I bought 192GB of DDR3 a year ago for literally $60 ($5 a stick). It's about $22 a stick now, so more like $350 today. What on earth is _anybody_ doing with DDR3?
Demand for DDR3 is up because people who want DDR5 or DDR4 but can't afford either any more are choosing DDR3 and old DDR3-compatible systems to put it in, instead of what they really want.
All memory products use many shared resources in the supply chain, so if there is high demand in one product line, others have to raise prices to compete for the resources or stop making those lines altogether.
That is to say at least you were able to buy them at $350 today, with the current trajectory there will be no supply at all in few months.
You could set up swap space on Intel Optane media, it'll be about the same performance as DDR3 and sells for ~$1/GB on the secondary market. Though it will be a lot more power hungry than Flash, let alone DRAM - so not suitable for all uses.
Makes prior assumptions that getting tens of gigs of ram is cheap thrown out the window. Would likely lead to super fast SSDs such as optain being way more valuable
It is one of the thing with consumer when they remember they brought it at the absolutely lowest price point when DRAM maker were bleeding money.
Those are not normal pricing. Before the pricing collapse in early 2020, 96GB DDR5 would have cost about $450 to $500. And I will need to restate again the cost of DRAM hasn't really changed much in the past 20 years. Its price just goes up and down in cycles.
So in reality it is more like going from $500 to $1300. But consumer felt it was more like going from $200 to $1300.
Crucial are already selling DRAM made by CXMT. And China are already throwing money at it. I doubt the memory bubble will burst in next 12-24 months. As in going back to money losing DRAM pricing. As they will all pivot to HBM or other money making products. But the bulk of lower end consumer DDR5 or LPDDR5 will goes to Chinese Foundry. Assuming they have figure out how to do them well. Which they have improved but are still so far away from industry leaders.
Normally memory maker will push the next DDR standard to market just to push out Chinese competitors, I am not sure it will work the same this time around. DDR5 have plenty of other usage / demands.
Historically the price has always trended downward. When I first got into computing $200 could buy you 128 MB (yes M) of ram. Really nice systems had 512 MB.
That's obviously changed over the decades as process shrinks have lead to higher memory density. We should generally expect that ram will cheaper up and until the point where process shrinks stop happening. They've definitely slowed, but they haven't stopped.
My main computer has 64GB. I bought that one in late 2022 or so.
Looking at the current prices, even of the same RAM, is just
insane. Those companies really need to pay us compensation
damage here. The whole "free market" notion does not work
when you have de-facto monopolies and mega-corporations abuse
average Joe and average Jane.
I paid $279 for crucial 96gb DDR5 5600 MHz SO-DIMM ram October 22 of last year. Amazon has the same kit going for $1,048.90 right now.
Nice, you were lucky. =3
I’m so mad I didn’t max out my main server when I had the chance. Used enterprise sticks were dirt cheap on eBay.
People spend that much a month on restaurants
Used enterprise HDD’s also jacked up now. It’s absurd lol
Yep mad about that too. I was about half way through upgrading my 45 drives server when they started to go up.
Brutal. I only did a 6 drive bay and I was angry lol
I bought 192GB of DDR3 a year ago for literally $60 ($5 a stick). It's about $22 a stick now, so more like $350 today. What on earth is _anybody_ doing with DDR3?
Demand for DDR3 is up because people who want DDR5 or DDR4 but can't afford either any more are choosing DDR3 and old DDR3-compatible systems to put it in, instead of what they really want.
At the rate we're going, soon we're going to draw from SIMM stock.
All memory products use many shared resources in the supply chain, so if there is high demand in one product line, others have to raise prices to compete for the resources or stop making those lines altogether.
That is to say at least you were able to buy them at $350 today, with the current trajectory there will be no supply at all in few months.
You could set up swap space on Intel Optane media, it'll be about the same performance as DDR3 and sells for ~$1/GB on the secondary market. Though it will be a lot more power hungry than Flash, let alone DRAM - so not suitable for all uses.
there's an economic term for this: substitute good. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substitute_good
Being desperate?
Makes prior assumptions that getting tens of gigs of ram is cheap thrown out the window. Would likely lead to super fast SSDs such as optain being way more valuable
The price of SSDs is similarly depressing.
I just found two 4tb Samsung EVO drives - unused - while organizing my garage.
2x16gb for $105 total April of 2025. $600 for that now. Makes no sense.
I bought a couple of used computers with 256 GB of DDR 4 (total) a year ago. The ram is worth more than I paid for the whole machines now.
It is one of the thing with consumer when they remember they brought it at the absolutely lowest price point when DRAM maker were bleeding money.
Those are not normal pricing. Before the pricing collapse in early 2020, 96GB DDR5 would have cost about $450 to $500. And I will need to restate again the cost of DRAM hasn't really changed much in the past 20 years. Its price just goes up and down in cycles.
So in reality it is more like going from $500 to $1300. But consumer felt it was more like going from $200 to $1300.
Crucial are already selling DRAM made by CXMT. And China are already throwing money at it. I doubt the memory bubble will burst in next 12-24 months. As in going back to money losing DRAM pricing. As they will all pivot to HBM or other money making products. But the bulk of lower end consumer DDR5 or LPDDR5 will goes to Chinese Foundry. Assuming they have figure out how to do them well. Which they have improved but are still so far away from industry leaders.
Normally memory maker will push the next DDR standard to market just to push out Chinese competitors, I am not sure it will work the same this time around. DDR5 have plenty of other usage / demands.
> Its price just goes up and down in cycles.
Historically the price has always trended downward. When I first got into computing $200 could buy you 128 MB (yes M) of ram. Really nice systems had 512 MB.
That's obviously changed over the decades as process shrinks have lead to higher memory density. We should generally expect that ram will cheaper up and until the point where process shrinks stop happening. They've definitely slowed, but they haven't stopped.
> Crucial are already selling DRAM made by CXMT.
Crucial was disestablished this year.
He probably meant Corsair which is the DRAM brand selling CXMT produced chips.
Ah, the old decrucialisestablishmentarianism.
I found the phrasing weird myself, I quoted wikipedia
My main computer has 64GB. I bought that one in late 2022 or so.
Looking at the current prices, even of the same RAM, is just insane. Those companies really need to pay us compensation damage here. The whole "free market" notion does not work when you have de-facto monopolies and mega-corporations abuse average Joe and average Jane.
Ramflation