On a side note: Who ever thought that those led lights on memory sticks was a good idea? I brought 128 GB right before memory prices went insane, lucky me, but the modules have led lights (the store was out of the normal ones)
My computer now looks like a tacky circus and I can’t turn it off, I can’t find bios options to disable it
Whoever made your RAM probably has some crappy piece of software you need to get from their website to control the lights if you don’t have a dedicated LED controller.
The people that are hyping AI are real quiet in this thread.
One thing we
cando is hope that some apps (e.g. Discord, Spotify and Bitwarden) stop using Electron and starting up a fucking browser for each windowWish granted. Those apps are now all rewritten as Swing Java applets.
I bought 96 gigs of DDR3 for my server in December 2022. It cost $118.76; less than $1.24 per gig.
Purchased May 6, 2024
I paid $158.99 in November of 2024, building my TrueNAS server. Wish I’d doubled up back then.
I got four 16gb sticks with intent to take two for my nas setup. Now I feel like I want the 64 for my main rig exclusively, and then 32 for my nas on the side.
I did score on HDDs during Black Friday tho
HDDs are another regret of mine, along with trying to save a bunch by opting against a chassis with hot swap. I went with four 10TB Red Plus drives. That ended up being about 26TB actual in a RAIDZ1. I failed to consider just how quickly I would start filling it between archiving some YouTube videos and taking DVDs and BluRays out on loan from the local library.
If prices ever improve I’m tempted to get at least a 12 bay, switch to RAIDZ2, and up the number of drives to start with. After migration I’ll probably repurpose the old chassis to be a dedicated NVR. Something lower power that hopefully won’t have to shut off right away if there’s a power outage. As it stands when the lights go out so does TrueNAS and 98% of what I host.
That’s the dream, anyway. Time will tell if it pans out.
Don’t worry, China is about to flood the market. Don’t buy RAM yet, wait for the prices to normalize first.
What if they decide to just keep their rare earth metals for themselves and control the entire market?
They already announced they are mass producing RAM and are going to export. So the market is going to be flooded.
I’m saying they could corner the market on components they can manufacture by banning export of the raw resources they control. Threatening rare earth metal exports was how they got Trump to heel.
Sinking the market for all the hardware hoarders is a good counter too. I’m fairly convinced that this move isn’t just about AI, but consolidation of resources into Cloud services that lets them squeeze out competitors and force consumers and businesses alike into a perpetual-rent model. AI is just a convenient way to allocate the money to corner the market
that’d be based
Don’t be too hopeful. China will first fill their demand
Definitely, but they also won’t miss the opportunity to become a major actor in the industry globally. Contrary to the US, they have in the past decade made a lot of moves to establish their influence globally.
Which will impact the demand world-wide, because China’s demand also takes from that either way.
Aug 2024, I purchased 32gb of RAM for $109. That same kit today would cost me $509. Sept 2025 I got a 250gb nvme for $33 that is now around $85. The inflation is real.
oh you kids…let me tell ya how much RAM was in the late 90s…
I appreciate the fact that this is a still gif (good compression!), but it has several frames with differing compression artifacts for no good reason.
still gifs have good compression? I recall that motion gifs are notorious for large file sizes, but are still gifs the opposite?
It’s been a while since I learned this but yeah we were taught it significantly reduces images in size, though in quality too (mostly because of the 256 colors limit, otherwise it is technically lossless IIRC). PNG results in slightly smaller files with much better colors and alpha channels so yeah by comparison gif isn’t that good, but to be fair, PNG was created as a direct improvement over gifs for single images compression/encoding, and quite some time later too.
Adding to that, video encoding and compression algorithms have gone so far now that encoding basically any video longer than a few frames as a gif is a waste, but that’s because these hardly store any actual still frame IIRC, it’s mostly codecs-based wizardry which, for a simple explanation, can cheaply encode several frames by basically saying “this whole area stays the same color for X frames” and even moving blobs of pixels across multiple frames, whereas gifs, by design, store each individual frame making up the video.
Interesting, I didn’t realize still gif was lossless, I was thinking in comparison to lossy formats like jpg.
Not inflation, just artificial shortage
The inflation is real.
109 USD in August 2024 is equivalent in buying power to $115.31 today. $33 from September 2025, adjusted for inflation, would be about $33.84 today.
This has absolutely nothing to do with inflation
The inflation of computer component costs, the topic of this post.
Fair enough, you could say the prices are “inflated”. There’s a big difference though between inflation as the devaluation of currency that’s been slowly happening “forever” and inflation in the sense of a guy selling shit simply racking up his prices and putting the surplus in his greedy little pockets. Of course you can choose to use the exact same word for both cases if you wish
It wasn’t the best word choice. I did say ‘the’ inflation to try and separate it a bit, but should have rephrased.
Ditto, thought 64 would’ve been overkill at that point…
I quite like the idea of people just not engaging with this.
Can’t play the latest AAA because I can’t afford the equipment for it? No worries, there’s literally thousands of other games out there.
More realistically though, people will end up subbing to a streaming service, which is almost certainly what the companies would prefer.
This isn’t necessarily about games.
My mini PC only has 4GB of RAM because I thought I’d just buy it later, and “for now” if it just boots it’s fine.I’m mostly just concerned on what I’ll do if a piece of hardware dies or corrupts at this point.
If you’ve got a PC built in the last few years you can play them anyway.
Mostly this affects people whose PCs are pretty old already :/ but like if you’ve got an AM4 build you can just upgrade your GPU and maybe CPU if necessary and keep your good ol’ DDR4. AM4 truly the GOAT of CPU sockets in terms of longevity.
This is so true.
My PC I built has parts from as far as 12 yrs ago and day to day tasks go very smoothly especially since I switched to Linux. I haven’t bought a newly released game from a big publisher since Borderlands 3 and that ran fine. Most recent indie games still run well too.
I’m currently planning on upgrading with used parts from 2020 ish not because I need to, but because I’d like to play some games from 2010-2020 in medium-to-high graphic settings and hopefully make it last another decade.
Chasing AAA highest setting has always been an expensive hobby, but not it’s straight up luxury that only those with a lot of disposable income or make a living off gaming can afford. And honestly that’s fine because there are just so many good games out there that don’t require the specs.
or maybe, just maybe… You could, are you ready for this idea…?
Play on medium settings !!!GASP!!! Or worse, play it at 1080!
I mean if you’ve you hardware that needs upgrading, you aren’t playing new games at medium anymore either and your display is probably 1080p anyway.
1080 and 1440 is a pretty big difference. 1440 and 4k, not so much. Definitely agree that there’s a point with settings where you just don’t really notice the textires/reflections/etc. when you’re playing the game.
Idiot me bought a 4k laptop and be fucked if I’m not gonna use every single pixel on that screen (even if I can’t tell a difference between 1440 and 4k)
Piracy and giving them nothing is the answer
RETURN TO THE OLD WAYS
This.
That’s what I do for new games now, fuck $100 for a linear single player game. I implore all studios to use Denuvo as it’s the best DRM on the market 😉
You can’t pirate ram though
that’s why workstation cases have locks.
Oh, have I got news for you…
zswap enters the chat
Though in fairness, it is free.
WAY AHEAD OF YOU MATEY
DDARRRRR5…ahoy!
I have a 16gb rx6800… playing stardew valley lol
Stop Killing Games could play neatly into this, fingers crossed.
RAM has always gone through huge price cycles as long as I can remember. You buy when it is good value then don’t when it goes up. The industry always responded to high prices by building too much capacity so after a few years the prices all crashed.
This time it feels different. We don’t have the huge diversity of producers we once did. The 3 big remaining players clearly operate as something like a cartel. I doubt they are responding to current shortages with huge new fab investments.
Lots of PC part manufacturers and retailers aren’t going to make it through to the over side of this. I think it could lead to massive long term changes for the DIY market.
At least China is pushing to expand production capacity.
HDDs have doubled in price recently too. Not a good time to try building a computer.
Building a computer like 5 years from now will be a weird experience because you will buy most parts from brands that you have never heard of. Very few of the manufacturers we know today will still be around by that time.
They will have Chinese RAM by then, so yeah, its going to be the random made up Amazon/Temu Chinese brands.
AmzRamBar24
Which is the same thing as the GOODKINDSTICK that everyone says is really good, but only if you get the V3.65 from 2025, the new stuff is garbage.
And you have to be careful because their versioning is broken. Version 5 is older than 3.
The Xbox 1 says hi
Yes, this is Microsoft. They have some issues with counting.
Much more than doubled. Most high-TB drives are not in stock anywhere, and even if you find a drive, the best deals are around $26-28/TB for used drives, whereas before new deals would be $10/TB. If you’re looking for a specific new capacity, you may be paying $36-40/TB.
I’ve been putting 12tb used SAS drives in my Plex server. The used market went up about 30% from last year for the same drives. I think I paid $115 each before, now they’re $150.
I don’t doubt you found a deal somewhere, but here’s what I’m seeing:
That’s admittedly better than $26/TB, but I also had been looking at 20-24TB drives. That’s the other change - the lowest-$/TB (highest value) TB size is has decreased substantially (from around 20-24 in late 2025, to 10-12 now).
I bought 5 of these last September at $99 each https://ebay.us/m/x9d0kn. When I did some searching about a month ago, I found a couple for around $150 of the same model. So I paid less initially than I thought.
It’s interesting, that’s what I felt was happening, but when I looked at the charts, it seems they are less than double. Either way it feels really expensive.
I think it depends on the drive sizes, whether you accept used, and if we’re comparing bare to shuckable, but yeah, for drives that I am looking for in the 20-26TB range (new, since I don’t have enough parity/redundancy to trust used drives), it seems more like 2.5-4x cost.
Who puts an HDD into a desktop computer in 2026? For a NAS I would understand, but putting an HDD in a desktop is very uncommon nowadays, even as a secondary drive
I didn’t say desktop. But, in any case, there are plenty of reasons someone might want extra storage in their desktop without shelling out for an SSD.
ChatGPT is a frustrating tool… That you can run locally and deny OpenAI your service via programs like AnythingLLM or GPT4ALL.
AnythingLLM and the larger Mistral 8x7B is also a lot less rules obsessed than OpenAI.
Don’t forget about ollama.
Upgraded my homelab with 256GB right before the prices went nuts. Lucky me.
But before I bought the best GPU at the time for absolute peak-price, adamant it would rise further and never going back.
So…universe equalized for me. For now.
Devs just need to optimize their software. My i5 750 still works just fine with a 1060 and 16gb ram. Their’s thousand of great games to play, fuck the aaa.
This comment got me to stop lurking and create an account! I finally found my people!
I’m also still using an i5 750 for gaming. Just this year I upgraded to a whopping 12 GB of RAM, because a friend wanted to throw their old PC in the trash. I upgraded the GPU to an RX570 at some point. And the main reason I still use this PC instead of a low-power laptop is that many badly optimized games try to burn a hole in the integrated GPU for no reason (looking at you, unity).
I love that someone else is still out there running an i5 750 :) There are dozens of us! The i5 750 was just too good for its time
Nah. Fuck AI companies causing the shortage. They should stop delaying the inevitable bubble crash and suffer real consequences.
I mean sure, fuck all those AI business. But the idea that we always need more powerful hardware is a consumerism illusion.
I agree but also this shit is also affecting people who may just need replacement part or in my case just need an SSD so I can see about converting my old PC into a nomad.
1gb of ram costs more than 1 hour of minimum wage
As you can imagine, this is enormous pricing pressure for enthusiasts trying to build gaming PCs or upgrade their rigs in 2026.
Waiting until 2028 for anything involving RAM would be a good idea, if possible. You’re likely to get more for your money.
If you’ve got money burning a hole in your pocket and are determined to spend on gaming computer hardware in 2026/2027, it might be a good idea to consider things like game controllers, displays, or something like that, since those don’t have prices driven by memory price.
I’m really focusing on saving up for some stickers with flames on them, that’ll speed it up as much as I can afford for a while
Make sure that they are red. That would make the PC become 3x faster.
Have you tried speed holes? They make it go faster.
Damn this is a hot tip!
That is a worst case horror story that everyone should think about, and I’m not usually an optimist, but I don’t think it’s likely.
Ultimately AI is a hype wildfire, and it will eventually run out of fuel - signs are already showing that happening as AI hyperscalers and vendors are ending investments, restricting access and raising prices to recoup unsustainable losses.
At that point, I hope we stay sane and not jump at the first discounts, and just sit tight while prices return to normal. Prices need to fall heavily before we start supporting these AI-first companies again, or else we are going to lock ourselves into that AI-inflated price dystopia.
At this point, I will never buy Micron again even if they bring back their consumer RAM lines. I probably won’t buy another Nvidia card as well. AMD has almost lost me as well. Might have to wait for Chinese GPUs.
The best part is when it crashes, all the hardware will be available very quickly. A lot of the shortage are caused by future orders that are not delivered yet.
Bad news is, most consumers would just rush to buy them before the price drop and the manufacturers will realize they can get away with higher price and not lower them.
As I understand it, unfortunately most of the memory that has already started manufacturing or been sold will not be usable, since it is specifically packaged HBM for AI servers/systems.
So once the crash happens, that is presumably the beginning of a longer re-supply ramp-up.
This is why I’m considering jumping the gun and buying at least the case for the new PC I wanted to get since last year
(My current one doesn’t have a proper side panel so anything would be an upgrade)
2028? You’re quite the optimist.
