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The coming “dark age for gaming hardware” - two 16GB DDR5 modules for 32GB total start at $330

throAU said:
Yeah, you can OPEX it though which is useful when contracts are < 3 years or so.

Either way, everybody is in the same boat.
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It only looks good when explaining it to the finance director when you have a capex hill in front of you. 5 years later when you look back you wonder what you were smoking. Think we ended up a 5x cost increment over 5 years. Such a win. Total win. And now we can't get out.

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cjsuk said:
It only looks good when explaining it to the finance director when you have a capex hill in front of you. 5 years later when you look back you wonder what you were smoking. Think we ended up a 5x cost increment over 5 years. Such a win. Total win. And now we can't get out.

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Yeah that’s the risk.

Fortunately the workloads i’m considering are not just going to incur the cost of the server, but a lot of other infrastructure to host the server in a remote location. Also on rolling contracts of varying duration.

Also, cloud would enable me to consolidate a lot of disparate servers (intended to be such to deal with internet failure) into fewer services. Now we have more reliable internet and connectivity redundancy available, i can put money into that instead of the servers.

Also i can spin up cloud services in an afternoon. Server hardware? 6-8 weeks. Frequently i get lead times of 4 weeks or less.

Its going to be interesting times.
 
throAU said:
Yeah that’s the risk.

Fortunately the workloads i’m considering are not just going to incur the cost of the server, but a lot of other infrastructure to host the server in a remote location. Also on rolling contracts of varying duration.

Also, cloud would enable me to consolidate a lot of disparate servers (intended to be such to deal with internet failure) into fewer services. Now we have more reliable internet and connectivity redundancy available, i can put money into that instead of the servers.

Also i can spin up cloud services in an afternoon. Server hardware? 6-8 weeks. Frequently i get lead times of 4 weeks or less.

Its going to be interesting times.
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Depends how big you are. We had hardware and space lying around we could plan scaling into. We had three physically separate datacentre cages, literally stacks of bladecentres and large 3PAR clusters. When someone took the constraints on the box away, all the fun trendy things appeared that look good on slithery architecture team résumés but have net negative ROI.

Trick is to build a business with an ROI stream that doesn't need all that crap. I know a guy who gets a few hundred hits a day on a single python script that makes more cash per head than we do. He has two orders of magnitude less heads but that's where we should be.

As I alluded to earlier, most LOB class applications could be knocked up in an afternoon in MS access. Why the flipping hell is it so hard and expensive to do what we could do then? I single handedly set up a whole damn network and wrote an ERP system for a 50 seat company back in the day.
 
We’re very decentralised. 60+ locations, all but 2-3 of them very small. We’re not an IT company (in resources) so this is just a business expense and not fundamental to revenue.
 
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Plutonius said:
that Apple doesn't use the RAM modules that the Windows computer uses
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DDR4 2933mhz ECC RDIMMs or LRDIMMs in my two Apple machines. And they are damn expensive now.

12x 128GB is an unthinkable price, over $8700 on memory.net. Even on eBay pre-owned HMABAGL7ABR4N‐WM are 4 digit prices each.

8x256GB for the maximum 2.0TB (DDR4 3200mhz) is even worse.
 
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bigglow said:
Nice clickbait article.

The prices will go bac to pre-Sep 2025 levels 9-18 months from now.

So if you were fortuante enough to buy PC parts released within the last 12 months at pre-AI pricing then great for you. Upgrade again 2028?
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Interesting comment. IMO the only way that "the prices will go bac to pre-Sep 2025 levels 9-18 months from now" will be if we are in recession, which IMO is likely. Low prices simply because no one is buying is not a very good thing.

The article had lots of words but never even mentioned the impact of tariff talk on tech markets. The consequences of the POTUS blathering about tariffs for months and months will be huge, and actually implementing some of the tariff talk is even worse.

Think about it. Any business that hears talk of tariffs will move to stock up on key components (hoard), and such behavior makes production less efficient worldwide. Prices will rise unless (IMO likely) buyers lose faith and recession occurs. Recession may lower prices, but if so it happens in very unpleasant ways.

Note too that the article seems to assume that the [dinosaur] world of gaming with energy-sucking hot boxes will continue as is forever. Personally I think not, but we will see.
 
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avro707 said:
DDR4 2933mhz ECC RDIMMs or LRDIMMs in my two Apple machines. And they are damn expensive now.

12x 128GB is an unthinkable price, over $8700 on memory.net. Even on eBay pre-owned HMABAGL7ABR4N‐WM are 4 digit prices each.

8x256GB for the maximum 2.0TB (DDR4 3200mhz) is even worse.
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Whether apple uses the modules or not, they still use the same memory DIES and those are what are not being produced so much in favour of massive amounts of HBM for AI inference and training in datacenters.
 
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Queen6 said:
You paid to say this or just drunk? Apple pushes prices past what the market is willing to bear Apple will see a significant drop off in sales, business basics 101. What Apple will do is absorb as much of the cost as possible as they are already at the pricing limit for many, that's reality. Everyone knows the AI bubble is going to pop, just a question of when...

Apple's stock price is already trending down, guess you want to push that down further?
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Many western economies are struggling, very last people want is inflated prices on toys they don't need...

Q-6
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That is pretty silly, showing a small fluctuation in AAPL. If you really think "Apple's stock price is already trending down" you could short AAPL and get rich quick. Good luck with that.
 
bigglow said:
Nice clickbait article.

The prices will go bac to pre-Sep 2025 levels 9-18 months from now.

So if you were fortuante enough to buy PC parts released within the last 12 months at pre-AI pricing then great for you. Upgrade again 2028?
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What's fueling the high memory prices has more to do with demand shifting towards AI data centers. SSD module prices are also going higher because of this as well. Steve Burke from Gamers Nexus covered this topic a few days ago on his YouTube channel.


Warning NSFW language
 
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Heat_Fan89 said:
What's fueling the high memory prices has more to do with demand shifting towards AI data centers. SSD module prices are also going higher because of this as well. Steve Burke from Gamer Nexus covered this topic a few days ago on his YouTube channel.
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Yes.

Those demands aren’t going anywhere any time soon, and building new fabs to keep up is a multi-year endeavour.

Steve is catering to his audience somewhat and isn’t involved in the enterprise space. It isn’t just gamers getting screwed, this is industry wide. No OEM is going to focus on low profit DDR5 when HBM is in high demand and more profitable.

This isn’t letting up any time soon unless either the entire AI industry craters (and i very much doubt that as even if cloud providers stop spending there’s huge demand from enterprise) or some miracle happens with production processes inside of 12 months. Both are extremely unlikely.


 
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throAU said:
Yup, but with the number of products, stability of sales, and sheer quantity of said products they ship, they can likely negotiate better margins than others.

Aware their existing contract expires in January, this is why i bought the ipad pro last week.
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OpenAI have already bought up 40% of the world's DRAM output for the whole of 2026. Only one of the several huge AI players competing for scarce resources. I don't think Apple will be securing great terms in this market, they'll be fighting just to get enough of the supply they need and will have to pay the going rate.

That said, I doubt SK Hynix or Samsung will want to totally burn their bridges with a dependable partner like Apple. Indeed, there's a rumour Apple already inked some kind of deal with Samsung.
 
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Allen_Wentz said:
Interesting comment. IMO the only way that "the prices will go bac to pre-Sep 2025 levels 9-18 months from now" will be if we are in recession, which IMO is likely. Low prices simply because no one is buying is not a very good thing.

The article had lots of words but never even mentioned the impact of tariff talk on tech markets. The consequences of the POTUS blathering about tariffs for months and months will be huge, and actually implementing some of the tariff talk is even worse.

Think about it. Any business that hears talk of tariffs will move to stock up on key components (hoard), and such behavior makes production less efficient worldwide. Prices will rise unless (IMO likely) buyers lose faith and recession occurs. Recession may lower prices, but if so it happens in very unpleasant ways.

Note too that the article seems to assume that the [dinosaur] world of gaming with energy-sucking hot boxes will continue as is forever. Personally I think not, but we will see.
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Prices will go down because >80% of AI data centers have been completed.

Didn't the tariffs occur months before Scam Altman cornered 40% of worldwide DRAM?

This appears to impact people upgrading/replacing from Oct 1 to late 2028.
 
bigglow said:
Didn't my 2nd sentence referenced that.... ?
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Yeah, I wasn't sure how it was meant to be, I mean you started off calling him scam altman and for the most part this contract of 40% seems to be more of a 2026 allotment, so prices won't be easing up anytime soon
 
maflynn said:
Yeah, I wasn't sure how it was meant to be, I mean you started off calling him scam altman and for the most part this contract of 40% seems to be more of a 2026 allotment, so prices won't be easing up anytime soon
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I was pointing out that the Trump tariffs was activated way before Scam Altman signed the 40% of the world's DRAM output.

So given supply dwindled by nearly half then no big surprise the price hike we're experiencing now.

I saw reference to 2028 as the likely date when supply will increase. Signaling to me this is when most AI data centers will be completed.

Up to anyone believing it or not but that's a plausible date of the return to cheaper hardware unless the DRAM industry follow HDD makers post TH flood changeo of business models.

Given Apple was able to secure fixed pricing on their hardware that allows them to still offer products at pre-October 1 pricing signals to me that anyone like me who upgraded from a 2012 iMac 27" to a 2019 MBP 16" 7 years later may want to consider replacing our 6yo Mac within 12 months time.

Or anticipate Apple trying to make a tidy profit and just buy into 2024 or 2025 Mac before possible price changes occurs.
 
bigglow said:
I saw reference to 2028 as the likely date when supply will increase. Signaling to me this is when most AI data centers will be completed.
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AI data centers aren’t a static thing. Every year new hardware becomes more powerful and cost-efficient, and old failing hardware needs to be replaced. They may also not stop building new data centers. It’s not clear at all if and when pressure on semiconductors supply will drop, or when manufacturing will catch up. Any predictions about 2028 today are pure conjecture, because nobody knows how AI will stand by then.
 
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klasma said:
AI data centers aren’t a static thing. Every year new hardware becomes more powerful and cost-efficient, and old failing hardware needs to be replaced. They may also not stop building new data centers. It’s not clear at all if and when pressure on semiconductors supply will drop, or when manufacturing will catch up. Any predictions about 2028 today are pure conjecture, because nobody knows how AI will stand by then.
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https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/1pm6r8b/sk_hynix_forecasts_tight_memory_supply_lasting
 
Much like the GPU shortage, I don't think RAM shortage will affect PC gaming a whole lot. Folks will just hold on to what they have for longer, or go prebuilt (if they haven't already).
 
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