2024 when prices were the lowest I’d seen in some time. Also, grabbing a couple more sticks of 32 Gb DDR4 for my homelab this spring now seems like it was a good choice.
Why has RAM suddenly got so expensive? We’ve been chasing this AI shit for the last 3/4 years and GPUs etc have been expensive the whole time, but somehow RAM has been ok until literally the last couple of weeks?
OpenAI abruptly bought 40% of global supply, and announced it.
Other companies found out about it when OpenAI announced and thought holy shit, if we hadn’t heard of this massive deal, what else haven’t we heard of?!, and so they started panic buying.
On top of that, because of US tariffs and trade restrictions, the Chinese “B-tier” memory companies, who usually buy old machines from the big 3 (SK-Hynix, Samsung, Micron) and sell this lower spec RAM at lower margins, didn’t buy up these machines as much as they usually do. They weren’t sure they’d be able to make a profit given their lower margins, should tariffs suddenly change again or other restrictions get put in place.
Micron actually just closed their consumer business to sell all their RAM to AI firms instead
Ah, so it’s the 2020 toilet paper crisis all over again, but with RAM
El Chavo del Ocho Reference!!! Elite ball knowledge 🤝🤝🤝
Is there even enough power on the grid for all these data centers? Wtf?
Power availability is actually a primary consideration when choosing a location for a Data Center. Sometimes they’ll site a DC even if there isn’t enough power and then build out the power generation that they need.
An example are the two DCs that Microsoft is building in Cheyenne, Wyoming and the absolutely massive 1.2 Million panel solar farm being built to power them. https://cowboystatedaily.com/2024/05/11/massive-1-2-billion-1-2-million-panel-solar-farm-planned-for-south-cheyenne/
This is at least the second time that Microsoft has done this in Cheyenne. In 2016 they contracted for 237 MW of Wind Energy, which led to the Chokecherry and Sierra Madre wind farms being built / expanded. https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2016/11/14/latest-energy-deal-microsofts-cheyenne-datacenter-will-now-powered-entirely-wind-energy-keeping-us-course-build-greener-responsible-cloud/
No matter what you think of AI the folks that engineer these DCs aren’t stupid. They are well aware of their extreme power requirements.
There’s many new jobs opening in the AI sector, pedalling on dynamo bikes.
Depends how dirty you accept the power.
This OpenAI RAM buyout really was a “If we’re going down, we’re taking everyone with us” move.
They’ll pivot to being the world’s largest RAM re-saler and clean up.
The “when you’re out of money and you pretend you have even more” tactic.
Damn, I was hoping to upgrade my ram in the next 6 months. When I built my PC last winter I couldn’t find any decent 64gb sticks so I went with 46gb instead figuring I’d upgrade when they got reasonable. Oh well, guess I’m rocking them for a bit longer.
Damn Samsung, they ruined Samsung!
Glad I built a new PC in the spring but bummed that I only bought a stick of 32GB DDR5 memory thinking that I would buy another 32 after a few months. I guess I won’t be needing dual channel memory after all.
