This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I am infinitely grateful to my past self that I purchased an on-sale 64GB RAM upgrade for my Framework 13 in 2024 before prices skyrocketed. It was $119, and checking back right now... Holy crap the same thing is $1,079 now.
It seems the more this shit happens the less I need tech in my life (pulls notebook out of back pocket and writes this down for posterity).
I got some 16gb of DDR4 i found in a closet. You guys can start bidding.
i'm using an optiplex sff with 32gb ddr4 as a monitor stand right now. i just don't know what the hell to do with it.. so it sits, probably until the dietpi running on a jaguar soc keels over.
What I'd do is a little media center / HTPC so my TVs stay dumb.
I fucking had to keep pushing back buying some more RAM. Yeah, that was a great move. Now I can only hope the bubble bursts and prices crash.
I mean, I get by fine with the RAM I have. I don't need much. It's the principle of the thing, you know? Sometimes being financially responsible and careful sucks.
The thing with the bubble bursting is it will still take time for it to come down, as they'll need to start manufacturering consumer RAM again. The stuff they're churning out now can't be thrown into a PC or laptop.
And they'll NEVER allow prices to drop back to reasonable levels. They've already learned people will pay a premium during a shortage, so they can still artificially control the supply to keep prices high.
If competitors ever emerge making RAM at reasonable prices, we need to boycott the current fuckwads even when they undercut the new players.
I dont... I am absolutely stressing the DDR3 I have. But no way I am going to pay 500% for some memory!
I feel so justified for doubling down on Zen 3, and replacing my dead R9 5900X with an R9 5900XT lol
I'm getting worried, 'cause I've got the same. What killed yours?
Bad luck. I started getting random reboots, the reboots started happening more and more frequently. I tried a few kits of spare RAM I had laying around, reboots kept happening. I replaced the PSU with a brand new one because mine was a decade old, reboots persisted. I replaced the CPU on a whim (with an upgrade if it was fine), problem went away entirely, not a single reboot since.
That's strange - I had some of the same symptoms and it ended up being a completely different thing - a dying (and then eventually completely dead) SSD (the Phison controller fiasco).
Other than that the CPU itself seems fine and it's only shown very minor degradation over the 4-5 years I've had it - i.e. it used to boost up to 4975 or 4950 single core, now it only goes up to about 4900 (no PBO, no CO); and I've also had to fix the SoC voltage because of the memory - but I haven't touched that in like 3 years, so not sure it's even degradation.
Yeah I tried increasing voltage, decreasing voltage, resetting BIOS to default settings, etc. I tried everything you could think of but nothing helped.
I did see a post on reddit from someone else with the same MCE hardware errors in Linux that I was getting, with the same random rebooting, and their 5900X ended up dying too.
I wonder if the fed gov cares that entire sectors of the tech economy are being threatened by one (AI).
They might get interested if people start talking about Epstein again.
And suddenly me "unjustifiably" buying 128gb of DDR5 was a good investment of money.
Yeah, I splurged on some hardware upgrades with great shame almost 2 years ago because I was preparing for the idiotic tariffs, expecting modest price increases.
I did not expect a 5x. So glad that I did it. It would no longer be an option.
Do I want more memory or do I wait for two years...
I wait for two years. As long as the existing memory modules doesn't break, Linux will continue to be happy with existing amount.
If you are on windows, good luck.
On the plus side, all the game companies are going to finally start optimizing games and quit pushing out more and more demanding shit. A big win for smaller devs and creative\fun game developers too. My steam deck and old PC gonna keep on winning.
And people who have an issue with this are called luddites
Absolute clown show
We've been told historical lies. People who have an issue with this are like Luddites, but that's because the Luddites were justified too!
They weren't against technology; they were against it being used to abuse and exploit them as workers.
Give it 10 years and civilians won't be able to own PCs... We will be forced to the cloud computers. And by that time AI surveillance and profiling will already have its infrastructure built.
We need to figure out how to do our daily things with very few computing resources. Gaming and heavy workloads excepted, most things we do ought to be possible on 15 year old CPU’s and 2GB. All we need is efficiency and low expectations. Fuck em.
If my workstation goes up in value in 4 years, something is seriously going.
So I got this RAM in August 2025, for ~$400 according to the receipt:
…That is absolutely bonkers.
I got 64GB of ram for my laptop back in April, was close to 700, of is 829 today. I guess only desktop sizes are over 1k?
Like April this year?
Could be that it was DDR4 or something.
I ebay'ed my DDR5 RDIMM 5600 RAM sticks. 32gb was $606 some months ago, the remaining six sticks was about $3,600 bucks. I was originally planning on waiting for bubbles to burst and DDR6 to be released before switching to a DDR5 platform, but the whole war with Iran threw everything into doubt.
The US's strategic oil reserve will likely run out within half a year, which means everything costing more. I wanted to be smart with my money and wait for a good time to buy, but this situation has ruined my planning. I bit the bullet and used a flex-pay to let me buy now.
Is it that my discipline sucks, or is the world certain to go into a hellish handbasket? I cannot tell anymore...
I honestly don’t know. Even setting Iran aside, it’s impossible to tell when the bubble will deflate, and even then, when memory supply will somewhat normalize.
But if you can afford it, it seems like a reasonable decision to me. Iran and the US could become allies tommorow, but DDR5 still isn’t coming down soon, and you get to use your server now instead of having to wait forever.
The only rational choice right now is to wait to buy new ram.
Either production capacity catches up and this amount of silicon is the new normal and prices come down or the ai bubble does crash and prices come down.
It can’t go on at this price point forever.
It can there are only 3 producers and they can decide to not let the price drop
Except in my lifetime I’ve seen the prices of computer components swing wildly based on supply and demand.
Tech improvements tend to drive prices down not up, it’s less about supplier collusion in this particular market.
Maybe this time is different but I’m not betting on this.
