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- Hacker News
- Still got 4x 128MB PC-133 Mosel-Vitelic. I'll be sooo rich soon!1!!
- I'm just imagining everyone counting memory usage in $ rather than GB now! hahahaby madazz01
- Added errata, homelabsales ddr4 2133/2400 16/32/64 prices are down from 3 months ago a decent amount.by jollymonATX
- People act like RAM is thousands of dollars now. I checked prices recently and while it’s pretty high, it’s not that bad for a component you just buy once and use for a long time. I’m still more concerned about the prices and availability of decent GPUs.by deadbabe
- Same people complaining "no one wants to work these days".by sudoshred
- RAM prices are so bad that my business couldn't launch our product this year. RAM increases completely obliterated our profit margin, and would have required raising prices 30%. For a small business, that just doesn't work.
A lot of small businesses are getting absolutely wrecked by this.
by vitally3643 - Okay, but... Are the new RAM players coming to the game? Or we'll be unable to afford a smartphone next year?
There were news that China has set up a new line, but tbh it's really bad that only a few companies are buying the ram at low low prices while others suffer. Economy and the invisible hand of the free market are failing their purpose.
by p0w3n3d - Does anybody have an understanding of when realistically there will be supply again? I've heard some positive sentiment about new developments in China, but that's not a market I am familiar with, and I haven't witnessed any effects of it thus far.by poly2it
- Two years at minimum. The manufacturing process simply takes that long to spool up.
That is, unless the hyperscalers all drop dead overnight. Then we'll be swimming in more chips than anyone would care to buy
by vitally3643 - Recently I had been struggling with a computer that kept crashing randomly. I finally figured out it was a bad stick of DDR4. I jokingly said to some friends I should put it on Facebook marketplace for free for repair. Maybe I should, who knows maybe someone can reflow the chips?
- Sell it outright on eBay. Someone will pull off the good chips and put them in a product.
It really is that bad out there for small businesses trying to make consumer goods. At work we had to recycle prototypes to salvage memory for a production run
by vitally3643 - DDR3 era processors are severely outdated today, with the strongest d3cpu 5th gen i7 unable to match performance of 6W TDP N100by linzhangrun
- I would argue that my old 4790K with dual channel ddr3 19200, at 10x power, is similar or better. That box lasted way longer than was reasonable.by interloxia
- 7th gen still supported DDR3L (with a suitable motherboard, obviously) and it's possible with 9th gen if you're willing to try "coffee time" mod.by kasabali
- The headline made me fear that I will need to shell out a few more bucks for 4164 DRAM chips, but fortunately this does not seem to be the case.
DDR3 is not "retro", for chrissakes.
by michalpleban - Good. 4164 DRAM production should be able to keep up with demand then.by RetroTechie
- I was about to say. DDR 2/3 I can still see many use cases for that stuff in modern-ish tech.
I am currently looking for some EDO sticks for a really well preserved IBM Aptiva I found on the side of the road. That stuff is expensive for a very different reason.
by HerbManic - It was introduced barely 20 years ago. By that rationale the PS3 is a retro consoleby lexicality
- Worldwide chip pricing and it's effects on the overall economy are fascinating. I expected by now somebody with a gen -2 class VLSI plant would swing into action and make <thing> for 2/3 the cost of the majors, and clean up in volume as the market absorbs the price shock. But no, instead it suits everyone in the pipeline to whine about it, but mark up prices instead.
I am guessing the other side of this, the price drops will happen but slowly, and just like gas pricing, the profit is in rapid reaction to shortage and slow reaction to competition returning.
Chip pricing a sawtooth would make a LOT of money for somebody.
by ggm - I think the DRAM manufacturers understand this is a bubble, and the massive orders won't continue long enough to make spinning up matching new production worth it. All they can do is sell everything they can produce and let the market stabilize to that level.by tencentshill
- Unfortunately from what I understood a production line that makes "normal" digital chips generally can't make memory cells with concrete physical differences in the process pipelineby p_l
- The memory crunch started October 2025. DDR6 will come out in 2027. At that point you're investing new capacity into an obsolete technology.
If I was a memory company, I would try to bring DDR6 to the market as soon as possible. DDR6 allows high end CPU based server platforms to reach the memory bandwidth of an A100 or half a H100 without the costly HBM.
by imtringued - Even on previous gen nodes it takes a year or two to bring a chip to full production.by rwmj
- Well, you are working from all sorts of misguided assumptions about how you convert, the yield, the efficiency, the shared capital, and history.
Old gen logic barely exists, and won't convert. The tools are wrong so it wouldn't yield. And there isnt the expertise (on tool recipes and integration) to do it.
Historically, memory is a sawtooth business. But history isn't a great guide here: 10 years ago, a new plant added meaningful capacity, as it came with a shrink of about 30%. Today....it doesn't. So it take huge capital to add a very small amount of capacity.
You can dream that things like 3d dram and 4f cells will help, but they are unlikely to offer enough with demand.
And finally, everyone running a dram plant has lived through these capacity boom bust cycles and the consequently layoffs and pay cuts. I suspect they are happy to take money this time. I would be in their place.
I do hope we see a new dram or dram-like designs. And that there are more efficient dedicated ai processors. And that models themselves become more memory efficient. But I don't really believe any of these come soon.
- I work in e-waste recycling. Ever since the TurboQuant paper in March, I haven't been able to sell any DDR3. I'm guessing that the DDR2 and 3 this article is referring to is the actual memory chips, not modules/sticks that servers, desktops, laptops, etc. use, because the latter aren't moving.
- Maybe you have priced it wrong? I just checked Ebay, a 16GB 12800 Registered ECC module goes for 40-50USD ea. That is crazy! Last year they were like 5 USD each.by olavgg
- Indeed, I was lucky that my PC is old enough to use DDR3 sticks, when I decided to upgrade a couple months ago. I think it's still cheaper to max out your RAM than to buy a new PC.by analog31
- Wild guess, but maybe China has something to do with that? They've got a huge "recover->break down/strip->recondition->sell refurbs to manufacturers" industry pipeline that doesn't seem to much exist outside of China.by kjs3
- Yep. Don't expect to sell those sticks on ebay at great price. Those new chips will be likely soldered to appliances like low end routers/APs, set top boxes, various adapters, low end systems, PLCs, IPBX, NVRs and various embedded devices.
I sold 7,2 Kg of DDR1/2/3 sticks two month ago, for gold recovery. As well as expansion cards, hdd PCBs and a few other things. Got about $600 from this.
by Felger