who would’ve thought that it would happen… (checks stats) yeah, it was EVERYONE. Gee, maybe someone needs to learn some supply and demand basics by this point. The tenacity!
At least people aren’t buying at these high prices, wouldn’t want them to stay there after all.
Honestly, probably a buy opportunity for good ddr5 motherboards. When the bubble bursts then you can buy the ram for pennies.
It’s the obsession with replacing PCIe slots with M.2 sockets that gets me.
Why not? I think its quite convenient. Also saves some required wiring and its very compact
Motherboards seem to have a normal amount of slots though?
Not like you can populate them all anyway, though. Use one modern (i.e. oversized) graphics card and it seems to block three slots.
I haven’t made any purchases since tariffs drove up prices.
I was prepping to build a new NAS in 2026.
Not anymore sellouts.
I went from thinking about a full rig upgrade, to just buying the best used processor and GPU my am4 board could handle with my current PSU and ddr4 ram.
Went from a ryzen 1600x and a Nvidia 1060 to a ryzen 5 5600x and a Radeon rx 6600 xt. I’ll be able to ride that out for a few years no problem.
funny i bought exactly the same CPU and GPU half a year ago. Someone in my city sold these for 200€.
I was going to go for an AM5 board and everything, but couldn’t afford it. My older parts were from 2016 and not even terrible. Its funny how little the hardware requirements have changed in the games and OS area. I am still using the same 16g RAM and PSU from 2016.
Ryzen 5600x here, was rocking a 6700 XT but found a good deal on a RX 9070 for $540 right around when the RAM prices increased. Already have 32 GB RAM, so I’m set for a while.
I also decided to do a mild upgrade in my AM4 board rather than shell out for marginal upgrades. I’m rocking the 5700x3d 5700xt build.
The artificial price hikes actually saved you money. Noice!
Nice, had a nitro 6650xt, can’t recommend enough if it makes sense financially
Paid under $200 for it and it punches well above the 1060 I’ve been using. Wanted a Radeon because they play nicer with Linux and this card is the beefiest AMD I could go without having to also buy a new PSU. Also couldn’t go much nicer anyhow or I’d be creeping up on games cpu limited, so it pairs nicely with the r 5 5600x. So for me and my particular set up it made for a nicely balanced hardware and cost choice. After this it will just be time for all new hardware in a few more years.
AM4 unite! Have had 3600X and 2070 super since 2019 and still works well. Although some USB-ports on the mobo are starting to degrade.
That’s alright. USB rails for a PCI slot are dirt cheap.
Nnnoooo, you won’t get enough fps to enjoy your games!!!
/s in case some of you don’t get it
My eyes aren’t good enough for 4k. Lol
I don’t understand what their long-term plan is here. Even if AI isn’t a bubble eventually all of the AI companies are going to get to a point where they don’t need more compute because they’re working on algorithmic optimisations because they decide that that’s cheaper.
Then they’re going to have to pivot back to the consumer market. Except by that point it won’t even be a consumer market because China will have eaten their lunch.
I read a great article recently that tries to analyze what exactly went down and for what reasons. And most importantly, the effects it’s going to have on different hardware prices: https://www.mooreslawisdead.com/post/sam-altman-s-dirty-dram-deal
Yeah people will probably turn to China when it comes to consumer pc hardware in the future like how when it comes to drones its been primarily just China actually interested in selling to regular people.
The plan is to continue making bank until the companies are done with them, then sell to consumers again without missing a beat.
Source: the GPU shortage we just went through.
Future source: the CPU shortage scheduled for 2026.
That’s my point though they can’t do that.
The market isn’t just going to wait around for them to get around to selling to consumers again. China is going to see an opening and they’re going to manufacture their own chips and make bank. Then when the traditional manufacturer is getting their head out of their arses then realise there market share has vanished. All 100% their fault.
They have decided to shoot themselves in the foot because someone’s convinced them they won’t ever need legs ever again.
I hope China moves to Linux once they get around to pushing their own consumer PC parts and move on from Windows. It’s just madness to me that countries will use OS of countries they aren’t on good terms with and use it to do important work on it and store important data on it.
Eh, Chinese manufacturers are also desperately trying to catch up with AI hype. In any case, we’ll see some new brands on the market, and it’s not a bad thing, and I would not spend my time worrying about giant rich corporations.
My actual worry is that once RAM prices go up, they won’t go down for quite some time. If we get another bubble after AI bubble pops, the prices may not decrease at all.
Cloud computing. Stallman was right.
We would need a better general network for that. Remember stadia? Nothing has changed since then, hell some areas have even lost some capacity.
These companies are controlled almost entirely by people who only really care about what the stock price will be sometime in the next few years or so.
Somebody pop the zit that is AI.
AI isnt a zit, its a giant infected boil and blister now.
I don’t disagree lance that green puss filled cavity.
what if we cannibalize our long-term viability for a short-term gain says every dipshit in charge of tech hardware manufacturing.
That’s every company, most upper management don’t stay in one position for more than 2 years. So the system is setup for short term gains because investors aren’t interested in long term investments and the blowback is the next guys problem. Who then is looking for the next big win to cover up the last guy issues without fixing anything. Then they bring in someone to clean up the mess and the cycle starts again.
Plus most consumers have short memories or don’t have an alternative so their stuck. There are small groups holding on but for 75% of the world’s population right now it’s Android or iOS, AMD or Intel, AMD or NVIDIA, Samsung or WD or Seagate or SanDisk, Att or Verizon, Apple or Microsoft, and so on.
you know when the bubble pops and they no longer have AI companies buying RAM they will switch back to consumers and keep the high prices.
Absolutely
if they’re still around when the financial shell game they’re playing finally comes to a stop. who am i kidding the government will bail them out.
Using your money.
Profits for me, losses for thee
That only works if we (the collective we) have more money. If a rich person has more $$ than a small country that means the effect we have is equivalent.
That’s why micron is doing what its doing. We are no longer the customer. They voted for us.
if the US government were actually funded by taxes, then everything the government does would be with “my money”
Well, if you’re a citizen, the country is yours, and the government is there to manage it, but some assholes in power managed to convince people that it’s the other way around
Of course, not all the companies survive and now there’s decreased competition, so we can shove prices up a little bit further
Also your reputation. I had a Crucial SSD and was days from getting an identical one as a backup but then they said they were stopping consumer RAM sales so they’re now on my blacklist.
Question is, though, who now isn’t on your blacklist?
Samsung and SK Hynix never sold to consumers directly, yet seem to be avoiding flak.
Who do you get that isn’t that three? Almost all RAM on the market is Samsung, SK Hynix, or Micron.
Every business is doing this for everything. To different degrees but they are all chasing their “get our fortune now and get the fuck out because the sky is falling” mentality. Have been since Trump 1.0 and now it’s accelerating rapidly.
You have to remember that “get that bag” is practically inherit to business. We spend a lot of time and effort making it illegal to fuck people over and do bad business stuff, but kinda-sorta since Regan the businesses have slowly been winning that battle.
how are they in control? market demand is an outside force
Time to buy an AM5 MOBO to upgrade in 2028 then.
Just in time for AM6.
Makes sense. CPU/Mobo/RAM typically go together in a rebuild. Storage, case, PSU, perepherals, GPU can often carry over between builds as they’re all pretty backwards compatible.
Yeah. This makes pretty good sense. Make some ram and SSDs - lowee the price - and I’m sure Motherboard sales will go up.
It’s funny how people don’t want to buy motherboards without anything else
Yeah but it’s like the gearbox. While everything’s pulled apart, you may as well swap out the clutch, bearing, and flywheel too because they’ll need replacing again first. Especially if better versions of them are now supported.
because youd only swap mobos for either aesthetics(expensive, not often done) at best because you choose to downsize, or because you need more pci-e I/O.
the average user doesn’t use all their pci-e i/o, and the ones that do, are looking towards workstation motherboards, which is almost a completely different market from the consumer level stuff. It’s a game of, you know when you need more i/o, and if you needed it, you probably would have never bought the consumer level board in the first place.
Does China not have any companies that can make RAM? Seems like an opportunity to grab some market share. But maybe they don’t, or maybe they’d prefer to sell it to AI companies too.
CXMT has ddr5 manufacturing capabilities but it will be years before they scale it, and they’re embargoed by the US, so nobody on good terms with the US can get it.
And yes, they would also sell to the enterprise customers, but it would lower prices overall.
they’re embargoed by the US, so nobody on good terms with the US can get it.
So no one.
They do, but perhaps they haven’t expanded yet into your market. I see some here sometimes.
Why would a Chinese for-profit corporation differ from any other? Except for the Chinese ones having backing from a garbage authoritarian empire. Maybe they can get free slaves from the state?
Because the Chinese government controls Chinese companies whereas the American government just lets companies do whatever the hell they want.
As opposed to the US, where they get free slaves from China AND the state.
Welp, sucks to be a motherboard manufacturer. Always getting dragged along by other component manufacturers.
They had a little bit of reprise with the surge of SFF PCs but not much.
What’s an SFF PCS?
Small form factor, or something like that . Little motherboard possibly fanless, space for one or maybe 2 2.5 hd. The little thing you can use for a nice video player at home or the cash register at work
Wonder if we’ll be getting consumer grade SoCs that are CPUs with integrated RAM.
Strix Halo (AI Max CPUs) are basically that.
But they’re still DDR5 hanging off a bus, manufactured in the same place as sticks, so that wouldn’t really affect the price.
We’ll be getting the opportunity to rent low-powered cloud computers at premium prices, and if you want to keep your data that costs extra.
“You’ll own nothing and like it.”
If things get that bad, I’ll just have to change my hobbies up and ditch tech as much as I can. I’ll buy used and try to wait this out first.
