Diving DRAM prices are a problem not even AI can solve If you're in the market for a memory-optimized server or top-of-the-range workstation, the industry watchers at TrendForce have some good news. The average selling price of DRAM is expected to tumble another 10-15 percent in the second quarter of 2023. That's on top of Q1's 20 percent slide. That outlook isn't so rosy for …
It's corporate greed and price hiking in so many sectors that's adding to the pain of lack of overall capital, causing any elastic markets to suffer.. It's not like putting up prices will allow all companies to gather more revenue in total from all customers in anything but the shortest term.
With everything and their dog going up in price well above the supposed rate of inflation, consumers are looking for bargains and abstaining from purchases... This greedflation, as I like to call it, mixed in with aggressive "restructuring" forces people to smarten up their consumer practices and purchase with much more care and attention.
As an aside, here in Tokyo, I see very few people with new iPhones for example, when just three or four years ago, the iPhone was a yearly replacement for most and biennial for the rest ... And none of my friends have replaced their graphics boards in three years. Yet on Kakaku.com (a price aggregator) we can see that higher capacity SSD and larger DDR4 RAM module sales over here are doing very well indeed, as people place their dwindling money on products they perceive to be reasonably priced.
We're in a situation where bigger and bigger hands are trying to snatch fewer and fewer remaining candies. But if the bag is empty, you can have hands like Lana from Archer and still not grab much.
/rant
When PC hardware routinely lasts 5+ years without upgrade, and a whole bunch of stuff was all sold at the same time, the outcome is hardly unpredictable! There will almost certainly be a hardware boom probably ~2025-2026 or so.
Old school Keynesian economics always spoke of building up a reserve when times are good to cover for bad. We all know realities of business, dividends and government don't work well with keeping reserves.
I have a desktop system sat at home with a 64GB of DDR4 in it. That'll be good for a very, very long time. Nothing even comes close to making use of it. By time I need an upgrade it wouldn't surprise me if DDR6 will be in circulation. Though I do like the increasing number of PCI Express lanes on newer boards - chipsets linked to DDR4 have some limitations.
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