Memory boom-bust cycle booms again as Samsung reportedly jacks memory prices 60%

If you haven't noticed, DRAM memory has gotten a lot more expensive in recent weeks.  Amid a shortage broadly attributed to a surge in demand for AI infrastructure, Reuters reports that memory giant Samsung has hiked prices 60 percent since September, citing two persons familiar with the matter. Among the memory types …

[Anonymous Coward]

20% increase in RAM prices for us this month. Its already the most expensive part of the servers.

[Michael Strorm]

I ordered 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) of Corsair DDR5 RAM from Scan on the 12th of October for £109.99.

In response to a similar comment, I checked again a few days ago- on the 12th of November, coincidentally exactly a month later- and the price for the *exact* same SKU has gone up to £173.99.

That's not a typo, it *was* a 58% increase.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cynical airline or holiday style surge pricing, out of alignment with what stuff costs to make/service/supply, economies of scale and a reasonably healthy margin.

A good job Turkey's aren’t priced the same way at Thanksgiving (Walmart) or Christmas (Tesco).

Price gouging fuckers with unethical Ticketmaster grade business practices. Fight Oligarchy!!!

[Michael Hoffmann]

I wanted to upgrade my old server which still uses DDR4 - and could barely find any left, and that with a 50% markup from a month ago (I suspect the jump is exacerbated by the Australia tax).

Grabbed what I could from the lone place that still had some in stock.

Is this what AI is doing? A sort of Tech-Niemöller?

First they came for the GPUs, but I didn't speak up because I wasn't a gamer.

Then they came for the CPUs, but I didn't speak up because I only run a browser and email

Then they came for the RAM, but I didn't speak up because 640K should be enough for anybody

Then they came for my PC, but by then I had gone back using a slide ruler.

[Bebu sa Ware]

Sliderule

I tried my slipstick recently and found it had jammed. It's over 50 years, old manfactured in Germany (FDR) but it appears the parts have shrunk or expanded disproportionately.

At least my HP35s still works — at least until they come for the CR2032 button cells.

I sourced non-ECC DDR4 a little while ago and found from the smaller vendors the prices were pretty unchanged or discounted. ECC DDR4 seems either unobtainable or unaffordable — I am guessing when manufacturers (samsung?, micron?) announced they were stopping production of DDR4 to concentrate on DDR5 etc production anyone expecting to keep a fleet of servers running for a few more years snaffled as much memory as they could get or afford.

[Michael Hoffmann]

Re: Sliderule

Did it come in a kind of protective sheath with two parts that slid into each other, one half red, the other white-ish?

That's what we learned with - we were the last year to use them, and transitioned to calculators in mid-year.

[Ken Shabby]

Re: Sliderule

Mine was grey on grey plastic, tought how to use, but never needed it

[Tim99]

Re: Sliderule

I bought my Otis King in 1970, it still works: vintage calculators.com. Based on current UK wages it cost me the equivalent of ~£120, or >5p a week. I'm pretty certain that won't apply to my phone, which has almost completely replaced it...

[DS999]

I lucked out

I'd been thinking about building a new PC for a couple years but kept putting it off. Then my PC decided to force the issue by dying, never knew if it was the CPU or the board. So I built a new one in early May.

Got 48 GB of DDR5 RAM for $90 on an Amazon deal, and that attractive price made me wonder whether my aging laptop could get a latelife kicker. Dell claimed 16 GB was its limit but the chipset said 32 GB so I figured what the heck if it doesn't work I'll return it and found 32 GB of DDR4 SODIMM for $40! Got great deals on the two NVMe SSDs I bought for my PC as well.

I had set aside the RAM from the old PC and the laptop, now I'm thinking maybe in early December after those disillusioned by the Black Friday "deals" they see on RAM I should stick mine on eBay - probably will get enough to pay the $130 I paid for RAM back in May lol

[GraXXoR]

Re: I lucked out

That would cost anywhere up to $400 from a major electronics retailer (Yodobashi Camera, BIC Canera, Sofmap) in Japan at the moment!

[lsces]

Re: I lucked out

Swapped the 4 8Gb DDR4 sticks for 16Gb ones a couple of months back and put the set of 8's on ebay to offset the cost ... went within an hour of listing ...

[GraXXoR]

Funny how a 60% price rise ends up nearly tripling the cost of "premium" RAM in Japan.

Here is an entry from kakaku.com link, a popular tech price tracker in Japan for the most popular RAM tracked at the top 50 local retailers on and offline.

Shows price of 2 x 16GB crucial PC5-44800 sticks has gone from 15,000 Yen ($100) to 45,000 Yen $300 in the space of 6 weeks.

https://kakaku.com/item/K0001540697/pricehistory/

$300 for 32Gb is hitting $10 per GB again... Like backin 2005, around the time when I first saw RAM fall below $10 per GB!

[DS999]

That 60% is on top of previous increases

And likely isn't the last increase we'll see before prices peak. If you want prices to go back down you're gonna have to wait for the AI bubble to burst, and a lot of those pent up orders for HBM to be canceled. Once that happens DDR5 prices will crash in a matter of weeks.

[neilg]

Feeling old

Can remember when RAM was £30/meg.

Adding a 4 Mb stick to an old Compaq cost £120, had to get director sign off..

[DS999]

Re: Feeling old

My brother was going through all the stuff in my dad's study a few years ago. He was a real packrat so it took a lot of time but my brother liked finding all the weird stuff, like bills from when my mom and dad were newly married in California before we were born.

One of the things he found was a receipt for buying two 16K upgrade boards for the Atari 800 (to take it to a massive - and maximum - 48K) for $129.99. Each!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Feeling old

Yes, I remember once buying 4 second hand 4MB SIMMs (bought from someone via uk.forsale on USENET) to go on my 486 board for £320.

As a contrast just bought 2x32GB DDR5 having watched the price go from £180 to £300 in 3 months ... fortunately discovered Currys had some for sale and they hadn't noticed the price change so, along with a £20 Quidco offer, got them for £200 - next day Currys had "corrected" their price to £300!

[Roland6]

Re: Feeling old

Remember (‘80s and early ‘90s) regularly removing the added (MB’s) RAM from system (often sourced from systems being scrapped), and putting it in the new system before letting the old system go for scrap.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny how prices rise this close to Christmas...

[Eric 9001]

Any company that determines that demand isn't going to slow, and there isn't meaningful competition, will jack up the price every time.

The solution is just not to buy - I don't buy anything with DDR5 and never will.

[Anonymous Coward]

First is takes a while for these changes to filter through to OEM, Dell, Lenovo, etc will have purchased months ahead to secure supplies.

Second, xmas makes very little difference to demand, your real hogs are servers. Our DB servers are 256GB, Virt servers anything from 512GB to 2TB and HPC & AI are 2TB to 4TB.

[ecarlseen]

Blame it on AI

Layoffs due to an economy strangled by politicians and bureaucrats? Blame AI

Price hikes due to whatever? Blame AI

Bad weather on a weekend? Blame AI

[O'Reg Inalsin]

Re: Blame it on AI

Yeah, sure, but Nadella recently said in an interview - "So, if you can’t do that [have the power and datacenters ready], you may actually have a bunch of chips sitting in inventory that I can’t plug in. In fact, that is my problem today. It’s not a supply issue of chips; it’s actually the fact that I don’t have warm shells to plug into.” Some interpret this as meaning MS is stockpiling GPUs and related hardware, which would be exacerbating prices.

MS CFO Amy hood previously said “We are, and have been, short now for many quarters. I thought we were going to catch up. We are not. Demand is increasing,” So why not raise prices and make a profit? Using pole position to undercut any possible competition. No AI specifically, but abuse of AI certainly.

[Helcat]

Re: Blame it on AI

If the cause of the chip shortage is the increased demand for server memory for new datacentres in response to the AI craze, then yes, you could argue it's all AI's fault.

However, if it's due to various political issues that seem to be plaguing the world, or various wars, then perhaps not.

Most likely it's just good old corporate greed in response to all of the above. And when things settle down... prices will be slow in dropping while corporations milk as much profit as they can from the inflated prices.

[Michael Strorm]

Re: Blame it on AI

I'm in the UK, so Trump's US tariffs don't apply. Yet, as I noted here, the 32GB of DDR5 (2 x 16GB DIMM modules) I bought for £109.99 on 12 October- just over a month ago- had gone up to £173.99 on 12 November and has gone up again to £233.99 in the past five days regardless.

[Martin an gof]

Re: Blame it on AI

Even DDR3, which is a bit thin on the ground. Needed an SODIMM for a laptop, last week when I was looking, found 8GB for £20. This week when I came to order it, £43. Found another for £33, but still. Also SSDs. 240GB cheapo SATA, was £32 last week, £36 this. Just my luck I didn't have the money to do these rebuild jobs over the summer as I had intended.

M.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bugger. That's teach me to procrastinate when I've needed an upgrade for a while. Solution? More procrastination! :¬)