If you want more RAM / VRAM, upgrade now before Apple increases the price

[Nik]

Memory prices have doubled over the last couple of weeks due to the A.I. boom.

I think it is only a matter of time (weeks?) before Apple increases upgrade prices considerably.

Look at the following chart. This is how prices developed recently. VRAM prices moved up the same percentage or even more than DDR5.

 

[avro707]

It’s also impacting us folks with 2019 Mac Pros - ram prices for DDR4-3200 or the 2933 LRDIMMs is crazy. Look for 128GB or 256GB chips. We can use 8x256GB for 2.0TB max.

Enough of this AI boom. Someone put a pin in the boom.

 

[radow]

Apple already charges $200/8GB for RAM, they should have enough margin covering the price hike.

 

[maflynn]

Apple already charges $200/8GB for RAM, they should have enough margin covering the price hike.

If memory serves me (pun intended), they had done that before. I forget the details, it might been related to the iphone but components spiked but they ate the increased cost and kept the price the same

 

[maflynn]

As a former pc build, though I probably will never get completely away from that, the content I consume is heavily in that segment so the news about this has been building for a little while.
It reminds me of when the crypto boon was happning in the early 2020s, and you couldn't find a GPU anywhere so the prices spiked crazily. Now thanks to AI, ram and storage are spiking

 

[pshufd]

32 GB of RAM, in general, is enough for my needs in my setups. I can't run everything at the same time but I can manage that.

My last five systems came with 32 GB of RAM but one of the systems before that has 128 GB and the system is still reasonably usable so I'd use that if I needed a lot of RAM for a specific purpose. One approach on the desktop is to combine your older system with the newer one and put programs that don't require a fast CPU on one system and programs that require more on the newer system. This way you get more overall effective RAM without having to buy new sticks or a new system.

 

[aakshey]

Apple is anyway charging 10x on memory, so even if prices double, it wouldn't matter one bit to them. You can get like 64 GB RAM for like $450 or so after the price double. And what does Apple charge for similar amount of RAM? 😂

 

[leman]

Apple contracts custom LPDDR5 RAM from Hynix. The terms of the contract are unknown, and knowing Apple it is likely that they have hedged against these kind of market movements. Overall, Apple likes to maintain their historical price points, so I wouldn't be too worried about price hikes at this time. A price hike usually comes with a chassis change or similar.

 

[splifingate]

Enough of this AI boom. Someone put a pin in the boom.

Peter Thiel enters the room

 

[poorcody]

How do I upgrade the memory in my MacBook?

/s

 

[maflynn]

How do I upgrade the memory in my MacBook?

Just get this and you'll have twice the ram

 

[benwiggy]

Just get this and you'll have twice the ram

You jest, but RAM Doubler used compression algorithms to store more data from background processes -- and there's built-in hardware compression in Apple Silicon that does exactly the same thing. The "Memory Pressure" in Activity Monitor represents how much data is being compressed.

I've seen Macs with 8Gb of RAM cope with 24Gb of data, between compression and swap -- and the user reported that it was 'a bit sluggish'...!

 

[poorcody]

Just get this and you'll have twice the ram
View attachment 2581580

I actually bought that (well, work did) back in the day!

 

[maflynn]

I actually bought that (well, work did) back in the day!

Yeah, the same

 

[IvyKing]

How do I upgrade the memory in my MacBook?

/s

"/s" flag noted...

I would be nice to be able to upgrade the memory with the M-series processors, but the soldered in memory is likely smaller, faster and less power hungry than the equivalent connectorized memory modules. Things get even more interesting with "3-D" stacked RAM, keeping trace length as short as possible.

I'm glad I'm not in the market for a new computer now, though I would be very surprised if Apple didn't have some sort of firm fixed price in place for memory.

 

[Abazigal]

Apple already charges $200/8GB for RAM, they should have enough margin covering the price hike.

According to a post on reddit, ram in itself is already costing more than what Apple charges to upgrade their laptops with.

From the pcmasterrace community on Reddit: Current RAM market is so bad that it makes Apple RAM seem like normally priced

Explore this post and more from the pcmasterrace community

www.reddit.com

 

[maflynn]

According to a post on reddit, ram in itself is already costing more than what Apple charges to upgrade their laptops with.

From the pcmasterrace community on Reddit: Current RAM market is so bad that it makes Apple RAM seem like normally priced

Explore this post and more from the pcmasterrace community

www.reddit.com

Not for nothing, but apple doesn't use DDR 5 ram, and DDR4 ram hasn't experienced the same price spike

 

[benwiggy]

apple doesn't use DDR 5 ram

Are you making a distinction between DDR5 and the LPDDR5 and LPDDR5X that Apple uses?

 

[leman]

Are you making a distinction between DDR5 and the LPDDR5 and LPDDR5X that Apple uses?

They are very different products. And Apple is not contracting RAM from Samsung, nor are they purchasing it on the free market.

I do wonder how these industry contracts work typically. Maybe a forum user with experience in these matters would be willing to share their perspective.

 

[Ursadorable]

Honestly, I'm surprised they haven't just embedded the ram on the processor die at this point.

 

[rb2112]

I actually bought that (well, work did) back in the day!

Me too! (yes, also not bought myself).