Generative “AI” data centers are gobbling up trillions of dollars in capital, not to mention heating up the planet like a microwave. As a result there’s a capacity crunch on memory production, shooting the prices for RAM sky high, over 100 percent in the last few months alone. Multiple stores are tired of adjusting the prices day to day, and won’t even display them. You find out how much it costs at checkout.
Even in 2025, emerging industries are like “what’s an environment?”
Can’t blame this on not knowing. It’s all just negligence and evil now.
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
This bubble cannot burst soon enough
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.
I LOVE FREE MARKETS!
I LOVE FREE MARKETS!
I LOVE FREE MARKETS!
I LOVE FREE MARKETS!
I LOVE FREE MARKETS!
I LOVE FREE MARKETS SO MUCH!
Can’t wait for the AI bubble to burst and we can all buy RAM at auction for $2 plus a 28% buyers premium.
You don’t hate AI slop enough…
Well if you know of a better way to generate pictures of comically obese bearded men gayly dancing, I’d love to hear it.
DMing you my patron
That’s crap. They’ve loaded their stock on a certain price and they want to surf the high wave while they can.
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.
Almost all retailers inventory on consignment. So, no.
No they don’t. They purchase at a fixed rate.
That’s Free Markets, baby!
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.
exactly when i needed some ram.
thank you based ai bubble, for making shit unaffordable because of spambots.
For real. I’ve been building a completely brand new computer for my husband for a couple months now. Buying a new piece each paycheck, then I get paid this week and I discover I can’t buy the RAM… It’s fucking half way finished and the only 2 parts left to buy is GPU and RAM.
Unfortunately those are the most expensive parts right now because they both require memory chips. Perhaps consider buying used, might be tough to find DDR5 DIMMs but used GPUs are plentiful.
I’m definitely looking for used parts, especially in my local classifieds. I’m going to jump on the first affordable set of ddr5 ram I can find lol
It’s sweet how much effort you’re putting into it. When I was a kid I built my first computer one piece at a time with money I saved from mowing lawns, there’s something so satisfying about earning a computer through dozens of shrewd bargains and months of dedicated labor. It’s all worth it in the end, you’ve got this!
You may have to settle on DDR4 for now
LOL I wish. It’s not compatible though, ty
Ffs I keep delaying a rebuild of my PC because of crap like this every year thinking the bubble will burst, but something new comes up. I don’t use it for gaming nowadays, just regular browsing since I have a console but even Sony is bringing their stuff to PC so I was looking to upgrade. Now it’s been pushed even more.
Hang in there my 8 GB ram PC with GTX 960…
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.
I just received all the parts for the high end gaming PC I’m building for my son for xmas. And I’ll have some uses for it too.
I didn’t really feel like I could delay it arbitrarily because teaching him real computer stuff (including games because I’m a fun dad) matters a lot more to me than however many hundreds of dollars I might have eventually saved.
And man it HURT. The RAM isn’t anywhere near the most expensive part, but it somehow stings the most. I like to err on the high side with memory and have never regretted it. But, this 2025 build is going to have the same 32GB memory size as my 2018 build did, and the prices for the kits was very similar for both purchases.
I’m tempted to splurge and swap for a 64GB kit before I start building, but it might be cheaper and easier to just wait a year. Or honestly never. The added memory would probably only help with my video editing, and that’s not a big part of my computer usage.
I swear there’s a new gold rush every time I want to upgrade my pc.
Same. Got 3080 for $1,500 usd in late 2020
It wouldn’t be quite so bad if the previous gold rush ended first, but they seem to just be stacking up.
Speak for your self - scored a nice GPU upgrade during the crypto crash, maybe something similar will be achievable after this insanity hits the brakes.
I thought they weren’t using gaming gpus this time though?
Gaming GPUs during normal crypto markets don’t compute fast enough to mine crypto profitably, but if crypto prices get high enough such as during a boom cycle, it can become profitable to mine on gaming GPUs
Edit to add: For crypto there’s basically a set speed that any given GPU mines at. The hash rate specifically. It really doesn’t change noticably over time through software updates, nor does the power consumption of the GPU. Its basically a set cost per cryptocurrency mined with any given hardware. If the value earned by mining can exceed the cost to run the GPU then GPU mining can quickly start making sense again.
Yeah, even less so with gen AI though I think.
Machine learning models have much different needs that crypto. Both run well on gaming GPUs and both run even better on much higher end GPUs, but ultimately machine learning models really really need fast memory because it loads the entire weights into graphics memory for processing. There’s some tools which will push it to system memory but these models are latency sensitive so crossing the CPU bus to pass 10s of gigabytes of data between the GPU and system memory is too much latency.
Machine learning also has the aspect of training vs inference, where the training portion will take a long time, will take less time with more/faster compute and you simply can’t do anything with the model while it’s training, meanwhile inference is still compute heavy it doesn’t require anywhere near as much as the training phase. So organizations will typically rent as much hardware as possible for the training phase to try to get the model running as quickly as possible so they can move on to making money as quickly as possible.
In terms of GPU availability this means they’re going to target high end GPUs, such as packing AI developer stations full of 4090s and whatever the heck Nvidia replaced the Tesla series with. Some of the new SOCs which have shared system/vram such as AMD’s and Apple’s new SOCs also fill a niche for AI developer and AI enthusiasts too since that enables large amounts of high speed video memory for relatively low cost. Realistically the biggest impact that AI is having on the Gaming GPU space is it’s changing the calculation that AMD, Nvidia and Intel are making when planning out their SKUs, so they’re likely being stingy on GPU memory specs for lower end GPUs to try to push anyone with specific AI models they’re looking to run to much more expensive GPUs
Until the next crisis…
This AI bubble needs to explode yesterday, Wall Street be damned.
There was a nice window from about a year or two ago to about 3 months ago where no individual components were noticably inflated. Monitors took the longest to recover since the pandemic shortages so that was arguably around the beginning of this year that they seemed to fully normalize
Its funny because at work we’ve been pushing hard on Windows 11 refreshes all year and warning that there will likely be a rush of folks refreshing at the last possible minute at the end of the year inflating prices. And we ended up being correct on the inflated prices part but it was actually the AI bubble that did it
That’s the tariffs, now. GPUs had come down a bit before the dumbass
This is why I’m still running ddr4. Every time I think about upgrading a generation, there’s a run on some integral component.
AM4 is gonna last until the 2030s at this rate…
With how good my 5600x still performs, I could very well see it lasting that long. Assuming it doesn’t randomly kill itself after a few years like my previous ryzen 5.
I was silly and got myself a 5950X. But I feel less silly about it now tbh. It’s gonna become my new homelab core whenever I get the chance to do a new gaming build again that’s not a high 4-figure investment.
Totally worth it with how good ryzens have held up performance wise. Unless you’re doing some really CPU heavy stuff or have a beast of a GPU, you probably won’t get bottlenecked by the CPU for at least 5 more years.
Unless you’re using windows in your homelab. I assume you’re not since you have a home lab.
Nope - proxmox is the way
5800x3d was probably my best cpu purchase of all time, damn
Why wouldn’t it?
In a sane world, the limitations of a CPU socket would be reached, and then newer SKUs would no longer be release and all stock for prospective builders would be second hand.
That’s clearly not the case here. AM4 continues to get new CPU releases and parts are still available new from retail, years after the support officially ending. That’s a good thing for variety and entry level machines, but such dependency means a future CPU could be limited in featureset/performance if it releases on AM4 instead of AM5, which there may be enough demand to force designers to downgrade chips for AM4 compatibility.
The good thing about new AM4 boards being available at this point in time is you have options to keep older hardware running. Usually the CPU and memory will out-survive motherboard. Much like those new Chinese motherboards supporting 4th and 6th gen Intel CPUs, this is great for longevity and reduces how much production is needed
In a sane world, the limitations of a CPU socket would be reached, and then newer SKUs would no longer be released
I’d argue that it would be best if computers were more like cars, a new platform gets released each decade or so, and small improvements are made to individual parts but the parts are largely interchangable within the platform and produced for a decade or two before production is retired. More interchangable parts, slower release cycle and more opportunities for repair instead of replacement
DDR4 is expensive as shit too now. I was trying to build out a new rack for my homelab and 256GB of ram went from like $300 6 months ago to $1500.
Did I tell you about using arch?
I dki so too - just upgraded my X2600 with a shiny X5950, the nicest cpu my aging mainboard can run. with 16 cores and 64 gigs of ram i see a future when i simply replace the entire machine for daily use and make this one a very nice server.
It’s why I started treating computers as commodities — I rarely upgrade anymore; just wait the 5 years and by an entirely new system.
Same except for me it’s 10 years.
This is about my upgrade cadence, except for storage. I ran my Ryzen 1600 until the 7000 series dropped and upgraded mobo+RAM at once for about $600.
I then moved the old parts to another case to use as a low load server only for both the motherboard and CPU die within a few weeks. 🫡
Yeah, i think the correct response to planned obsolescence from the side of computer manufacturers is to exclusively buy products from companies who have produced long-living machines in the past.
That gives manufacturers an incentive to make the machines they produce last longer, instead of shorter to sell newer products more frequently.
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
I feel like the luckiest person because I built my last PC right before the crypto hype and my current one right before the AI bubble.
So it’s your fault…
First they came for the hard drives, and I did not speak out because I didn’t need a hard drive. Then they came for the GPUs and I did not speak out because I had a pretty dope GPU. Then they came for my 8gb of ram and there was nobody left to speak out for me.
You can get 32gb of ram in the UK for the equivalent of $130…
You guys are being ripped off
I can see ddr4 at that price not ddr5
Just coz a few stores have not updated their prices doesn’t mean the demand will stop. It will be gone unless the ai bubble pops
Or its affecting America more because of a combination of tariffs and profiteering.
This is crazy, not displaying the price of an item in a shelf or display is against consumer laws where I live. And if the price on display is not updated the store is required to sell by the price on display.
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”.
Some places try to argue something like that, but if you push back a little they cave. The law estipulates a fine ranging from 74 to 1 000 000 USD for visible products in shelves or display without a visible price tag. And since its a fine, the government is eager to get his piece of the pie.
(Edit for misspelling)
What’s stopping them from throwing a blanket over the shelf and just posting the same notice on the blanket? That’s what I mean by toothless law.
So with things like fish that can change day to day are they required to just update it every day? that sounds nice.
@kieron115
Yes, otherwise how would buyers know the price?
@kurodrielAt restaurants here you would ask the host/waiter the market price before deciding to order.
That’s a little different.
But it’s what the article is comparing to when they say “market prices”. This particular store is based out of California.
Lived in the Silicon Valley in the 1990’s, when the price of RAM exploded with the web, armed robberies of manufacturing plants and warehouses for RAM became a thing for a few years.
Insert <Aw shit, here we go again . meme>
I think the RAM manufacturers were found to be guilty of colluding/price-fixing in that case (maybe this case too).
Altman secretly secured 40 % of the world’s DRAM manufacturing capacity last month. Supposedly Samsung and HK Hynix weren’t aware they were both signing up for it.
That alone would be enough to call collusion if it wasn’t an obvious play to strangle his competition by literally choking them out of hardware.
https://www.mooreslawisdead.com/post/sam-altman-s-dirty-dram-deal
OpenAI just bought the raw wafers? WTF.
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
