is anyone affected by the rampocalypse? gpupocalypse? nandpocalypse?

[TonyJZX]

you know what this is about if you are even a partial technology buyer... or even if you just need a new phone?

i bought a whole load of ddr4 server ram to upgrade my AI servers... that was 18 months ago? my server guy had piles of 32Gb ddr4 reg ecc that he didnt want since it doesnt work in consumer pcs

i bought 2 x 8Gb ddr5 4800 sodimms for like $20 apiece from a friend who needed up upgrade his laptop to 2 x 16Gb ddr5 wanted me to take his laptop apart to do it

i bought 2 x 8Gb ddr 4800 desktop modules for $22 apiece... NEW... for a computer I was supposed to build but didnt as I moved to AI servers and I still have the motherboard and cpu in the garage somewhere

i think various 500gb ssds in nvme or sata was like $35 a shot at the time and i got a few from work upgrades and like I bought 3 for $100 for various tiny pcs i have around

i dont buy GPUs since I rarely play games but the last GPU I bought was a Quadro P4000 8Gb for $100 for workstation use

this seems like a fever dream in q3 2026

also predictions of more rises to come up until at least 2028

 

[JSmith]

Very affected... pricing is just stupid at the moment.

Got a new laptop recently, has already gone up by $400 - $900 compared to what I paid... not to mention about $1K of the purchase price was a 5070 Ti.

SSD's have almost doubled and RAM not much less than double, which can hit hard for self hosted servers etc.


JSmith

 

[TonyJZX]

samsung memory had more profit but not revenue in the last fiscal year than since their accumulated profit since their inception over 50yrs ago...

in fact close to 20x the profit

this aint normal

also i'm cruising your equivalent of craigslist fb marketplace for 2nd hand laptops that are busted but have 2 x 8gb modules on board because that's worth more than an entire working covid era laptop

 

[OldTimer]

I was taking advantage from DDR4 RAMs and SSDs but not GPUs because the GPU is already expensive. They are taken from an old workstation that have 16 pieces of 8GB RAM and 8 pieces of SSDs. Those prices become 10x.

 

[Chrispy]

Over my head. I get what I get when I buy the laptop and haven't found there an issue particularly with the memory available but don't do crazy stuff.

 

[TonyJZX]

the thing is companies like dell asus acer lenovo still have to sell cheap laptops and desktops and so you do still see closeout laptops w/ 16gb ram and 512gb nvme for say $750 and its because they have the buying power to get a LOT of components for a little bit cheaper

but the sticking point to me is that they have win11 and that makes things very unattractive

 

[respice finem]

The non-powerusers are the lucky ones. As a self-retiree, I took all PCs from my former workplace with me (my successor wanted to have all new, so they would otherwise be discarded). So probably I'm trouble-free for years. The only device I will be forced to replace soon is my 5 years old smartphone. I've been planning to finally configure a NAS, using one of these PCs, but looking at the current HDD prices, I'll pass for now...

 

[Redacted]

And check the crazy prices for HDDs (for arrays)!

 

[respice finem]

And check the crazy prices for HDDs (for arrays)!

Exactly why I'm waiting, buying nothing. When (and if) the AI hype is over, the "hog cycle" will turn around and they will be cheap(er). Maybe it will even be affordable to configure an all-SSD NAS? Good things come to those who can wait.

 

[TonyJZX]

funnily enough this spells doom for manufacturers who are not 'riding the wave'

i hear motherboard companies are something like 45% down on sales... ie.. MSI Gigabyte Asus Asrock

people like you guys arent buying PCs when all the main components are so expensive

 

[respice finem]

funnily enough this spells doom for manufacturers who are not 'riding the wave'

i hear motherboard companies are something like 45% down on sales... ie.. MSI Gigabyte Asus Asrock

people like you guys arent buying PCs when all the main components are so expensive

They are "doomed" in another way as well: The "era" of DIY PCs seems to come to an end. I've assembled my PCs for more than two decades, but now, more and more "midrange" stuff has soldered CPU, soldered RAM etc., so "real" DIY is only a thing for gamers or server operators.

 

[TonyJZX]

i still do it for fun and its a cheap enough hobby ie. i spend heaps more on my cars and you should see my repayments on the commerical property i have... and also... kids

but yeah i get ya... my main PCs are HP z440s Dell t5810/5820 workstations

its the old story where my mechanic gets to work every day in a toyota camry... you just want things to work. you dont want to tinker on your own stuff

i still have a love affair with small pcs so I have a few Shuttle and Lenovo HP Dell small form factor 1 liter jobs

also these things were all over the place at my last few places of work

 

[PjV]

I was lucky, bought an Asus NUC and added 96GB ram and 1TB and 4TB SSDs, a little over a year ago.
That would be quite costly now.
Since I bought my macbook air M5 the prices went up too, but not as spectacular as SSD and RAM.

 

[TonyJZX]

i was using a ps4 up until fair recently... i got a ps5 slim for $450.... ie. $500 - $50 ebay 11/11 coupon

now this console: Costco $979.99

even at the time $500 for a PS5 was under the cost of the components inside given that it has 16gb ram + 1tb ssd...

thing is a whole heap of industries are getting decimated

also remember a while ago the AMD AI 395 MAX small 'super computers' were being released with 128Gb ram soldered onboard + 2tb SSD and that was a usd$2,000 pc

that's REASONABLE given that this would be excellent for AI inference

these now START at $4k to $4.5k USD given the price of ram AND they are in demand due to AI duties

 

[ernestcarl]

I was lucky enough to purchase a moderately priced mini PC last year with 32 GB of ram -- DDR 4 and not 5, though.

Also took some snapshots of the 1 year price difference chart last month on Amazon.ca below:

I try to keep price notes of a bunch of items on Amazon. and BH etc. saved in my account profile or even just keeping simple web browser bookmarks with low(est) price noted.

So many electronics with memory items like HDD have ballooned in price.

Recently I've been backing up the bulk of all my blu-rays (including a few 4k discs) and I've all but ran out of HD space now. Oh, well. None of this is mission critical so I'll be fine playing the occasional blu-ray directly from disc rather than a saved file.

 

[TonyJZX]

ram prices are the same as they were in... 2007

so 20yrs of price efficiencies have been undone in less than a year

for micron samsung and sk hynix they propelled into into the trillion dollar club

in the near future we will see CXMT and YMTC (ie. Changxin and Yangtze memory) also try to export modules to the west

i heard the cxmt denied Apple's request for memory modules because they forecast a shortage on the backs of strong laptop and upcoming phone demand

cxmt is flat out with china phone makers and consumer demand which is, as you'd imagine, nuclear with china consumer unending demand for ram... in fact the China government has freely given money to cxmt and others as long as they guarantee enough demand for local consumers

i'm even dragging out old equipment like that Japanese gentleman

i have a HP z420 32gb 12 core xeon workstation with 2tb of ssds onboard, just sata, but i sidelined it due to purchasing newer machines but it actually works fine

 

[Sharpi31]

I built my NAS a few years ago with 4x 4TB hdd (decent WD industrial ones), plus 2x NVME cache drives. Have always planned buying a fifth matching hdd for when I need it, but the price is crazy (more than double what I paid a few years ago). Decided to hold off for now and buy reactively if I have a failure (or buy a spare later if prices drop). Looking at current pricing for the NAS components the same setup would by $1K+ more now, compared to when I bought it.

I had to bite the bullet with a PC I built in the spring. My kids are getting older and I was keen to have something decent we could use for local LLMs etc. I’m keen to give my kids insight into basic LLM setup, prompting etc. to hopefully help them stay current as they approach working life. No option to hold off until prices dropped, but I’m not losing sleep over it - my kids will hopefully benefit in the long run from having access to a decent setup now.

At work we’ve seen huge increases on Cisco server costs (and anything else with RAM or storage). Some SKUs have increased 300% from memory. Given Cisco’s discount model the street price won’t have increased by the same $ value, but it’s still a huge headache for clients that have budgets allocated that are now insufficient.

Crazy times….

 

[noisey]

I will have to set up a new NAS in 2028. Maybe I can stretch it to 2029.
My current NAS is equipped with 4x14TB WD Red Pro HDDs, which I bought in 2023 for 250€-300€ each. Currently they are sold for 690€-900€ each.
If prices don't normalise until then, the 8-bay NAS that I plan to equip with 8x30TB HDDs would cost a small fortune. Oh well, best not to think about it.

My Roon server should be good for years to come, though. I equipped it with a WD Blue 4TB SSD in November 2024. It cost 210€ back then. Today, offerings range from 346€-1140€.

 

[TonyJZX]

what the hell are you guys needing so many spinning discs for?

i got into the nas bug years ago but i only had HP Microservers... them cube things with the AMD N40 type cpus

i have like 3 of them stacked up at my dad's place with 4 x 4tb drives in them

yeah the nas boys have all complained that the cost of the shells the ram and rust discs have made this hobby untenable

 

[noisey]

what the hell are you guys needing so many spinning discs for?

I have a large library of physical and digital media and for various reasons I don't see subscribing to TV-streaming services as a viable option.

I want to start copying my 4K-Blu-Ray-discs to my NAS. Until now it's 1080p only. If I create a remux of a 4k film, the average file size per film will be ~50-85GB. So anything <100TB just won't get me very far. Plus you have to take into account the amount of disc space one can't actively fill up with data due to RAID.