6 ms·

My partner cried the other day because her long-planned PC upgrade is now an order of magnitude more expensive than she budgeted for pre-AI-boom.

nylonstrung 1mo ago
Order of magnitude? It's 10x more expensive now?
- layer8 1mo ago
  At least base 2.
- CDSlice 29d ago
  That’s honestly plausible with RAM and SSDs, the same kits of RAM I spent around $50 on years ago were being scalped for $500+ because there was absolutely no supply.
  - Dylan16807 29d ago
    A normal RAM kit went up a lot but it's still more like 6x. SSD, more like 2.5-3x. But what percent of your PC price is RAM? When it was cheap it was probably less than 10%. I assume a long-planned upgrade means a mostly new build, and it's a pretty rare setup where that has gone up more than 50-100%. If this long-planned upgrade is just new RAM then the price could skyrocket, but it's still not that much of the overall build.
dlubarov 1mo ago
I don't love this either, but at least it's a short-term economic quirk. At some point fabs will figure out what the long-term demand looks like and scale up production accordingly.
- john01dav 1mo ago
  This doesn't imply that it will settle at the same or lower price as before though.
- nomel 1mo ago
  > it's a short-term economic quirk Not with the memory cartel that exists right now. They're more than happy to keep things exactly as they are, with lawsuits flying [1]. [1] https://www.rainintelligence.com/blog/dram-price-fixing-lawsuit-samsung-sk-hynix-micron https://www.rainintelligence.com/blog/dram-price-fixing-laws...
  - briandw 1mo ago
    Fabs take a long time to build. The price will come down once the new fabs come on line. It’s expensive because there isn’t enough of it. It’s not a conspiracy, it’s supply and demand. We’ve see this boom and bust cycle again and again.
    - piva00 1mo ago
      This cycle might need more competitors, not only more fabs. It's in the interest of three companies to keep supply constrained to raise prices, and they act as a cartel so until the cartel breaks or a competitor grows large enough to have fabs that can make a dent in the demand we will keep seeing high prices. For a relevant competitor to show up takes much longer than building a fab (which is already a long enough endeavour). I'm not that hopeful the price for RAM and other PC parts will come down in any meaningful way for the next 3-5 years.
    - dogleash 29d ago
      > It’s not a conspiracy Why does everyone play the game where everything ought to be assumed above-board until someone painstakingly proves otherwise. > To date, five manufacturers have pleaded guilty to their involvement in an international price-fixing conspiracy between July 1, 1998, and June 15, 2002, including Hynix, Infineon, Micron Technology, Samsung, and Elpida. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_industry_price_fixing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_industry_price_fixing We are not the courts. The most reasonable and truth based position is operating with a fuzzy impression that most businesses are substantially more dodgy than their carefully manufactured PR releases are meant to portray themselves as. And in this case, that includes acknowledging that a literal criminal conspiracy in well within the realm of possibility.
- TheOtherHobbes 1mo ago
  It could be a medium/long term political quirk, because as long as RAM and GPU prices stay high the BigCos maintain a monopoly on non-trivial AI compute, and personal AI can't happen. I still can't work out if data centre mania is an irrational faddy bandwagon event or a covert socio-political monopolisation strategy.
- m4rtink 1mo ago
  Or rather creditors scrapping AI datacenters once all the money burning "AI labs" are finally insolvent & repurposong the hardware into something actually useful for people, possibly on chip level with custom PCBs.
- Yizahi 1mo ago
  Aaaand, then watch prices continue rising regardless.
- a2ff6eeb0 29d ago
  Fabs take multiple years to spin up, so expect it to last probably 3 to 5 years.
winocm 1mo ago
Same.

nylonstrung 1mo ago

Order of magnitude? It's 10x more expensive now?

layer8 1mo ago
At least base 2.
CDSlice 29d ago
That’s honestly plausible with RAM and SSDs, the same kits of RAM I spent around $50 on years ago were being scalped for $500+ because there was absolutely no supply.
- Dylan16807 29d ago
  A normal RAM kit went up a lot but it's still more like 6x. SSD, more like 2.5-3x. But what percent of your PC price is RAM? When it was cheap it was probably less than 10%. I assume a long-planned upgrade means a mostly new build, and it's a pretty rare setup where that has gone up more than 50-100%. If this long-planned upgrade is just new RAM then the price could skyrocket, but it's still not that much of the overall build.

dlubarov 1mo ago

I don't love this either, but at least it's a short-term economic quirk. At some point fabs will figure out what the long-term demand looks like and scale up production accordingly.

john01dav 1mo ago
This doesn't imply that it will settle at the same or lower price as before though.
nomel 1mo ago
> it's a short-term economic quirk Not with the memory cartel that exists right now. They're more than happy to keep things exactly as they are, with lawsuits flying [1]. [1] https://www.rainintelligence.com/blog/dram-price-fixing-lawsuit-samsung-sk-hynix-micron https://www.rainintelligence.com/blog/dram-price-fixing-laws...
- briandw 1mo ago
  Fabs take a long time to build. The price will come down once the new fabs come on line. It’s expensive because there isn’t enough of it. It’s not a conspiracy, it’s supply and demand. We’ve see this boom and bust cycle again and again.
  - piva00 1mo ago
    This cycle might need more competitors, not only more fabs. It's in the interest of three companies to keep supply constrained to raise prices, and they act as a cartel so until the cartel breaks or a competitor grows large enough to have fabs that can make a dent in the demand we will keep seeing high prices. For a relevant competitor to show up takes much longer than building a fab (which is already a long enough endeavour). I'm not that hopeful the price for RAM and other PC parts will come down in any meaningful way for the next 3-5 years.
  - dogleash 29d ago
    > It’s not a conspiracy Why does everyone play the game where everything ought to be assumed above-board until someone painstakingly proves otherwise. > To date, five manufacturers have pleaded guilty to their involvement in an international price-fixing conspiracy between July 1, 1998, and June 15, 2002, including Hynix, Infineon, Micron Technology, Samsung, and Elpida. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_industry_price_fixing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_industry_price_fixing We are not the courts. The most reasonable and truth based position is operating with a fuzzy impression that most businesses are substantially more dodgy than their carefully manufactured PR releases are meant to portray themselves as. And in this case, that includes acknowledging that a literal criminal conspiracy in well within the realm of possibility.
TheOtherHobbes 1mo ago
It could be a medium/long term political quirk, because as long as RAM and GPU prices stay high the BigCos maintain a monopoly on non-trivial AI compute, and personal AI can't happen. I still can't work out if data centre mania is an irrational faddy bandwagon event or a covert socio-political monopolisation strategy.
m4rtink 1mo ago
Or rather creditors scrapping AI datacenters once all the money burning "AI labs" are finally insolvent & repurposong the hardware into something actually useful for people, possibly on chip level with custom PCBs.
Yizahi 1mo ago
Aaaand, then watch prices continue rising regardless.
a2ff6eeb0 29d ago
Fabs take multiple years to spin up, so expect it to last probably 3 to 5 years.

winocm 1mo ago

Same.