The reason RAM prices went up 4x is that a massive amount of not-yet-manufactured memory was bought with money that doesn't really exist to be put into GPUs that haven't been made yet, to be installed in data centers that haven't been built, powered by infrastructure that may never exist, to satisfy demand that isn't actually there, in order to generate profits that are mathematically impossible.

😎

Going to be fucking hilarious when all the western companies get fucked by China taking over the market they don't seem to care about.

Back in my day, we downloaded ram. 8GB at a time.

MY CLASSIC SCI-FI SOFT COVER BOOKS!!??!1

Edit: MY CLASSIC CONSOLE COLLECTION?!

The things I love the most don't have RAM, or I already have them 🤷

My most recent hobby has been an old Suzuki Samurai that I dragged out of the woods a few years ago. It doesn't use much RAM. It doesn't even have fuel injection.

I've also been getting back into archery with my kid.

Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I think that making it harder to get a computer and play games is a huge miscalculation. If everyone is distracted by Call of Battle: Dutyfield then you have fewer bored assholes casting about for something to do, and if people can still play Factorio, you don't end up with bored, autistic, organized assholes casting about for something to do.

And they told me I was crazy for putting 64 gigs into my machine back in early 2021. I "only" paid about 200 USD

Go ahead, make a lucrative market for consumer ram, see how fast china figures out how ot start filling that need :)

. . . And then the market will be flooded with RAM that companies preordered and can't pay for, because the AI bubble burst before it could be manufactured.

Hey, I can dream, right? And seriously, I would be quite happy if this causes an increase in dumb appliances, devices, and cars in the meanwhile.

What I'm surprised hasn't happened yet is RAM ICs being recycled at the retail level. As in, you could bring in an old laptop or phone with 32GB of soldered RAM and it would be desoldered and sold for cash or possibly even soldered into a new device you buy from that retailer.

I wonder how close we are to that business model arriving.

I would LOVE to believe this will force automakers to return to using buttons instead of touchscreen.

Yeah, I know. But I'd sure love to believe it.

AI's are more important than humans now. I guess we should get used to this. Line must go up.

"everything you care about" - Time to change hobbies and care about things that don't have RAM then.

What if the unintentional consequence of hardware hoarding by AI companies is we have fewer devices being made that spy on us, like smart TVs and appliances.

I'm aware, thanks.

Now I'm just contemplating whether I should upgrade from 32 GB DDR4 to 64 or 128 while it's still within the realm of possibility, or bet on memory prices coming back down within the next few years, and upgrade to an entirely new platform with DDR5 then.

At least I'm not planning on buying a brand new car anytime soon, or even a nearly new one. And my phone's fine for a few more years.

Good thing AI sucks

I find myself at a point where I don't actually want any new computing devices, partly because of this, and partly because, well, what I have works fine for me.

I have an M2 MacBook Air that is still as solid as the day I got it (Sequoia for life) for the majority of my personal needs, plus a 2014 Mac mini running Mint as my home server, an M1 Mac Mini my dad gave me that runs my Home Assistant, and an old(er) PC that has a GTX 1060 GPU that's capable of playing most of the games I care to play. My phone is a Pixel 9 running Graphene which is a year old and nowhere needing a replacement, and I have an iPad mini that I barely use these days anyway.

I guess I'm lucky enough that my shit is new enough that it's still usable, and my use-case is light enough on resources that the older gear still works perfectly well for what I need.

My wife, however, needs a new PC...

I‘m switching hobbies to gunpla. No one has managed to put DRAM in an airbrush to the best of my knowledge.

Most of the stuff I care about is like 30+ years old so prob not.

I can't wait till these companies shutter their AI shit and that supply gets dumped back into the market

Knowing real life some other party will juice it and ride the ram shortage for another few years, just keeping the supply as a speculative income stream.