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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The issue is not black and white like you people that barely got by high school make it out.
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.
Technically and diplomatically, China and Taiwan are the same country
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.
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.
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.
They’ve been going to invade Taiwan next year for the last 30 years
If they do it Trump strikes “a deal” to give them Taiwan. That’s my bet.
What is loose, certainly not your anus right? Or, maybe it is!
I don’t understand this thing about anyone destroying those factories for any reason. I don’t think that would happen.
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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.
Certainly, but hopefully you won’t turn on your PC and have 50 popups and 10 different buttons blinking and getting in the way of each other begging you to try AI.
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
Good thing AI sucks
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 got mine 2 (or shit, is it 3 now) years ago - 10/10 best laptop purchase in a long while.
GPD have done well for themselves in the small screen laptop space!
I knew somehow similar thing would happen in coming years. Alas, I had neither money nor requirement for that.
Same
Go ahead, make a lucrative market for consumer ram, see how fast china figures out how ot start filling that need :)
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.
And if they complain, just shout “free market” at them
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?
So prices may not actually drop, (even after the pop), because the companies still won’t be producing more hardware than they currently are.
There’s also the risk that they simply may not drop the price even after, because the customer base can bear that price, so it becomes the new normal.
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?
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…
Just you wait. Ai airbrushes are coming soon
Yet
I can’t wait till these companies shutter their AI shit and that supply gets dumped back into the market
Knowing real life some other party will juice it and ride the ram shortage for another few years, just keeping the supply as a speculative income stream.
AI’s are more important than humans now. I guess we should get used to this. Line must go up.
Soon it will just be a bunch of AIs buying, selling, and interacting with each other.
That is what we in the professional world would term the “poop” scenario.
Line must goes up until it hits a ceiling, then system collapses… but line go up again after!
My most recent hobby has been an old Suzuki Samurai that I dragged out of the woods a few years ago. It doesn’t use much RAM. It doesn’t even have fuel injection.
I’ve also been getting back into archery with my kid.
Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I think that making it harder to get a computer and play games is a huge miscalculation. If everyone is distracted by Call of Battle: Dutyfield then you have fewer bored assholes casting about for something to do, and if people can still play Factorio, you don’t end up with bored, autistic, organized assholes casting about for something to do.
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
Those are also unobtainium.
Read/write cycles are absurd with RAM. One good way to break SSDs if I am getting this correctly.
I’ve already got a 64 gig swap file to complement my 32 gigs of RAM tbh. I just wish I didn’t have to swap lol
What do you need all that ram for?
fr. huge war is going on and people worry about playing the latest games on their pcs lol
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
To get rid of swap and mount /tmp entirely in RAM. Right now I only have 32 gigs and a 64 gig swap file to compensate.
Anyone remember RAMdisks?
remember that ram drive that gigabyte made like 20+ years ago?
That worked by putting sticks of ram in it, with… i think AA batteries? to maintain the data during power downs?
DCS
What if the unintentional consequence of hardware hoarding by AI companies is we have fewer devices being made that spy on us, like smart TVs and appliances.
The idea is that in the future your “personal computer” will be a streaming stick that you plug into a monitor to access your Microslop Copilot Windows 12 OneDrive Azure Cloud Virtual PC for $99 a month.
Yup, they’re 100% trying to shift towards cloud computing. It has already been happening with gaming, and many players have decided that they’re okay with a slightly worse experience if it means they can run their games on a potato PC. Tech companies see the blood in the water, and know that there is money to be made in cloud computing. Everything is shifting to SAAS, so it only makes sense that hardware will be a subscription next.
Thats a nightmare :(
A terminal would require more RAM, not less.
I’d just point out that now might be a good time to add a whole-house surge arrester and/or get a bunch of new surge arresting power strips for your hardware. They have a useful life measured in joules dissipated so replace them if they’re old too or your cheap RAM (among other things) may let out the magic smoke one day.
