I was supposed to get a device with 64 gigs of RAM later this year. I just got an email telling me that due to the RAM shortage they’ve cancelled the 64 gig version.
What I’m surprised hasn’t happened yet is RAM ICs being recycled at the retail level. As in, you could bring in an old laptop or phone with 32GB of soldered RAM and it would be desoldered and sold for cash or possibly even soldered into a new device you buy from that retailer.
I wonder how close we are to that business model arriving.
How many 16k 4116 RAM chips can your laptop handle?
4116s are DIPs. I’d de desolder those myself for installation into my Intel 8088 luggable.
I want to be there when you set that up on the table at your next departmental meeting.
32GB of RAM from old hardware might as well be trash compared to 32GB of RAM made today.
What good is all that (slow) RAM if you’re stuck with an equally slow CPU?
Its not an equally slow CPU. These boards support Xeon CPUs that first launched 11 years after DDR3.
The implication is that there are users needing large RAM footprints that aren’t CPU bound. The hit in performance on the RAM isn’t significant enough to justify spending orders of magnitude more for modern DDR5 which is in short supply.
In computing history there’s precedent for this. Amiga computers had a small amount of “Fast RAM” which was extremely expensive, but the CPU could address a second bank of “Chip RAM” which was significantly slower but much much cheaper.
We could see this idea return in modern computers.
MY CLASSIC SCI-FI SOFT COVER BOOKS!!??!1
Edit: MY CLASSIC CONSOLE COLLECTION?!
The things I love the most don’t have RAM, or I already have them 🤷
Back in my day, we downloaded ram. 8GB at a time.
Which was used to then download a car.
I believe that’s the plan for the future, too. Conglomo A owns all the RAM, but we can rent access.
I hate that this is the plan. Time to burn it all down
Exactly. No loyalty to this system. The only solution is to destroy it.
I downloaded a gallon of cum and my parents got really mad
Kids these days don’t know the pain of LimeWire
no I never had to use that crap
Nutsack doesn’t know the pain of downloading gallon-of_jizz.vid.exe and completely fragging the family pc
no i never did this one time even because i am a genius
Going to be fucking hilarious when all the western companies get fucked by China taking over the market they don’t seem to care about.
They’re wealthy but absolute fucking morons. The people who fall for the “they have money so they must be smart” are such gullible buffoons. CCP is much more competent than American oligarchs, running what could’ve been great with better policy into the ground.
It’s almost as if socialism makes for a better capitalistic system. It’s a lot better when the oligarchs fear the government rather than the government fearing the oligarchs.
I agree
Hmm I know China has a big push for AI as well, I wonder what their market is looking like.
Edit: https://www.chinatalk.media/p/how-much-ai-does-1-get-you-in-china Ah seems like their AI isn’t as big due to lack of access to western chips.
AI is the last great bubble.
And it, like all bubbles, will pop.
You are already seeing the people in the know flee the field.
You see reports that every company that has adopted it has at best changed nothing, at worst lost money on it.
Outside of the psychotic linked in CEO bubble, literally no one wants AI. And every day its generating more and more hate due to its halucinations, mistakes, and bullshit.
Its garnering massive negative attention for its use, and for anyone stupid enough to adopt it at this point (cough intel cough)
Its a dying star, and people are frantically trying to harvest the last bits of warmth from it before going off in search of new horizons.
I can only assume you haven’t used it for anything it’s good at lately. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Just like we still have websites after the dot com bubble, there will still be LLMs after the AI bubble pops.
The only stories I’ve ever heard of involving AI are told by people who, once again, are unable to see how their increase in productivity is not being met with a reduction in work hours. Unless, or course, “reduction in work hours” means they are being shown the door so a different idiot can do kore work for the same amount of pay.
Why does everyone feel the need to do as much as possible as quickly as possible at all times of every single day? And why are most people I talk to using ChatGPT to replace Google searches so they don’t need to actually think?
We all need to slow the fuck down.
worker productivity continues to climb ever higher, yet wages never grow with it.
take someone from the 1950s office and ask them to do the same amount of work that an officer worker today does, and they’d quit on the spot. especially since they’d be paid less today than they were in the 1950s as far as buying power goes.
No, I dont use it.
I get enough hallucinations and blatant lies from biologicals, I don’t need an AI erasing a mountain to consume the coal underneath to tell me made up bullshit.
What’s your source for that. China has no more reason to invade Taiwan next year than they have at any point in the last 30 years
China has been wanting to reunite with Taiwan ever since the founding of the PRC. the reason has always been there, and right now they are more ready than ever.
keep a close eye on what Chinese military is doing.
Why are they more ready now than they were 2 years ago? Politically nothing has really changed I know Americans like to think that Trump is a big factor but he isn’t, since even he is just as bullish on China as any other US president has been and it’s not as if the military is left.
Well, our economy is collapsing from bad debt and inflation, we’ve alienated ourselves from our ally’s, we’ve relocated aircraft carriers and are starting new wars.
It’s honestly a great time for china to exert some force.
you really are asking me to do the research for you huh.
a quick web search finds me:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/29/china-live-fire-military-drills-around-taiwan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLA_Navy_landing_barges
and it’s not hard to find more.
Umm hundreds of Chinese ambassadors to Xi Himself. How many do you want I’ll start pulling them.
Why would they need to invade Taiwan? They already have their own companies making RAM.
It’s not about recent tech, it’s about historical territorial claims, and broader territorial strategy. Of course, while ignoring history/historic context at the same time.
they have more than practical reasons.
It’s called unfinished business. Xi is not going to give up on reunifying all of china. They got their Hong Kong now they need the Taiwan
It’s well known that Taiwan has all strategic factories mined. If a single Chinese soldier steps on the island, anything industrial of value will be blown to bits. China is interested in the land.
Don’t count on China. They are going to invade Taiwan next year and the global trade embargo will be a rounding error to the destruction of the tmsc factories during that war. Or they will capture the fabs and prohibit export to the US. Loose loose for us.
“China, a country that hasn’t invaded another country in 50 years, is going to invade this country” said the country that invades a country once a decade.
China claiming Taiwan is its territory and threatening invasion, the regular military “training exercises”, even including the specific goal of Taiwan landing operations, and continuous hybrid attacks for years already, like invasion of Taiwan waters with shipping vessels, and cyber attacks, and you’re sitting here claiming China isn’t a country that would invade others. What do you make of these kinds of activities, then?
The what-aboutism deflection doesn’t work very well on an international comment section, either.
I’m not an expert on Chinese military policy. I just know that all of us living in the West have been told by our media and our government that China is bad for us. I know we see the world through the lens of war.
I know you think it’s impossible other countries could be bad because the U.S. is held under a microscope and intensely critiqued both by foreign interests and specific groups here. The U.S. is far from perfect but pretending other countries like China would never do bad is absolutely comical.
You don’t have to be so defensive. I’m not criticizing you personally.
I know. I mean it all respectfully
The issue is not black and white like you people that barely got by high school make it out.
China a country that has been trying to unify Taiwan since the civil war they couldn’t quite finish.
When you live in the imperial core of one of the most militaristic nations in the history of the world, everything seems like a provocation.
Ironic considering much of the world was constantly in conflict prior to Pax Americana.
America has engaged in war the majority of the post world war 2 era. Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan twice, Iraq twice. And that’s not including all the proxy wars they’ve funded.
Don’t forget Africa!
Yes every instance was totally bad. The U.S. should’ve done nothing to counter USSR and their dominoes across the world. US should’ve just let every country fall into an authoritarian USSR influenced country.
Obviously, I don’t blindly think every war was good, such as Bush era Iraq. However, defending Kuwait was 100% defensible in Gulf War.
yes, because what happened in the past can perfectly predict what’s going to happen next.
not saying you are definitely wrong, but if someone wants to have a bet i wouldn’t bet on the side of China not invading.
Spoken like an American
Spoken like someone who is blinded by the Trump admin, obliviously naive. You must’ve been one of those that thought Russia would never invade Ukraine despite US intelligence.
I’m blinded by the Trump administration because I don’t believe American propaganda about Chinese aggression?
No because you’re using your current “America bad” outrage to justify other countries and their expansionism. Other countries can be bad, you know? Many just were unable to do so under American hegemony.
Technically and diplomatically, China and Taiwan are the same country
If they do it Trump strikes “a deal” to give them Taiwan. That’s my bet.
They’ve been going to invade Taiwan next year for the last 30 years
What is loose, certainly not your anus right? Or, maybe it is!
The reason RAM prices went up 4x is that a massive amount of not-yet-manufactured memory was bought with money that doesn’t really exist to be put into GPUs that haven’t been made yet, to be installed in data centers that haven’t been built, powered by infrastructure that may never exist, to satisfy demand that isn’t actually there, in order to generate profits that are mathematically impossible.
😎
All that to create Artificial Intelligence that isn’t really intelligent.
What do you mean?
Just walk the car wash!
On the bright side, at least the entire global economy isn’t ridiculously overextended on this delusional bubble.
The price crash is going to be great. Such a massive yo-yo. Most of the AI companies will just completely eat shit out of it.
Yes and no. The hardware companies have already said that they’re not interested in expanding production. They know it’s a bubble, and don’t want expanded production now to cause a glut in the future when the inevitable pop happens. So prices may not actually drop, (even after the pop), because the companies still won’t be producing more hardware than they currently are.
My best guess is that we’ll have some dark data centers sitting around collecting dust, but the hardware they bought won’t actually flood the market and crash prices. If anything, since the US dollar’s value is essentially tied to Nvidia and OpenAI’s market share, a pop will only make the dollar less powerful and will counteract any potential drops in prices that may have otherwise happened. The companies will get a trillion dollar bailout when the pop happens, (because they’re too big to fail) then nothing will change about the current hardware prices.
…except that PC sales will fall off a cliff, so they won’t have a market to sell to. Its not like you need a PC to access the internet anymore.
Are you just like, completely unaware of workplaces?
All the ram being bought up is going to end up in the 2nd hand market as the hardware is all liquidated out. The prices will crash, and despite manufacturers not increasing their productions lines to build more ram, will still have to compete against themselves from the used market, meaning they won’t be able to keep trying to charge crazy high prices.
The problem is it’s manufacturing capacity that is being bought. They’re going to use that capacity to build HBM modules and data centre GPUs that cannot run outside of specialized servers. There will be a lot of high end gear gathering dust, but nothing you or I can use.
Maybe if you’re a large business/enterprise you could get some hardware on the cheap during the crash, but it’s not ot like those things are full of DDR5 DIMMs and RTX GPUs.
Well that sucks. I dug into your info a bit as well, and it seems true. Registered ecc ram that servers tend to use won’t work on consumer desktops.
Good thing I don’t plan on upgrading my PC for at least a few more years.
As a side note, I’m pissed off the ram and storage inventory issue has delayed Valves new steam VR headset release. I’ve never bought VR anything before and was looking forward to it.
It’s not even ECC RAM that’s the issue, it’s that they’re not making DDR ram at all, it’s HBM RAM which is totally different. That and the GPUs are custom solutions that slot into specialty liquid cooled server chassis with proprietary connecters and everything. It’s simply not for anything except for it’s current purpose in a server.
I know how you feel, it’s too bad this is impacting Valve. I really want their new controller which won’t be hit by this, but I expect they’re still going to wait and release it with the other products.
Did you use ChatGPT to write this?
And they told me I was crazy for putting 64 gigs into my machine back in early 2021. I “only” paid about 200 USD
I bought a netbook (GPD Win Max 2) with 64GB of RAM last year. It was really expensive, by 2025 standards.
But now I feel like I have the power of the universe in my jacket pocket. Best irresponsible buying decision I ever made.
I knew somehow similar thing would happen in coming years. Alas, I had neither money nor requirement for that.
Good thing AI sucks
I think calling it a RAM shortage is a bit incorrect. It is not like we are running out of raw materials or something else in the supply chain is broken. It’s shitty AI companies buying RAM that is not existing yet with money they don’t have. Unfortunately there’s no good term for that, I guess.
Supply monopolization?
Consumer fraud?
Sherman Act cartel market manipulation.
Section 1 of the Sherman Act prohibits price fixing and the operation of cartels, and prohibits other collusive practices that unreasonably restrain trade.
It’s called Imaginary Economics.
It tends to happen right before a capitalist system fails.
It tends to happen right before a capitalist system fails.
How often does this happen that we can claim this correlation? 🤔
About once every 350 years… With a sample size of 3… 😅
So you’re saying which empires/systems exactly then?
Spain perhaps? The Holy Roman empire?
I was averaging roman, British and Mongolian empires, based on Google AI summary, so take that with a pinch of salt 😅 🧂
It’s about to. The very nature of it, means you can only have a sample size of one.
And when do you predict this will occur? When should I have built my nuclear shelter so I know when to start building it?
Too late for that I’m afraid. It already happened. It just takes a while before the [citation needed] folks understand that past performance is not a guarantee for future success.
Lol sure, any time now, just one more year bro, just one more year and it will collapse bro, promise.
Maybe the usa will collapse a bit (because those people are often americans that don’t know there are other countries out there) but that’s another story.
I highly recommend staying ignorant honestly. It’s a much lighter burden to carry than seeing all the datapoints and seeing the collapse as a certainty. Have a good life, seriously.
The term was well established centuries ago.
FRAUD
Yes there is: it’s a Ponzi scheme (AI companies will fail when they get no new funds to pay off the stockholders)
Are they paying off stockholders?
They are creating staggering shortsighted profits, so yes, they are doing that. And of course ignoring what a bubble does in the long run.
I like electron finance
Their exact location cannot be pinpointed; instead, they exist in a probability cloud where they are likely to be found at any given time.
That’s what this hype cycle is founded on. If I lend you $5, you have $5 you can lend further. Now, we each still have a right to $5, so we can lend that debt obligation again for $4.50. Now we have, somehow, a market value of $19.
Until someone looks, then it’s probably 0.
It’s a racket, plain and simple. There used to be laws against this sort if thing.
It’s a racket, plain and simple. There used to be laws against this sort if thing.
Keyword: used to
I hope that it was worth it, and that America is great again. Let me just check some news articles… Oh my
We have RAM supply shortage.
Now better? god…
I’m aware, thanks.
Now I’m just contemplating whether I should upgrade from 32 GB DDR4 to 64 or 128 while it’s still within the realm of possibility, or bet on memory prices coming back down within the next few years, and upgrade to an entirely new platform with DDR5 then.
At least I’m not planning on buying a brand new car anytime soon, or even a nearly new one. And my phone’s fine for a few more years.
Just get a 256GB SSD and boom, cheap RAM - albeit slow
Read/write cycles are absurd with RAM. One good way to break SSDs if I am getting this correctly.
Those are also unobtainium.
What do you need all that ram for?
Since you asked: some games or if running heavy processors for simulated projects
Not everyone just uses their box for writing emails and surfing TikTok.
Or for things like video editing. Video editors tend to be quite RAM heavy.
Absurd stuff in Blender
SOMEONE has to render boobies with 30k polygons in 8K, it’s an important foundation of the Internet
Frustratingly this is not just affecting the current generation of devices, but the previous one too. DDR4 RAM (which I use in my desktop) has gone up 300% since I bought it a few years ago.
Here’s hoping that nobody needs to replace current or previous gen hardware if it breaks in the next 2 years…
Looking at me 2 x 32GB DDR4 systems 😌
I overbuilt my system when I bought it and am glad I did. I also prioritize heat management.
Yeah so glad I went with 32GB when ram was cheap.
I, too, am glad that I added two more RAMs when they were cheap. Hopefully if one of them died, I can still have a decent machine in the foreseeable future.
Same. Spent about 65 € I think, now it’s looking like > 200 €
I bought some expensive ram back when i bought my current CPU to maximize Factorio and that was about 200 €. Don’t even want to know how much it would be today. Also cheaped out and bought 16Gb ram for my home automation server last summer for less than 50€. Regrets hits me now as more would totally be better.
Me too. But I learned a while back that my cpu or slots are fucked and I can only have one stick installed at a time.
So I’m drowning in RAM that I cannot use. I could sell the RAM and get another motherboard but then I won’t have the RAM!
It’s not fair… It’s not fair.
I wish Sam Altman to encounter difficulties every time he had to use bathroom and increased chance of his phone fell to the toilet all the time.
I’m so glad I bought this book years ago
I was saving it for a retirement hobby project but looks like I will have to open it sooner than I thought.
IDK at the current price trend, maybe we’re approaching a point where having sweatshops make ferromagnetic memory modules in GB sizes is feasible. I’d better start building a couple of hangars for my GPU memory.
I‘m switching hobbies to gunpla. No one has managed to put DRAM in an airbrush to the best of my knowledge.
i mean, i thought you were wanting to save money…
Go ahead, make a lucrative market for consumer ram, see how fast china figures out how ot start filling that need :)
And if they complain, just shout “free market” at them
I’m fairly certain that spinning up RAM fabs isn’t super quick nor something that doesn’t require the most cutting edge tech.
China is definitely ahead of the US in a lot of tech, but unless they do invade Taiwan they might not have quite a deep enough bench.
Ram doesn’t require anywhere near the tech we need for processors.
They’re going this kind of thing for processors
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiUHjLxm3V0
Ram uses tech that’s way older. and for our needs, they can just stack smaller, low density chips
I’ve not missed a Veritasium video in a long time 😄. I’m sure that RAM is much easier to produce, but DRR5 is pretty complex still, and is what has been snapped up in whole by these AI companies. I’m actually wondering if we’ll see a resurgence of DDR4 motherboards, as those fabs are likely around still, just likely more idle if used at all.
