Then and now ...

[Trunk Monkey]

I heard RAM is now ridiculously expensive so I looked up what I have.

Bought this in June of 2024:



It's now going for:



Anyone else have any PC horror stories? Anyone else seeing this?

 

[theterminator93]

I had some clients I recommended new servers to this FY. One "forgot" to put it in their budget, and it was mostly a proactive suggestion so I told them if necessary it would be OK to wait a year.

Next year, when I give them pricing, they'll wish they'd bought it this year...

 

[Grog6]

Memory always does this, as it changes types.
I bought a 32-bit rambus machine in ~'02
A 1 mb 32bit module was ~$350. listed.
I never was actually buy one; complete unobtanium.
Within a year, ddr dram was $100/GB The market moved on.
First memory I bought was edo dram @ $50/MB.
I bought 4x4MB sticks, for $800. For an 11 MHz 8088 processor,on an '88 pc clone, lol.

At 400 bux, it's 32000x cheaper than the xt system I had.32Gb is $160k@50/MB,lol.

 

[Kenz]

We can thank to the AI server farms for the ram takeover; this is the second stage in the push/evolution of cloud computing. The complete changeover is coming sooner than we think and is somewhat already here. Everything will be a pay monthly service that grants access to processing power. IMO home computers and all modern tech will be terminals and processing/rendering is done remotely at the farms.


My recent DDR4 ram purchase in August, $99...



Now $240...

 

[Grog6]

I last bought ddr3 8GB sticks for $50, with the cheap x79 mobo with m2 ddr tech. I have a 20 core Xeon for that mobo.

 

[Irv]

This is due to OpenAI securing 40% of the world's supply of DRAM. It isn't going to get better anytime soon. Another reason why, as a consumer, I hate the AI fad.

RAM is going to AI: OpenAI has secured up to 40% of the market. — Global CIO

Reporting on the business of technology, transformation, cybersecurity, data analytics and cloud computing, artificial intelligence.

globalcio.com

I moved on this last year at around this time because I saw something else coming, which was the tariffs of the incoming administration.



Now, in addition to being out of stock:

 

[Trunk Monkey]

This is due to OpenAI securing 40% of the world's supply of DRAM. It isn't going to get better anytime soon. Another reason why, as a consumer, I hate the AI fad.

RAM is going to AI: OpenAI has secured up to 40% of the market. — Global CIO

Reporting on the business of technology, transformation, cybersecurity, data analytics and cloud computing, artificial intelligence.

globalcio.com

I moved on this last year at around this time because I saw something else coming, which was the tariffs of the incoming administration.

View attachment 15850

Now, in addition to being out of stock:

View attachment 15851

Good call to move on this last year.

I don't believe the current AI fervor is exactly a fad. It's a race between companies, nations, and platforms to gain durable advantages (moats) in productivity, intelligence, and control over critical infrastructure and we're caught in the wash. AI compounds — early gains lead to better models, more data, more capital, and faster iteration—so falling behind is costly and hard to recover from, hence the heavy investment in it. Unfortunately, consumers are left on the sideline. It reminds me of the supply/demand issues that arose around graphics cards as everyone was hoarding them to mine bitcoins.

 

[XR7-4.6]

Good call to move on this last year.

I don't believe the current AI fervor is exactly a fad. It's a race between companies, nations, and platforms to gain durable advantages (moats) in productivity, intelligence, and control over critical infrastructure and we're caught in the wash. AI compounds — early gains lead to better models, more data, more capital, and faster iteration—so falling behind is costly and hard to recover from, hence the heavy investment in it. Unfortunately, consumers are left on the sideline. It reminds me of the supply/demand issues that arose around graphics cards as everyone was hoarding them to mine bitcoins.

Not a fad, a bubble. I’d say the stark difference between bitcoin and AI is motive; bitcoin is individuals pursuing a get rich quick scheme, AI is multinational corporations pursuing a get richer quicker scheme for the people at the top.

Productivity = fire swaths of the workforce eating into profits

Intellegence = monitor everybody embittered by the mass unemployment

Control your over critical infrastructure = control phones, tablets even vehicles(with connectivity) “owned” by the subjects to censor or disable to prevent potential bad acts against our tech overlords in retaliation.

Moat is an interesting word to use, an obstacle around a castle to prevent the Lords of the kingdom from being ransacked by its subjects…. Sounds about right…

 

[Irv]

I initially wrote "AI bubble" before deleting "bubble" and changing it to "fad" because I don't think the pricing itself is a bubble. That seems to be a convenient excuse to normalize high prices going forward like COVID. The "fad" part is attaching those two letters in our alphabet to any product or industry sector as an excuse to raise prices 100+%. Now excuse me while I figure out how to market AI toilet paper and AI bottled water. One thing I know for sure is that I'm calling the water Brawndo.

So AI itself isn't a fad, or at least the theory of it isn't. Rather, it's the guise in which a select few corporations are printing money and enriching themselves at the cost of everyone else, especially those who have to suffer the consequences in their surrounding environment such as dwindling clean water supplies, enormous strain on the power grid, and worst of all if you're unlucky, the noise pollution from being unfortunate enough to live near the data centers.

All the other crap that these tech leaders like Jensen Huang, Sam Altman, and others promote is empty blather designed to con government leaders into subsidizing their plans to enrich themselves. And really, all you need to do as a tech CEO to embezzle money from our government is tell the 79-year-old president who can barely spell "AI" that China is coming.

AI isn't all bad. I could share my theories on that in another post. However, the way it's being leveraged today as the vehicle and resource vacuum to benefit tech leaders and only tech leaders is a bubble and a grift on the rest of the world that isn't part of their inner circle.

 

[Kenz]

The "fad" part is attaching two vowels in our alphabet to any product or industry sector as an excuse to raise prices 100+%. Now excuse me while I figure out how to market AI toilet paper and AI bottled water.

I was actually about to post almost the same thought. "AI" is on just about product these days. It was "HD" a while back

Gamers Nexus is a great channel to keep up to date. Their Nvidia banned GPU video was a good watch

 

[Trunk Monkey]

I was actually about to post almost the same thought. "AI" is on just about product these days. It was "HD" a while back

Gamers Nexus is a great channel to keep up to date. Their Nvidia banned GPU video was a good watch

I know! It's as bad as "Smart" everything where they're adding Bluetooth connectivity to everything from refrigerators to toothbrushes.

 

[theterminator93]

"You can monitor your brushing habits and get personalized recommendations on improving your oral hygiene!" and unsolicited emails from our sponsors who now also know your dental habits

 

[Grog6]

destination void 1966
The Two Faces of Tomorrow 1979
Code of the lifemaker 1980

Then we get to the movies, which end badly for humanity.
The driver behind this are the idiotic executives, who want their machine slaves to put expensive and argumentative humans out of work. It will never work as they think.

 

[Trunk Monkey]