It’s related to the AI bubble. The AI companies are trying to make it as difficult as possible to get a good PC, because they know they’re cooked if the general public has access to systems that can run AI models locally, so they’re buying everything up as fast as they can in the name of data centers that will never be built.
As soon as the first one fails, it’s all over. Prices will tumble and memory makers will come crawling back to Valve (and other hardware makers) begging them to buy.
Let’s not forget that almost all memory is made by a cartel of 3 companies known for price fixing. They’re all being as slow as possible about increasing production capacity.
Is that not for good reason though? Only for them really, but if they did ramp up production and then the bubble pops… I wish they would ramp up production, it’s just easy to understand why they won’t.
If there is a demand for ram, which there is in the consumer market, then it shouldn’t be a risk. If DCs get cancelled, then they should have contracts in place for at least a minimum buy, which should offset cost risk. If they don’t have that, then that’s just shitty business. Even still, they can just as easily slow down production if needed. If the bubble pops, either they’ll have inventory that the world will buy and they can throttle back prod, or they don’t have inventory and they will have to throttle prod anyway since demand for DCs as a whole has to be more than just the consumer market.
Idk, it’s probably just the cynic in me, but I think it’s likely this is just manipulation of the prices, especially given the history of these companies doing just that.
They definitely have contracts that ensure the ai companies buy the ordered amount.
However building new production factories is expensive as fuck. They know they need to do that. But why buy a factory for billions and sell RAM at a lower price when you just don’t spend billions and earn even more with less RAM
I’m sure they’re already running their factories at 100% capacity. Ramping up would mean building more factories, and ramping down afterward would mean letting those factories sit unused. That’s risky.
Once the US economy craters into the recession it should by all rights currently be working through… Oh I am sure at that point there will be all sorts of companies dumping all sorts of things into every market they can to try to survive.
The AI bubble bursting will fuck the world in ways that will take decades to unfuck. If sanity was even slightly fashionable right now governments around the world, especially the US would be using every power they had to put some limits on this whole mess. Regulation, taxation, environmental controls everything would be on the table.
Instead we seem to be racing at the wall as fast as we can with NVidia and co in the driving seat, and governments around the world in the passenger seat screaming “Go! Go! Go!”
That’s OK though, economic turmoil is felt by the individual based on their starting wealth. The rich often manage to become wealthier, it’s the poor who get buried. Yay capitalism.
The AI companies are trying to make it as difficult as possible to get a good PC
This is a wild theory if I ever heard one
I mean, it seems pretty obvious at this point. The data centers aren’t getting built in time for all the hardware they’re buying up to get used, so it’s just sitting in warehouses and will be obsolete by the time any of these new data centers are built (if they ever actually are). And Jensen Huang has been waxing poetic about a future in which people don’t own computers anymore, they rent them to run AI agents on.
I’m not saying this is a sane and rational thing they’re pursuing, and it’s certainly doomed to failure because no one wants to rent computer time to run AI agents. But trying to prop up the AI bubble certainly seems to be the primary goal of all this ridiculous hardware purchasing.
Yep. Just like how nobody uses Windows since Linux is easily accessible.
Wait
What are you talking about?
The general public adopting open tech themselves instead of using corporate options
Was that not clear?
It’s not the average consumer spending thousands on tokens. Even my work just had a meeting about how “the free lunch is over” now that AI costs are expanding, and they bought their own hardware to investigate hosting local models.
Linux is widely used in the enterprise world. It’s the home consumer world that doesn’t use it as much and even that is rapidly changing as things enshitify.
they bought their own hardware to investigate hosting local models.
That’s going to be incredibly hard to make economical I bet, unless you have the ability to basically max out the utilization of the hardware around the clock.
general public
Having an option vs not having an option
Also Linux and Windows are pretty different in use cases and capabilities. Meanwhile, local AI models have a very similar user experience. If hardware was cheaper and people could run better LLMs locally, they wouldn’t pay monthly for it.
You’re right, the general public doesn’t use Linux due to the lack of ability to browse the web and file their taxes—Windows exclusive functionality.
In the workplace, there are still a lot of domain specific programs that don’t have Linux support. Companies don’t have much of an incentive to port that stuff over. As for the people who just need a web browser, they probably would use Linux just fine if they could buy a computer at BestBuy that comes with Linux preinstalled
Compare that to LLM programs, where it’s a matter of “download this app instead of that one, because this one is free and that one costs $25 a month”
I hope China floods the market with cheap RAM and absolutely destroys these scumbag memory companies.
It will take maybe two to three years before China could do that. The cheap Chinese RAM manufacturers are only starting their production.
That’s true, but after that point the capacity is there and it will be harder to constrain supply in this way after that. After China establishes a major memory player, I assume they wouldn’t want to fall behind after that point either.
If they have the capacity to do that they would have already been doing it. Chip production is extremely expensive which is why there’s only a few companies doing it.
Fingers crossed for the next 5 years.
So maybe try to remember that after the AI bubble burst, and there is more RAM than customers, and it’s the customer that sets the price.
I’m starting to think more and more that the only way to pop the bubble is the Luigi Style.
This is crazy… But it’s true.
Knowing Sam Altman, he might have a plateu of plans to keep the bubble from bursting. Him going will mean the bubble will have one week at top.
It’s not really a bubble if you have to shoot someone pop it
I think that would feed the hype machine.
I know it’d be expensive, but I wonder if it’d be worth it to valve to start producing ram. They’ve certainly got the money to get it started, they are getting heavy into hardware that they can use it in, and they could sell it as well.
I don’t know if there’s a shortage of raw material or if no one wanted to invest in more manufacturing when AI could crash within a short time.
In a nutshell this is impossible because of how the global supply chain works. Specifically how most of the hardware engineers/factories are in Taiwan, and how the technology to make chips is proprietarily owned by a company in Norway.
Like the whole reason China wants Tiawan in the first place is the same reason they can’t just bomb them into submission… Their population of highly skilled hardware engineers that fundamentally make the global chips supply chain possible is impossible to replace.
And China also can’t really invade because all the facilities that make the silicon are rigged to self destruct if China puts boots on their soil, at least last I heard.
Would be brilliant
I mean, it would bring global tech to a standstill. It would be a significant problem. Once existing stuff broke, there would be no replacement. I know very little about chip manufacture, except that the lithography machines are fantastically complex and costly. It would probably take years to spin up new production.
This seems like a pretty solid mutually assured destruction deterrent and doesn’t even involve nukes.
You have clearly and concisely explained the exact reason the US wouldn’t and couldn’t allow China to invade Taiwan (well, wouldn’t under a rational administration).
From what I can find, it looks like ASML has a software brick they can just drop into the update stream. As cool as physical disabling would be, a remote software trigger is simpler and leaves the machines in tact to spin back up after aggression ends
It’s a lot of things. But complex tech can involve literally thousands of hardware engineers. Each with very specific skills.
The proximity of these highly skilled workers to cheap chinese labour is another reason why this is difficult to replicate elsewhere.
AsmL is a dutch company…
Also ,i’m not sure if HBM requires the smallest nodes
I know it’d be expensive, but I wonder if it’d be worth it to valve to start producing ram.
There’s a reason why there’s only, like, three RAM manufacturers. It’s horrifically expensive to start production.
I wonder if it’d be worth it to valve to start producing ram.
They’d need to source the components outside of the increasingly monopolistic US-alligned group of hardware manufacturers. The only way you end run the Big Three is to go to… CHINA. And we’ve layered so many sanctions, tariffs, and putative measures on import of Chinese hardware that it would be a fool’s errand to bother.
I don’t know if there’s a shortage of raw material or if no one wanted to invest in more manufacturing when AI could crash within a short time.
Even if there’s an AI crash, the long-term outlook for chip demand only goes up. The problem isn’t with the economic demand, it’s with the provisioning of capital. For the most part, you need to spend tens - if not hundreds - of billions of dollars to start producing even the middle tier of nano-computing components in modern use.
I might suggest there’s another way to tackle this problem. And it’s one that Valve already is heavily invested in.
Lower resolution games. Lower hardware requirements. More efficient software engines. More games focused on the mechanics and story than the raw, realistic visuals.
You can run Doom on a pregnancy test and people still buy that game. Games like “Undertale” and “Vampire Survivors” do incredibly well in part because they are so accessible to anyone with a 15-year-old rig. Rather than trying to build a PS5-killer machine, you can go the Nintendo route and build a novel interface that runs on more basic components. Then you exploit the hell out of your Disney-esque IP without worrying that Halo: Remastered Delux Ultra looks better than the next iteration of Metroid Prime.
I don’t know if there’s a shortage of raw material or if no one wanted to invest in more manufacturing when AI could crash within a short time.
My understanding is that it’s the latter. AFAIK it takes something like 3-5 years to get a fab going if you already know what you’re doing, so it would not only be wildly expensive but you’re also gambling that RAM won’t come back down to a reasonable supply/demand in the next 5-10 years to break even on the whole process.
There’s also the fact that it wouldn’t really make sense for Valve unless they wanted to make a huge pivot in their whole business. Entry costs aside, manufacturing RAM is not really something a company can just do as a “side gig”. Valve is only like 400 people, so it wouldn’t be Valve just “starting to produce RAM” but rather Valve turning itself into a RAM manufacturer that also distributes video games.
You know i always forget how small valve actually is.
Chips. Where are they made? Right now its in Taiwan. Wafers for these chips are the most expensive part and that requires special factories and incredibly expensive engineers.
Valve cant just make chipa, they have to make it in quantities to satisfy demand while justifying upstart costs.
Yeah, you have to make much more than you need and sell the excess to keep per unit costs down. At that point you’re a chip manufacturer. I’m not sure even valve could afford the startup costs involved.
Can’t wait to see how negotiations go once the AI bubble pops
Their dilemma is whether to build more RAM factories, which would reduce prices, or not. Knowing when demand slows down would surely help them.
They’ll just continue with artificial scarcity until they get sued or fined or something but won’t be enough to offset the profits
AI is not a bubble and will not pop.
It’s interesting seeing how AI companies are now changing their pricing models, altering feature sets or amounts of tokens available. Looks to me like the realities of the cost to provide AI to the end user is catching up with them. Once they paywall the free features, I can certainly see it becoming a more niche product that fewer will pay to use for a specific task rather than just a Google replacement.
Once the growth projections get revised, look out below! That these companies are desperate to IPO rather than private equity sitting on an ever increasing asset seems like a red flag to me also.
You’re incorrect and here are some explanations why.
Thats how you know you are dealing with a cartel.
Yeah, kinda shows there’s zero competition in the market.
I think legacy american market ram companies need to be blacklisted.
Once China floods the market, we need to put these fuckers out of business.
There is only one American memory company: Micron. Sk Hynix and Samsung are South Korean.
Everyone else who sells memory modules in the west gets the actual memory chips from one of those three companies. Beyond that there is only one company that makes the waifers that the chips are made from and I think its Dutch. Definitely European.
I think the wafer is dominated by the Japanese. The Dutch company you are thinking of is ASML and they manufacture 90% of the precision machines that manufacture chips in the world.
Is that what I said?
Ah yes, the law of greed and demand.
What’s to stop them from just going a generation back and using DDR4 instead of DDR5.
There is no one who can convince me that it makes any noticeable difference anyway. When I was putting together a new/used desktop I specifically looked for DDR4 for precisely that reason and I would take any bet that a performance hit would be measured in numbers too small for any user to even notice.
Constantly needing newer hardware with only fractional improvements is the biggest scam in tech. They took their lesson from Apple and Samsung.
I don’t think DDR4 is significantly cheaper. Plus, they would have had to go a CPU generation back too then and I think the AMD CPUs of that generation had way worse integrated graphics, so now you’d need a dedicated GPU as well.
I haven’t been following the Steam Machine, but are they using integrated graphics for it?
Nah, it’s some kind of a mobile GPU.
Looks like a custom GPU configuration based on AMD hardware to me. So not an iGPU, but also not a mainline card.
DDR4 prices have come up too. In fact, DDR3 and even DDR2 prices have spiked.
DDR4 isn’t much cheaper, and wouldn’t stay cheaper at all if demand spiked.
I feel like Valve would have been better off designing a new motherboard and discrete GPU design to facilitate cooling and smaller cases.
Make a new standard and allow any third party to use it.
They just wanted to make a new GameCube instead.
Yeah, because everyone agrees the price is too low and more engineering and manufacturing costs are needed to beef it up.
I’m talking about something that is closer to a true PC ecosystem than the locked-in underpowered overpriced DOA system.
If the price is going to be exorbitant the system might as well be customizable and not limited to AMD’s trash bin.
I’m curious what miniature graphics card were you thinking to put in
You’re asking me to create the design? I’m not an engineer.
I can tell you that PCs are generally a mess and are definitely limited by standards set decades ago.
That’s what Valve should be doing instead of making a $1000 PS4.
You’re asking me to create the design? I’m not an engineer.
yeah, so the hardware does not exist yet. but valve is not AMD either, I doubt they have the money (yes) or the expertise to effectively become a graphics card manufacturer. probably they would have to come up with their own data and power sockets, and then it wouldn’t be compatible with anything else, maybe a steam machine 2
It wouldn’t be compatible with anything else? Like the current overpriced and underpowered hardware which they designed themselves?
yes it wouldn’t be compatible with anything else, but you would be even more angry because the research and manufacturing costs would make it even more expensive.
complain to micron and openai about the price, not valve. they can’t do anything.
That article is confusing, are they talking about the RAM chips themselves? Or the packaging(sticks)? Or both? Also without an ad blocker on a phone, that article is herpes. Why would anyone voluntarily read an article from that site.
There should be a “no RAM, no storage” option.
Valve managed to make a system that can possibly outperform a PS4 for $1050 plus tax plus whatever a controller costs.
The PS4 can also play DVDs, Blu-ray’s and comes with a controller.
If you disagree on valve share in publishing a game on steam it would pretty much be the same story. Valve is a for profit corporation whos ceo own an entire fleet of mega yachts, they are just as shit as any other corporation.
I can always just not publish on Steam. There are other options.
What’s happening here with RAM is a cartel
I seriously don’t get this constant “Valve is a monopoly, end them” bull crap. Yes they’re a business. Yes they make money. Sure they’ve got flaws we should tackle. But they aren’t out there trying to shut itch.io down or using legislation to stop you from hosting the game yourself. GOG and Epic aren’t as popular because they don’t provide a strong enough product to pull people away.
I seriously don’t get this constant “Valve is a monopoly, end them” bull crap.
You are on lemmy, perhaps understanding how this place work can help you figure out how much shit corporations like valve are. https://join-lemmy.org/docs/index.html
I literally said they have flaws. Calling them a monopoly is as pointless as your rebuttal and shows a complete lack of critical thinking. Call them out for the actual issues, not made up nonsense. Call them out for their inconsistent content moderation, call them out for their lootboxes, call them out for their caving to payment processors. Just don’t call them out for the thing they aren’t.
I can always just not publish on Steam. There are other options.
What’s happening here with RAM is a cartel
The same way you can publish on a different platform that really few people know about, you can use a different architecture or different ram nobody knows about.
It’s hard to believe that it’s just a RAM issue.
Valve is going full Apple with the SSD upgrade. They’re making a healthy profit from each system they sell.
It’s both RAM and storage price. A 2TB NVMe cost upward of 300$ CAD.
Did you for get that when they upgrade the storage to 2TB they do not also include the 512GB storage included in the low end model?
Could be said for literally every single product ever made, come back to reality, holy fucking shit dude.
Valve is making a bad deal worse. By being needlessly greedy.
I am in the reality where all the other gaming consoles massively outperform it while costing hundreds less and also providing a controller.
Do you have any experience in product development? They went through a design process and unfortunately for them, when came time to choose a storage and RAM solution, they had to do it through the current price crisis.
So they either had to table the design and lose their development money or go through with it with the current storage and RAM cost.
Does it matter if I have experience in product development? Do you?
A product has to justify its cost. This one does not.
You can DIY or buy a pre-built that massively outperforms Valve’s console.
Yes I do have experience, in fact it’s core to my job.
The cost to design is significant and wasting a few years of development is not a light decision. So Valve either had to scrap the design and waste the development cost, or price it according to the current PC parts prices
You are right that people can DIY, but it always was an option and people still buy ready-made computers, so that’s a moot point.
The price for comparable parts and same form factor isn’t far off from DIY.
Why shouldn’t they? Margins are going to be tight btw, so they’re really not. What they’re really selling is a vehicle for Steam.
BTW, try putting together a same or better spec build yourself and get back to us with the cost.
They’re also trying to make Steam OS available to install on any PC, so any argument of “AlL tHeY tHiNk AbOuT iS pRoFiTs” goes out the door there. I think the only struggle right now is getting it to work with NVidia graphics cards or something.
You can easily make a better pc for cheaper. Plenty of reviews showed this.
You can build and buy a pre-built PC that easily outperforms the Steam console.
that does not make sense. you are not building a pre-built, because then its not a pre-built. is the sky cloudy over there?
I meant that pre-built or DIY are both better deals. I realize now that I should have been more clear.
This Steam console is bad when discussing performance and value. It has a nice design.
oh, yes that makes sense
I really feel like Valve spend a bunch of R&D to make something that doesn’t fix any issues with PC gaming.
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It’s noticeably less powerful than comparably priced PCs
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It’s noticeably less powerful than consoles costing hundreds of dollars less
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It doesn’t come with a controller.
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It is not customizable in any meaningful way. 
 This feels like a valves version of the Wii U. Neat hardware, but ultimately underpowered and overpriced with little to no way to lower the cost.
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Why shouldn’t they?
Because they are a for profit company with a billionaire ceo. Making profits it’s their job.
BTW, try putting together a same or better spec build yourself and get back to us with the cost.
The price you pay for something in a store is not the same price valve pays for a stock of parts. They buy the same stuff for a lot cheaper and resell it at an higher price to make profits.
No Gabe, you fucked up with these price hikes. Don’t blame the supplier.
Are you…stupid?
Yes.
Valve and its ceo decides the price of their products. Considering valve is a corporation making billions and the ceo owns an entire fleet of mega yachts, arguing that they are directly to blame for the high prices doesn’t sound stupid at all to me. If they are literally swimming in billions their profit cut is high.
Really? The cost of components getting jacked by a supplier is their fault?
If you really are going to make that claim, you simultaneously lose all credibility by admitting that you are literally arguing in bad faith.
Shut the fuck up.
Really? The cost of components getting jacked by a supplier is their fault?
They jack their own prices to begin with, valve is a for profit company making billions, their faith is making profits.
Wow. They’re guilty of… (checks notes)… being in business.
Shut up
Don’t rant about prices being high then
The ram in the system went from 200 dollars to 600 dollars. Not increasing the price of the console by 400 dollars would have meant scrapping it instead.
There is literally no choice, the ram would have been sold either way, just to someone else instead.
No Gabe, you fucked up with these price hikes
…in the universe you live in, is there cheap ram?
can I send you money for some please?
…in the universe you live in, is there cheap ram?
Private yachts aren’t cheap either. To buy an entire fleet of these you need to boost your profits as high as you can.
So they should fund your gaming habit?
Who’s funding your chattering on lemmy?
so gabe fucked it up by buying a yacht years ago, when ram was cheap, somehow boosting up ‘profit’ on this margin machine?
my god you’re fucking silly
so gabe fucked it up by buying a yacht years ago
He owns multiple mega yachts, he added a 500 millions one to his fleet last year.
and you really think this matters in regards to the ram crisis.
wow, man, whatever you’re smoking you should share
You sound quite salty, are you in love with the billionare?
nah just reality. billionaires suck, but you seem to suck even more somehow. impressive.
man I wish you’d gone out with the rest of the dinosaurs, this conversation is extinct.
The component price changed, what was Gabe supposed to do, start manufacturing its own RAM?
That would be amazing timeline
Dreaming about Pipe RAM by Valve.
The component price changed, what was Gabe supposed to do, start manufacturing its own RAM?
They are swimming in billions, they could easily lower the profits they make and give it away for cheaper but that’s not their goal.
I’m sorry, do you have any awareness of the world past your nose?
Yep. You are owed everything, after all. You deserve it.
He really shouldn’t have dumped trillions of private and public money into AI. Thanks Gabe /s
