It wouldn't be quite so bad if the previous gold rush ended first, but they seem to just be stacking up.

This is why I'm still running ddr4. Every time I think about upgrading a generation, there's a run on some integral component.

It’s why I started treating computers as commodities — I rarely upgrade anymore; just wait the 5 years and by an entirely new system.

because we're in an era where there always will be a gold rush for a specific component. upgrades have slowed down considerably in the past 10 years, my laptop is 4 years old and still kicks like the first day, I still game on my 8 year old laptop which is permanently attached to the TV and running as a steam machine with more than decent performance.

this wasn't even thinkable in the 00's

I'm pretty sure after hard disks, GPUs, rams the next shortage is either Arm CPUs or a specific future type of PSUs

Same. Got 3080 for $1,500 usd in late 2020

I also have 128gb of ddr5 ram

And 64gb of ddr5 ram

And some laptop ddr5 ram

I'm going to wrap them all in Saran Wrap and stick them up my ass so my brain works faster

Is it sitting on top of a pile of beanie babies?

If it’s new it genuinely might be worth 2k. Looked at the prices yesterday and corsair had 64gb for ~1k.

EDIT: Snapper RAM for the man!

Thing is, this isn't new in the slightest.

I remember calling around to different PC stores in the 90s and early 00s to find the cheapest RAM and hard drive prices.

Before that, I remember my grandfather, an IBM employee in the 60s-90s calling places looking for best pricing on 64k-128k SIPP memory for an ibm pizzabox 286.

In paris there was this street "rue Montgallet" selling computer stuff like that around y2000, the prices for the most sold things were printed on a cheap paper daily or you had to ask. Guarantee? Yes, but it stops when you leave the shop, or so was the saying.

I was like DDR4 doesn't count

One well-documented memory industry trend that is behind the price increases seen is said to be makers shutting down their DDR4 production in favor of DDR5 and other more profitable lines. In February, we noted that the likes of Micron, Samsung, and SK hynix were being rudely elbowed out of the DDR4 market by Chinese players (such as CXMT and Fujian Jinhua) ruthlessly undercutting them in this segment.

Samsung was seen to flinch in late April, as reports circulated that the South Korean technology and manufacturing giant had scheduled to cease DDR4 production in early June.

Now there are indications that oversupply from Chinese ‘dumping’ is at an end, as CXMT has been instructed by the Chinese government to abandon DDR4 manufacturing. Thus, the reported spikes in DDR4 pricing in recent weeks may stem from a perfect storm of the above supply-side factors all exerting an effect over a relatively short period of time.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ddr4-prices-continue-surge-reportedly-122337204.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall

But still ouch :)

Here's some that's significantly cheaper than the graph would suggest: https://www.amazon.com/G-SKILL-Trident-64GB-SDRAM-Memory/dp/B0BSB94VC2

Not that it's a good price in general or anything, but if you absolutely must buy now...

I think the RAM manufacturers were found to be guilty of colluding/price-fixing in that case (maybe this case too).

But now the surveillance capabilities of both the state and large corporations have been ramped up to infinity and beyond. I'm expecting a partnership announcement between Micron and Raytheon any day now, where Raytheon gets free DDR5 and Micron gets armed and autonomous security drones.

Kind of \s, kind of not

It's blatant price-gouging. Any stock in the store has already been sold to them at an agreed price. They can set a number and make their set margin.

Updating prices after each delivery might make sense (if their procurement department is absolute dogshit at negotiating contracts), but updating prices throughout the day is just someone trying to see how hard they can push their margins to drain every cent out of their customers.

That's probably one of those toothless laws that can be easily bypassed on a technicality. Like, just say the shelf is for "storage" and not "display".

So with things like fish that can change day to day are they required to just update it every day? that sounds nice.

and feelin fine

so i switched myself and my parents to arch linux over the past 3-4 months and I can say definitively that those specs are fine for CachyOS (an Arch Linux distro). My mom is using my hand-me-down 970 with its lovely "we charged you for 4gb of vram but actually only 3.5 of it is fast haha sucker" and it runs great paired to an old i7 6700k.

If you have 8gb ddr4 you can probably get a decent deal on a used 8gig stick. Even that would be quite aboost.

If you got good internet you could look into GeForce Now as a stopgap / headstart.

It can't pop if the US Treasury just keeps dumping tens of billions of dollars into it as a backstop.

The Infrastructure Reinvestment Act kicked this mess off, but it didn't pad the wallets of the right people to the right degree. So now Trump is just cutting idiots and assholes across the VC Tech Sector ten-digit checks to keep doing what they're doing.

We're increasingly operated as a Planned Economy that exists to turn natural resources into AI slop, because this is what the federal government's leadership believes they need to maintain the illusion of control over the public.

They are going to pivot all that processing to the next snale oil scheme. Do you think its a coincidence that rhe AI hype came immediately after crypto crashed?

They also need to be able to replenish that stock at current prices. I've worked retail many times in my life and arguably kinda-sorta do so now (albeit largely over the Internet) and I've never run any store where we did not set our pricing by replacement cost rather than original invoice cost. In my current operation there are some rare exceptions for clearance items and the like, but for the vast majority of products we sell for what it's going to cost me to get the next one to put back on that shelf, not what it cost me for the one I'm selling you now.

I don't have any insider insight into other companies' operations, but I imagine a lot of other retailers work things the same way. Especially these days.

I think what we're seeing is the result of their stock depleting actually. AI has been buying up supply for a while, and I don't think the consumer markets are able to compete.

That's Free Markets, baby!