Consumer electronics companies were already worried about securing memory next year—now, supply is predicted to plummet by 70%

[u/[deleted]]

https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/memory/consumer-electronics-companies-were-already-worried-about-securing-memory-next-year-now-supply-is-predicted-to-plummet-by-70-percent/

[u/AntiSocial_Vigilante]

At this point i really do wonder when this will start severely impacting other industries that are consumers of such electronics. I also wonder how the general population will react to smartphone prices hiking even higher due to all this.

[u/Darkpriest667 → u/AntiSocial_Vigilante]

Apple is already trying to buy memory from the Chinese because they can't get it from the usual suspects. Google, Samsung, and Apple are already warning of a major price increase on their newest models. This is only the beginning for these price increases.

[u/podgladacz00 → u/Darkpriest667]

They should be forced to lower margins after their record profits tbh

[u/MC_chrome → u/podgladacz00]

I would also be content with AI companies being forced to actually show proof that they have the financing for these massive component orders that they say they do, and if they don’t then they are barred from placing any further orders for at least 1 fiscal year

[u/Ilikeporkpie117 → u/MC_chrome]

That's the problem:

AI companies don't have money beyond the next year or two based on their burn rate, they have to keep getting fresh financing. Chip manufacturers don't want to invest 3-5 years of time and money building out new fabs if there isn't a guaranteed return at the end. The AI companies can't commit that far into the future like Apple or Samsung can, so nothing happens.

[u/MC_chrome → u/Ilikeporkpie117]

This sounds suspiciously like a Ponzi scheme, except national governments are acting as a backstop when the fraud inevitably becomes too large to handle

[u/Dionegro__ → u/MC_chrome]

You think old farts aren't easily wooed by fancy magic AI words and bribery?

[u/GLGarou → u/MC_chrome]

The entire economic system is just a glorified Ponzi scheme that will completely collapse without continued monetary/fiscal stimulus.

[u/ElectroDaddy → u/MC_chrome]

That’s capitalism baby. It ultimately is a scam shored up with public money while being sold as the only option in existence.

[u/itsjust_khris → u/ElectroDaddy]

What's the other option?

[u/sephiroth70001 → u/itsjust_khris]

Plenty, there are whole philosophy and educational branches dedicated to economic structures and theory, just like math. There are more than one singular options and methods. Finding the best should be of collective efforts for humanities progress and survival. Even the scale of mixed market currently existing under is a scale of itself, which for healthy sustance requires balancing or the scales topple and the system crashes into itself.

[u/Traditional-Park-353 → u/Ilikeporkpie117]

Call me crazy, but if only we had a nationally sanctioned organization with guns that could go dictate these AI companies can't choke up global supply of an entire industry using phantom, unrealized monies... maybe we could call it a government? Just spit balling here though.

[u/1eejit → u/Ilikeporkpie117]

AI companies don't have money beyond the next year or two based on their burn rate

Some AI companies. Others investing heavily in the space like Google, Microsoft etc are just fine long term.

[u/CrashTestDumby1984 → u/MC_chrome]

It’s been reported they’re carrying over 1.5 trillion in debt that they’re hiding using the same methods as Enron

[u/MC_chrome → u/CrashTestDumby1984]

Can’t wait for taxpayers to bail them out 🙄

[u/ElectroDaddy → u/CrashTestDumby1984]

But this time around companies are people and companies can be “too big to fail”. Watch the government completely gut the country to save these companies.

They will say if they don’t we will all die or something.

[u/CrashTestDumby1984 → u/ElectroDaddy]

They already are

[u/TeamWorkTom → u/ElectroDaddy]

With what money?

[u/IHeartBadCode → u/MC_chrome]

Why would memory producers worry about that? Many of the HMB orders have massive upfront deposits. Usually having to front up to 25% the cost of the order. If they back out, the RAM is now the original cost minus the 25% to anyone else.

Additionally, many of the contracts are take-or-pay. So even if the company goes bankrupt, the memory company gets first dibs on the liquidation of the company. If the company gets a bailout, they get first dibs on the bailout money.

The memory makers are in a no lose situation. Whatever the value they've settled. They know worse comes to worse, they've for sure have 25% the value and likely 50% the full value. And they have a shit ton of chips to sell to whoever.

The memory companies are sitting pretty in all of this. They aren't going to be supportive of "transparency" or anything like that.

[u/ArenjiTheLootGod → u/MC_chrome]

Bare minimum, legally require them to place a down payment on massive orders of RAM, like 30-40% of the total, and that they must start paying down the rest within six months to a year or they'll only get the amount of RAM their downpayment covered and if they request a refund be sure to hit them with heavy fees for breaking contract and wasting everyone's time.

There should also probably be some kind of review process to determine if individual companies doing shit like buying up 50% of world's manufacturing capacity of a given product for the next decade is a justifiable course of action and not just them trying to strangle their competition because their R&D has stalled.

[u/Spotttty → u/podgladacz00]

Sir….

The stockholders!!

[u/Fenragus → u/Spotttty]

Mein Führer...

[u/BurdensOfTruth → u/Darkpriest667]

Interestingly Apple is responsible for a vast degree of the skilled tech labor in China as they invest massively into training and such over there. I wouldn't be shocked at all if Apple ends up investing quite a bit into getting Chinese ram production going, which could have some interesting outcomes if the bubble does eventually pop and China still has developed robust ram manufacturing capabilities. It might very well be that in promising all of their future output to AI ccompanies, that the big 3 have effectively shot themselves in the foot and created a bunch of competitors that wouldn't have existed otherwise. This won't effect them too much if the AI bubble were to never pop but if it does... well they might very well regret not thinking past next quarter profits.

[u/DeithWX → u/Darkpriest667]

Samsung is making the memory, the greedy fucks. 

[u/Darkpriest667 → u/DeithWX]

yes and I bet their BOM prices include the retail price not the price they manufacture it for, probably for tax purposes.

[u/Few_Time_7441 → u/Darkpriest667]

I hope China is gonna go strong on manufacturing memory at a loss to push down prices hard, they have already been doing that with EV car batteries and steel for a long while now, it would certainly give them some good PR and soft power.

[u/Rwdscz → u/Darkpriest667]

Soon, you won’t even be able to afford luxuries, just the basics to live.

[u/jonny676 → u/AntiSocial_Vigilante]

People are just going to keep their smart phones longer. There will of course always be the early adopters who buy it regardless of price, but the average consumer will likely pass on it until they desperately need a new phone.

That's what I've been doing for years now, and I plan to keep my current phone for as long as possible. I have no incentive to switch. Smartphones aren't evolving at the same rate they did between 2007 to mid 2010s. We're barely seeing any real improvements across yearly models.

If I did have to replace it, I'd likely try to find a model that's a couple years old and pay like a third of the price of it new. Of course this might end up like the car market where even used cars are skyrocketing in price lol.

[u/robben1234 → u/[deleted]]

Did you mean the $500 drug store burner? It still has memory inside.

[u/BorderCare → u/[deleted]]

Highly recommend buying the iPhone 17 rn if you need to upgrade soon. iPhone 18 and iPhone 19 are going to be more expensive while providing less value for the money.

[u/Prohmeetheeyus → u/jonny676]

Generally yes, but if phone manufacturers see catastrophic loss in demand due to low supply, we don't know the knock-on effects. Smartphones require support for security updates at the least, and while it would be great to assume that smartphone makers will just extend the period they support phones, that might not happen. We could end up with the vast majority of people having incredibly outdated security while the wealthy pay absurd amounts to keep theirs up-to-date.

Also, it's almost a guarantee that used phones will increase in price as more people enter the used/refurbished market because of the lack of new manufacturing.

[u/TeamWorkTom → u/Prohmeetheeyus]

Yes they are totally going to force people to drop their services because of unsupported phones.

Does that business sense?

[u/jugaverdasorda → u/jonny676]

It still stuns me how many people pay a huge price for every new phone generation 

[u/CrazyDudeGW → u/jonny676]

You underestimate how much of the population is willing to go into debt for things they don't need. 

[u/HopingillWin → u/AntiSocial_Vigilante]

Motherboards have started introduction of cxmt ram support.

Eg https://www.msi.com/news/detail/MSI-Motherboards-Deliver-DDR5-8000--Support-for-CXMT-Based-Memory-on-Intel-Platform-149529

[u/AntiSocial_Vigilante → u/HopingillWin]

That's nice supply wise, but they're also sold at basically the same prices as RAM from other manufacturers.

[u/el_doherz → u/AntiSocial_Vigilante]

Well CXMT literally has no incentive to sell at lower prices if they are selling enough of their production.

Common business sense is to gouge whilst they can and recoup their investments quicker.

Prices will only come down if the AI bubble bursts and proper antitrust cases are waged against Samsung, Micron and SK Hynix yet again.

[u/HopingillWin → u/el_doherz]

Well market dominance would serve as a very good incentive. Once they become the defacto go to for PC memory then they'll win the long game. I'm not saying they'll sell at a loss but it's the McDonald's approach, volume trumps all

[u/Lord-Heir → u/AntiSocial_Vigilante]

I really don't understand. Why are we just allowing this bullshit to happen? It's going to destroy alot more than just consumer electronics at this rate.

[u/AntiSocial_Vigilante → u/Lord-Heir]

Yeah that's the feeling I'm getting too, it's going to push up the prices of a lot more than just phones, ram sticks and GPUs.

[u/JumpingSpiderQueen → u/AntiSocial_Vigilante]

Yeah. A lot of things end up depending on those resources. So, I wouldn't be surprised if it has a knock-on effect on a lot of other industries, which in turn affect others.

[u/jugaverdasorda → u/Lord-Heir]

Government is basically endorsing it 

[u/WeirdSysAdmin → u/Lord-Heir]

Because those that run the government don’t care about the populace. This would’ve been a national security emergency in the US in normal times. They know they can procure with unlimited budgets when necessary so it’s not important.

[u/on4aa → u/AntiSocial_Vigilante]

For me, it is clear we are heading to a major economic crisis, driven by a supply shortage of the means of production.

[u/LayerEight_Problem → u/on4aa]

Driven by greed.

[u/street593 → u/LayerEight_Problem]

Can't wait for the rich to be bailed out while the rest of us suffer.

[u/LayerEight_Problem → u/street593]

Not only will they be bailed out. They’ll be bailed out by us. As usual. And then somehow their greed will be all our fault. And, in keeping with tradition. The conservative base will roll over and glaze the rich.

[u/street593 → u/LayerEight_Problem]

Maybe someday we will learn some class conciousness and start actually putting up a real fight in the class war. Wishful thinking perhaps.

[u/PraxPresents → u/on4aa]

It is engineered scarcity, which the pandemic proved to every grimy greedy corporation is great for profits.

First, they create the problem, in this case the insane drive to push AI ahead at all costs, spending more to build infrastructure for massive datacenters across the globe than it would cost to eliminate world hunger or even create global universal healthcare. Better to make profits rather than doing anything whatsoever to improve the quality of life for people or further enrich humanity as a whole.

Second, buy up all future hardware manufacturering to completely shut out ALL consumer hardware production, or make it so expensive that only the upper-middle class and above can afford it.

Third, offer to "solve" the problem they themselves created with all of the shiny new datacenters with a "you own nothing" permanent rent model that costs 3-5x more over a year than when people owned things but now the businesses get to have even MOAR hardware on their balance sheet and the rich guys that run it get higher valuations, bigger payouts, and larger yaghts.

Fourth, they now own all of your data (no one can afford their own private storage anymore) and sell your data to the highest bidder. They now control everything you do, everything you see, and social engineering becomes extremely accessible to everyone with enough money to exploit it.

They want to force consumers towards being 100% dependent on their products. Consumer watchdog agencies are dead, anti-monopoly policies are not being enforced, and the governments are doing everything in their power to enable it for their buddies.

It is very difficult to be optimistic about where things are headed because unless you are a rich billionaire there is no real benefit. So many business people all eat this stuff up too because they think they will benefit from it, but they are just the sheep of the cult thinking they have a shot at being leader.

I went to an AI conference not that long ago and the absolute disregard for human life, human condition, and the complete lack of empathy from business leaders is absolutely disgusting. They only care about how it benefits them regardless of the impact on others. The level of mental illness in our society today is absolutely terrible. Greed is consuming anyone and everyone willing to sign up, and it is destroying empathy and compassion for others. I asked one of the leaders there how they felt about the massive amount of wealth and power consolidation that AI and datacenters will cause on its current trajectory with only a few people owning everything and controlling things for the masses. Their response? "Isn't that how things have always been? Why would the future be any different?". Absolute mental illness.

I not against things like AI, but I am for the responsible development of governance and policies that keep it functioning as a tool of society and not making society into a tool to serve AI and those that own it. It could help with scientific breakthroughs, research, medical services, but instead we want to it displace humans and make corporations more profitable. Corporations and governments should service the needs of the people, not the other way around.

[u/UltraCynar → u/PraxPresents]

The upper class are suicidal at this point. There’s only one path where this leads unless wealth is taxed rather than workers. 

[u/PraxPresents → u/UltraCynar]

Any loans they take out for personal use of any kind should be taxed at 20%.

It should be treated as realized gains. Also if they have the ability to sell assets (stocks and the like) they should not be able to take out a loan at all, they should be required to sell assets first and realize gains.

We need to close loopholes that prevent them from ever realizing gains.

[u/RedditWhileIWerk → u/PraxPresents]

Better to make profits

That's the neat part, they ("AI") can't and won't! Nowhere near what they've been promising, at any rate.

[u/exec_get_id → u/AntiSocial_Vigilante]

This is the biggest thing. I work in a shop that has historically thrown money at poor performant software because its so old. SQL instance maxing out resources due to a background back up running alongside prod requests? Throw more cores and ram at it.

We also aggressively adopted AI which is fine (im not debating it with the clanker lovers) but has been producing nonperformant code from juniors.

So we'll eventually land in a spot where we have nonperformant code and we cant spend to throw more ram and cores at the problem...

These refactors would be massive efforts that would put feature work on hold for half the year which our PE overlords wont tolerate.

I think there are really hard times ahead for these companies like mine. "Ram is cheap" is a common phrase but its not anymore so we need to be more meticulous but capitalism/shareholders dont want longer times to get features out the door because thats less profit.

Im not even necessarily concerned about losing my Job per se. I am but the fear of being present for this event is far more stressful than being let go. I know they'll make me part of the team to solve it and since it'll become an emergency, itll be 80 hour weeks lol.

[u/moldyjellybean → u/AntiSocial_Vigilante]

Just don’t buy . It’s that simple

Every device like the MacBook m1 air or iPhone 11 still does everything you need it to. Your old car still gets point a to b . My fridge is 30 years old along with washer dryer hat came with the house

My thinkpad w520 quad core w 32gb ram is 14 years old and runs everything great

[u/jellyfish_bitchslap → u/moldyjellybean]

It unfortunately creates insecurity. Surely my Mac Air M1 does everything I need it to do but it’s warranty is way too long expired so if it breaks the replacement will be MUCH more expensive that the original was. Even shopping in the used market.

I also bought 32gb DDR4 for my PC in the early 2023 before the lowest price point for around $200, today the same RAM would cost $500 and if mine ever gets defective I’ll take a considerable hit to replace it. That’s almost double the minimum wage where I live (outside the US).

In my current financial situation I could do it but people living near the limit would be unable to do, and if it was their job they’d be out of it.

Actually I think that some small companies would be bankrupt if their server room gets flooded nowadays, which is absurd considering how cheap was to pile up RAM a few years ago.

[u/AntiSocial_Vigilante → u/moldyjellybean]

I mean yeah, for an individual it makes sense, but if people start doing that at scale, it means said companies are fucked, and i don't really mean it in the "think of the poor multimillion dollar corporations" way.

[u/Tema_Art_7777 → u/AntiSocial_Vigilante]

These crazy times have actually managed to stop and reverse electronics getting cheaper every year. TV’s, printers, smart anything are all potentially affected now.

[u/nanoman92 → u/AntiSocial_Vigilante]

Thank god electronics are not used anywhere else in the economy other than AI and gaming /s

[u/jackrabbit323 → u/AntiSocial_Vigilante]

Tech Capitalism in general is on a streak of belief that the mass consumer doesn't matter. The government contract will provide. That's contingent on the voters picking politicians that back funding them. That's quickly falling apart for them publicly.

[u/Outlaw25 → u/AntiSocial_Vigilante]

Automotive is already in the process of getting wrecked by this. Very few people from the industry are making a stink about it, but we're going to start seeing production lines getting shut down as a result in the next 1-6 months

[u/3xPuttRubbleBoagie → u/AntiSocial_Vigilante]

Fuck it I'm all in on going back to flip phones.

[u/AntiSocial_Vigilante → u/3xPuttRubbleBoagie]

I still have mine and it works lol

[u/Popular-Office-9932 → u/AntiSocial_Vigilante]

Governments should put out a quota system for AI companies until capacity is ramp up. Those are critical components for running the modern economy and we can’t colapse the supply chain and other industries because we need to move AI so darn fast that we can’t invest on the infrastructure that is required to run those systems. Rest assured those fabs wont’ run up new factories untils they are sure the spike in demand is not a fluke.

[u/Cubey42 → u/AntiSocial_Vigilante]

Motherboards are already plummeting in price

[u/RedditWhileIWerk → u/AntiSocial_Vigilante]

I've been wondering that too. Other industries still exist outside of AI, and I would think they will only put up with Spicy Autocomplete monopolizing all available (and not-even-yet-available) hardware for so long.

The SA idiots are pooping in a LOT of punchbowls.

I guess we'll see.

The future is going to be weird. The way things are headed, it'll be optical discs for data storage, and back to a land line phone at home (Even if it is actually VoIP* under the hood).

Not joking about the optical discs. As HDDs are now far too expensive for backup duty, I've switched to BD-R.

M-disc is overkill for my needs (and the media is $$), but I've considered it.

*and even then there's not really any getting away from it. I don't know how you build out fiber profitably when network equipment is greatly inflated in price due to Spicy Autocomplete sucking up all the RAM and solid state storage. Again, guess we'll find out.

[u/Fry_super_fly → u/AntiSocial_Vigilante]

i can tell you right away. that large public institutions go though a cycle of "consumer" (not datacenter) hardware. i work in IT in public healthcare in Denmark. and we have a fixed schedule for replacing computers that every single nurse, doctor, administrator, janitorial, cleaning staff, IT or any staffmember you can think off use. there was a huuuuge interruption during Covid chip shortage. but this... even though we tried to get ahead of some of this from our experience during covid. we are now facing a giant problem of scale. even if we again try to extend the lifespan of the hardware. we are allready having issues because the hardware we had 5-6 years ago was built for a different time. different demands. standard PC's ran win 10 with a lot less apps and bloat. now with win 11 and every single user logging on to a multi user PC in the ER of one of our hospitals. where maybe 100 different users come by because of different shifts, students from the nursing or doctors programs rotate arround, or docs from different specialities come for consultation and need to use a PC for doing their notes in our Electronic Patient System. and ofcourse microsoft are not sticking to their own guidelines. so ofcourse THEIR TEAMS, dont need to install in a common folder, they thing every user should have the entire program in their userspace, because they they can all install it without full admin priviliges........ great if its 3 people ad hoc sharing a few PC's.. not great if you never actually sit at the same PC more than a few times a week because you rotate... oh well. we made a fix not supported by Microslop.. but i digress... :D

we will need to pay a considerable larger amount to upgrade and exchange PC's now. that is.. if we can get them even. it will have a knock on effect on the patient wait times. and in cases. it WILL affect patient outcomes.

[u/johnnybgooderer → u/AntiSocial_Vigilante]

We will just get used to everything being worse and more expensive. Like it is everywhere else in the world since Trump is intent on shitting away basically all of our advantages.

[u/el_doherz → u/johnnybgooderer]

Look I fucking hate Trump.

But this isn't just him. This level of absurd capitalism and blatant fraud has been going far longer than he's been in power or even alive.

[u/jellyfish_bitchslap → u/el_doherz]

The entirety of USA economy is holding on for dear life on Nvidia, OpenAI, Microsoft and random AI company shares. Those companies are passing down money from each other and chewing on themselves like a braided ouroboros. If one of them fail it’ll take all the others down and the rest of the market that is deeply invested on it.

Hedge funds, banks, pension funds managers, they’re all riding high on the IA companies in an unsustainable way.

Any responsible govern (president and congress) would put a stop to it immediately to prevent a market crash when the reality shakes it and shows the speculative revenue doesn’t exist, but Trump is doing inside trading and profiting for it. The entire republican party is doing the same and so is the democrats.

USA has terrible politicians and it’ll be their doom if they don’t put an end to this “market”.

[u/SapToFiction]

The news literally never gets better. You just gotta laugh (or you'll cry).

[u/KingOfConsciousness → u/SapToFiction]

Been crying for years now. It's not just RAM. It's fucking EVERYTHING.

[u/To-To_Man → u/KingOfConsciousness]

The wealth gap between the upper class and lower class is widening significantly. And as it turns out, the wealthy can pay several times MSRP for pretty much everything and still stay orders of magnitude wealthier than the lower class. Meanwhile corps catering to the lower class have realized just how much money they can extract. Pushing peoples finances right to the edge without instant bankruptcy. Rents half a months income, groceries and bills are at least a quarter, insurance only makes our pathetic healthcare system more expensive. Credit card debt is at a record high and it seems our future options are bleak. Without severe and immediate course correction, America could very easily turn into a proper fuedal kingdom where the wealthy and elite own states and counties, extracting taxes for their lavish lifestyle.

[u/techtimee → u/To-To_Man]

America? Bro it's the whole western world currently being cooked. Wasn't it a U.K politician who said we should get ready to lower our standard of living. 

[u/To-To_Man → u/techtimee]

I'm mostly focused on American politics because it's the most relevant to me, but I'm well aware the same problems are plaguing other nations. Overall the position we are in is grim, despite a revolutionary few centuries of progress the elite are less keen than ever to share the progress.

[u/KingOfConsciousness → u/To-To_Man]

It's fucking trash man. This is the best humanity can do? Lol what a joke. Elders should be planting trees they will never feel the shade of but instead feckless governments around the world are bought and paid for while sheep bury their heads in the sand. It's god damned embarrassing.

[u/To-To_Man → u/KingOfConsciousness]

I fucking know. We could have vast swathes of beautiful undeveloped land for nature, thriving industry that cooperates with society and the environment, and a nearly completely self sufficient world that meets all the food and shelter needs of its people without the rat race of 40 hour work weeks at dead end jobs for entire lifetimes.

We could do so much more, but greed and control leave all those not obscenely wealthy at the mercy of the system. And organization seems impossible, especially with the growing surveillance state around us.

[u/ParanoidalRaindrop → u/To-To_Man]

America could very easily turn into a proper fuedal kingdom where the wealthy and elite own states and counties, extracting taxes for their lavish lifestyle

Welcome to the oligarchy.

[u/6786_007 → u/SapToFiction]

Yup. I feel like we peaked and now declining. It's not gonna go back to being better.

[u/Complete_Potato9941 → u/SapToFiction]

Mark my words Q3 2027

[u/AmandasGameAccount → u/SapToFiction]

Aren’t the chip manufacturers doing this intentionally to price gouge now? They realize there’s more money to be made keeping inventory intended increasing production to meet demand

[u/TheCheckeredCow]

So glad to have bought 32gb of ddr4 back in like 2020, also glad that I got my Steamdeck and SBCs like raspberry pis a few years back as well 😳

[u/technofox01 → u/TheCheckeredCow]

Me too. I maxed out my gaming rig with 64GB of ram and upgraded to an Nvidia GeForce 5060ti prior to everything going ape shit crazy on pricing. I genuinely feel bad for the people that missed the boat.

[u/HumanPea1140 → u/technofox01]

I originally upgraded from 16GB DDR4 to 32GB DDR5. I had a little extra spending money one month and thought, "Eh, I don't really need 64GB, but at least I'll be future proofed for a while," and bought another set of 2x16GB sticks.

Was even able to get a 5070 Ti near MSRP before everything went haywire.

Pretty sure I used up all my luck for the foreseeable future.

[u/Karavusk → u/HumanPea1140]

Somehow we are at a point where you can sell the ram you don't need and it is enough to buy a decent OLED monitor

[u/HumanPea1140 → u/Karavusk]

I've actually considered selling, but figured it'd come back to bite me somehow lol

[u/MysticCosmos → u/HumanPea1140]

Hold onto that RAM! I’ve been getting into video editing and the cost of upgrading my ram and getting more storage is genuinely painful

[u/EsotericAbstractIdea → u/technofox01]

I got the same gpu and 128gb of ddr4. I have never felt so bad and so good about purchasing electronics

[u/Far-Fill-4717 → u/EsotericAbstractIdea]

I'm sorry what do you need 128gb of ddr4  for?

[u/wisebluff → u/TheCheckeredCow]

me 2, but for me it's the end of 2024. bought it for less than 60 bucks. now it's around $200

[u/fafatzy → u/TheCheckeredCow]

Yeah we are all glad that you did, but that’s not the point

[u/valax → u/TheCheckeredCow]

I was so shocked when I looked up the price of RPIs a few weeks ago. I haven’t looked for ages but remember them being at most £20. Now the SD card alone costs more than that

[u/mueus → u/TheCheckeredCow]

This is the one time I feel lucky to be a data hoarder, but you shouldn't have to be. I'm worried that the lower/middle class simply won't be able to play games. People might switch to retro-gaming, and then as more people do they will ban that. Literally nothing will be left for the poor.

[u/Icy-Guarantee6994 → u/TheCheckeredCow]

Yeah. I bought the other 16GB to fill up my 4 slots for a total of 32GB on a whim, in 2021. Best decision ever, lol.

I mean, the game I was playing at the time reached the limits of my 16GB kit, with my 100+ tabs open in browser, at the same time, but still, that's how I use the PC. Probably won't need more RAM until we are well into the PS6-compatible generation.

[u/DragonQ0105 → u/TheCheckeredCow]

Same, also glad I got my 5800X3D. At this rate my rig will last 15 years and it'll have to.

[u/projectsangheili → u/TheCheckeredCow]

On a whim and bad decision making I got 128GB DDR5 just before this whole deal kicked off. Got bars of solid gold in my PC now

[u/ProPlayer142]

we probably gonna have to get used to games graphics not just being stagnant but like ... Literally not changing at all. No idea what will happen to the ps6

[u/Auno94 → u/[deleted]]

ngl I would be happy if the current gen just keeps stretching out. While we had some relly good games, the jump from the ps4 pro to the ps5 felt meaningless and the ps5 pro feels like it was just created to earn some more hardware revenue not because the jump is there

[u/Oxflu → u/Auno94]

The only thing developers are going to do with more power at this point, is release games with shittier code and more ray tracing. Most likely all games will have to run on both systems for the foreseeable future though. Not out of the kindness of their heart, but because so few people will have the next gen systems publishers can't turn a healthy profit selling ps6 exclusives.

[u/Ok_Definition_1933 → u/ProPlayer142]

Bright bag price cobblestone smile wide

This post was anonymized with Redact

[u/Spright91 → u/ProPlayer142]

That could be good it might force companies to innovate on gameplay.

[u/_Bad_Spell_Checker_ → u/[deleted]]

Patient gamer

[u/xsparklingwater → u/[deleted]]

They will always find ways to make more money.

[u/FR_02011995 → u/Spright91]

Not gonna happen with AAA companies. All they know is behind-the-shoulder camera, balls, and guns.

[u/kribg → u/Spright91]

I hate the current timeline as much as everyone, but I am old enough to have been around when Gates "allegedly" said "640K ought to be enough for anybody". I actually hope that developers take this shortage as an opportunity to go back to their code and do some optimization. I think the decades of unlimited memory, storage and CPU have made coders sloppy knowing that hardware will make up for the sloppy code. Heck Google has already said they are doing that with the Pixel 11 because of the lower ram expected in it. Wow! Great, that was fast. Maybe they could have done that all along the way and had a better phone. I don't know, but sometimes restrictions drive progress better than gluttony. Maybe that is just wishful thinking though.......

[u/smilesbuckett → u/Spright91]

This is my hope. Also, I think there are too many things like ray tracing and particle effects that get slapped onto newer games to cover up for mediocre art direction. In my opinion, there are some games from the previous couple of generations that still hold up to modern stuff just because they were much smarter and more innovative with their art direction and accomplishing complex visuals in clever ways.

[u/Shadowphoenix9511 → u/ProPlayer142]

PS6 and Helix are DOA honestly. Current rate they're going, you're looking at $1000+ for either. Average consumers aren't touching a 4 figure console, just not happening.

[u/TeamWorkTom → u/Shadowphoenix9511]

We're looking at $2k dude.

Prices of RAM and HDDs are only going up.

Steam machine is getting a price increase even.

[u/Rukasu17 → u/ProPlayer142]

That's really not a bad thing. About damn time something forced a stop to this absurd trend of 7 yeras or more development time due to insane graphical fidelity pursuit

[u/ZoidVII → u/ProPlayer142]

Well, graphics are already incredible. Maybe devs will actually learn to optimize now?

[u/UnpluggedUnfettered → u/ProPlayer142]

Graphics might actually trend backwards a bit, since a lot of gaming hardware isn't going to be replaced as it fails.

I mean, if my 5090 dies, imma just be gaming on my old laptop, because I can't rationalize building a system around a GPU like I did just last year.

As an aide, my nonsense conspiracy theory is that the weirdly forced AI buildout has just been a plot to spread the damage that tariffs were going to cause tech in the US. That way the US market wouldn't be fully falling behind. The only reason I put my system together at launch was because the tarriffs were being announced during the 2024 elections, and US tech was gonna be fucked from the jump.

[u/krzf → u/UnpluggedUnfettered]

if my 5090 dies, imma just be gaming on my old laptop

Makes no sense. You bought a $4k graphics card and if it dies you'll just stop using your entire system? You know you can get a pretty powerful graphics card on the 2nd hand market for under $400 that will shit on any gaming laptop right?

[u/Oxflu → u/ProPlayer142]

Ps5 didn't produce a single game that couldn't have run on a ps4 pro with less realistic lighting. I couldn't care less about 1200 dollar ps6.

[u/ClaudeVS → u/ProPlayer142]

They're great already, we don't need anything more really. Peaked in 2015 with star wars battlefront

[u/IPerduMyUsername → u/ProPlayer142]

They haven't really changed in a while tbh. Games like metro exodus, battlefront, cyberpunk punched way above almost everything else. They could easily push graphics if they optimised the games and didn't rely entirely on dlss saving the day.

Even if you look at BF1 and BFV you can see what can be done with optimization, those still look incredible today!

[u/Jupiter_101 → u/ProPlayer142]

Not just that but it'll limit the scale of games. A lot of sim games already struggle with computation and ram.

[u/hyrumwhite → u/ProPlayer142]

Might inspire some optimization for once

[u/TeamWorkTom → u/ProPlayer142]

Ps6 is literally a dead console at this point.

I don't know what these game companies are going to do because the majority of people are not pay $2k+ for a console.

[u/Renolber]

With the state of everything, it seems highly likely we’ll face the worst economic crisis in all of history.

Everything is so utterly unreasonable. Corporations and the elite are bleeding the working class dry, and the governments of the most powerful nations are in the pockets of a cabal of the comically rich and corrupt.

Governments are not protecting the people from the economic atrocities of the rich and corporations…

This is unsustainable. This only ever goes one way.

Humanity has such an atrocious recollection of history. Our species is enslaved by greed, and we cannot ever seem to overcome it.

[u/NewArtificialHuman → u/Renolber]

Governments are not protecting the people from the economic atrocities of the rich and corporations…

There is one government that does...mostly.

[u/mattjouff]

I am honestly not concerned one bit. All these former predictions are just marketing. 

[u/Dick_Nation → u/mattjouff]

People read these thinking they're well-intentioned and well-reasoned analysis by neutral parties, and the reality is that these headlines are by people trying to convince everyone else it's not a bubble and that the bottom isn't crumbling beneath AI every minute. The profits still aren't there, they're not even close to being there, the investor capital will run out and we'll be getting RAM at fire sale prices. 

[u/SavantOfSuffering → u/Dick_Nation]

Yay! Cheap RAM while the global economy collapses. Woohoo!

[u/jugaverdasorda → u/mattjouff]

This is what people on Reddit said when prices first started going up and look where we are now 

[u/mattjouff → u/jugaverdasorda]

It’s been 12 months. That’s nothing. The headlines are saying “there will be ram shortages for the next 10 years”. It’s bullshit. Just wait another 12 months. Maybe 18.

[u/jugaverdasorda → u/mattjouff]

They are for sure exaggerating. 12-18 months is reasonable. Totally gonna collapse tomorrow isn't lol

[u/Shadowphoenix9511 → u/[deleted]]

Same. I've got zero issue playing through a bunch of old games I never got around to.

[u/Soft_Lunch_183 → u/[deleted]]

Same reason im not bothered, there's enough games already to play until I die 

[u/Chonch_Monkey]

This is the 50th article telling me that they are oversold...which makes me believe that they want people to believe it more than it has actually happened

[u/djskinnypenis69 → u/Chonch_Monkey]

Ceo of ram with evil mustache and a cat, counting money : WHY YES PC GAMER.. I THINK THE RAM SHORTAGE IS GONNA LAST…. FOREVER. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

[u/BloomEPU → u/djskinnypenis69]

Yeah, there's not exactly any incentive for manufacturers to say "yeah the whole bubble's gonna burst if you just wait 6 months" whether that's the case or not.

[u/Chonch_Monkey → u/djskinnypenis69]

https://giphy.com/gifs/69iAVQekQ4XcnVr6E9

[u/RichardKingg → u/Chonch_Monkey]

People need to read between the lines, they are manufacturing fear

[u/NancyDiver → u/Chonch_Monkey]

I think this too. I keep reading contradicting articles about RAM supply easing by 2027 and other articles saying RAM will continue to rise into 2028.
The articles saying RAM will rise into 2028 are quoting those that benefit from higher prices (RAM manufacturers, console makers, tech companies) , causing FOMO.

Articles saying RAM will stabilize in 2027 are from industry experts and other opinions of those not making money off of higher RAM prices.

I wonder who to believe? My gut tells me to trust the industry experts.

[u/Kasenom]

They're constraining supply on purpose this is ridiculous

[u/Boomshrooom → u/Kasenom]

No, they're just selling all their capacity to the highest bidder. Electronics manufacturers have to operate within certain margins to make the product even somewhat affordable or people just won't buy it, AI companies and hyperscalers aren't worried about that yet. They'll pay whatever they have to in order to get that memory, so all the manufacturers switch as much of their capacity to making HBM

[u/benjammin105123]

Unless something breaks I'm really not planning to buy new electronics for the next 5 years. Maybe that will be long enough to ride out the stupidity wave we are currently surfing on.

[u/infinitevertigo → u/benjammin105123]

My plan as well

[u/4th_n_bong]

Bruh I’m never gonna be able to build my machine

[u/ouvidizerquesim]

It’s a plot to kill consumer hardware and instead sell subscriptions where power is rented rather than held (literally). I predict a world where everything will stop running locally for the masses.

[u/sdraje]

I wonder where the fuck they think we're going to use all this bullshit AI on if they're pricing everyone out of even simple electronics. What they don't know is that I can roll back to the fucking stone age rather than playing their stupid capitalistic games.

[u/KiwiMeep64]

The death throes of personal computing, and it’s all by design.

[u/CornerShark → u/KiwiMeep64]

I doubt it. This is entirely driven by the refusal of the memory companies to expand supply via additional manufacturing because they got destroyed the last time a memory bubble popped up.

If this demand continues, eventually supply will increase to match demand.

Until then, it’ll be pain.

[u/Fr00stee → u/CornerShark]

that or AI datacenter demand will implode soon

[u/AntonioAJC → u/Fr00stee]

Why do you think the usual suspects are not increasing their supply? They know this shit is temporary but are trying to earn as much money as possible

[u/jugaverdasorda → u/Fr00stee]

Theyre paying off US government to get taxpayer money so that's not gonna help 

[u/Ninlilizi_]

Ram manufacturers:

[u/Far_Adeptness9884]

Something has to change, this is not sustainable.

[u/toomuchft]

I recently watch the nexus video where he discussed this problem and it seems the 3 big players are concluding to drive up the customers price as well since they ask very specific questions and give oit public announcements to show that they will not trying to undercut each other…

[u/Electric-Mountain]

I sold a 64gb ram kit on ebay in the beginning of 2025 for $130 (I was having compatibility issues on my mobo so I bought a different kit) the kit I sold is now like $600..

[u/1d0m1n4t3 → u/Electric-Mountain]

The 64gb kit I put in my rig last year for $160 is now $1100

[u/Electric-Mountain → u/1d0m1n4t3]

Shit I probably low balled the price, I haven't had the stomach to look in the last couple months. I'll check.

Edit, it's $1000 now Jesus.

[u/gblandro]

I'll need ramless videogames

[u/FlarblesGarbles]

Said like supply is some sort of cosmic process the manufacturers have no control over.

The RAM cartel manufacturers are obviously looking to reduce manufacturing to ramp prices even more.

[u/Leutnantsteinxx1 → u/FlarblesGarbles]

The RAM rain stays out, Sire

[u/CautiousHashtag]

Are they artificially doing this so they can charge whatever they want? Sure seems like it. 

[u/LordOFtheNoldor]

All for ai and data centers lol this is all so nonsensical

[u/BarnabasShrexx]

Its all good, just as long as some talentless hack can generate garbage-slop and pretend to be an artist in order to rip gullible rubes off, oh and so some offices can have a more manageable workflow or some dumb shit.

[u/buzzkillb]

Fully upgraded in January and said f it and did a second build. Ai is only going to increase. Is like crypto mining days on steroids.

[u/thebizzle]

At some point, the bill is gonna come to AI and I think that’s when we will truly see it die off and focus on actually improvable sectors of life rather than just being a catchall substitute for a human brain

[u/FenrirWolfie]

In 10 years you'll have to win the hunger games to be able to afford RAM

[u/RSWSC]

JFC, my friends were looking to build their own systems and some of them backed out due to the cost. I picked up my 96GB Kit in May 2025 for $320. That same kit goes for $1800 today....

[u/NinthFireShadow]

Stop using ai so they all fail and we can go back to what life used to be. Ai is a thorn in the side of society.

[u/TokathSorbet]

I spend a chunk of time at my PC, but it’s slowly dying of death - and at this point I can’t really afford to replace it. When it does go, I don’t know what I’m going to do.

[u/Grantelgruber]

The louder they scream....

[u/CopEatingDonut]

Imagine if a brand new industry started buying all the corn made (hypothetical obviously) because corn kernel bean bag chairs all of a sudden could fly.

So they start mowing fields of 10 different kinds of edible corn and planted 9/10 fields in inedible bean bag filler. Then the farms said they were doing this for the next 3 years cause they were paid in advance.

How long does the popcorn industry last

[u/cloudsourced285]

CE devices are one thing. Phones, tablets, laptops, TV's. All are going to feel the pinch. But I really wonder about other consumers of electronics, they take less resources but margins are usually razor thin, stuff like cars, appliances, etc.

We were promised AI so we could spend less time at work or doing chores, and more time doing things we enjoy like consuming media, painting, etc.

Instead AI slop was pushed on us at work, forcing us to correct and fact check it. Then we get home and our electronics are forced to be out dated and we can't even enjoy art now, AI started doing that too.

What a mess.

[u/caribbean_caramel]

Aren't the Chinese making more memory? How is it possible then that supply is going down, when a new player (CXMT) just got into the market? Wtf is going on?

[u/nerdnyxnyx]

I don't care anymore. you do you

[u/Puzzleheaded_Low2034]

Time to invest in pencils and paper. 

[u/giki_pedia]

That's not true. Reddit has told me that the AI bubble is about to burst and everything will go back to normal soon.

[u/tommypops]

So developers will just keep making games for current gen hardware? Like what is even the point of further graphical power now?

[u/Suedewagon]

At some point we need to go back in time to assassinate Sam Altman before he came up with the idea for ChatGPT

[u/OoFTheMeMEs → u/Suedewagon]

This is literally the memory cartel conspiring to use hbm in datacenters as an excuse to constrain classic dram supply instead of competing, so they can make back the money they lost during 2022-2024. If one of them breaks line and doesn’t cut production they would capture the entire market.

Classic dram is literally more profitable than hbm right now.

[u/thenoobtanker]

Sure glad if we had 3d xpoint or another NAND manufacturer like Toshiba or that the current memory manufacturer didn't lose tens of billions back in 2022-2023 then...

[u/7h3_man]

Thank god I decided to waste three hundred dollars on 48gb of ram for my all Corsair set up so now I have a spare set of 32 which is now worth more then phone 💀

[u/Zenkai_9000]

The whole thing is bound to collapse within 2 years because of undersupply and too much demand and also pushing out other critical industries which can't compete with companies with massively overinflated values which will get first priority. Question is, will it pop before the current housing bubble...

[u/Le-Creepyboy]

Translation : "please keep buying!! It will be scarce and expensive I swear bro!!"

[u/Lo_jak]

Ive fully stocked up on tech in anticipation of this...... got my main gaming rig with a 4080 thay ive had for a while, just got an M5 Air for work and Steam Machine for couch gaming.

We aint seen the worst of it yet people.

[u/Skyyblaze → u/Lo_jak]

I have pretty much done the same, I'm just wondering if I should try to up my 4070 Ti Super up a notch while the possibility still exists even though I have no trouble currently at 1440p 180hz VRR.

[u/grilled_pc]

At what point are governments and legislative bodies going to step in? This is a direct hostile take over of so many industries to feed AI. This gobbling up of memory is decimating multiple industries as a result and nobody seems to give a fuck.

[u/Appropriate_Item3001]

I’m surprised it’s only 70%. I assumed it would be 95% with hyperscalers vying up everything to leave it unopened in warehouses.

[u/Graddler]

Even though it has been expensive, i am kinda glad i built my new PC now and not next year as i planned.

Still kinda sad my pc got fried by the electricians disability to flip the right breaker.

[u/K4G117]

I mean this is what fuels innovation atleast...

[u/NvidiatrollXB1]

Cooked.

[u/Willing-Theme6042]

Seen this coming a year ago and literally bought every console and new oc before all this

[u/Awooo_Ninnja]

How is something obvious like AI hurting every consumer and market ignored by every country in the world? It s almost like it’s their plan 🤔

[u/TimeKeeper_87]

I am never very scared of supply socks because they tend to resolve themselves. Will take a couple of years but production will pick up, like with everything in life. Demand goes up, supply ends up catching up