The RAM I just bought last week was 4 times the identical purchase 14 months ago.
You sure it’s not part of the shortage? Who’s making new ddr4?
Comment on MSI's $80 AMD motherboards with DDR4 support swoop in to rescue gamers amid the global RAM crisis
just_another_person@lemmy.world 17 hours agoDDR4 isn’t part of the memory shortage
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 17 hours ago
just_another_person@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
That’s why I said “as much”. Since DDR5 went crazy, people started buying DDR4, which is driving the price up, but still only at a 2x increase vs 5x for DDR5.
Hence, the release of this motherboard.
Novis@lemdro.id 17 hours ago
The problem with this is that companies were winding DOWN DDR4 production before AI bought all the DDR5 RAM. So if no one can get DDR5, attention will shift to the already dwindling supply of DDR4 aaaaand… well, prices are already up and it’s not going to get better.
tal@lemmy.today 16 hours ago
There is existing DDR4 in existing machines that can be scavenged that would otherwise probably just be thrown out. I understand that secondhand memory was an industry even before the surge, remember reading a recent article some California company that would strip servers of old DIMMs and sell them, mostly to China. The CEO was being interviewed, said that sales had surged recently.
searches
I don’t think that these guys are them, think this is a different California company doing basically the same thing, but illustrates the point:
www.ramexchange.net
I mean, I’ve thrown out old DIMMs. Wasn’t worth my time hassling with trying to resell them. But if they’re worth enough due to price increases, it’ll increase the number of companies who are willing to recoup some of the value of the DIMMs. Companies can buy them, re-certify them, and sell them.
Obviously, that’s not an unlimited supply, but the window in which it’s of interest is probably only something like three years.
PancakesCantKillMe@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
The scavenging is making it more difficult looking for a SFF PC on fleaBay. More and more listings say “no RAM/no SSD” and the ones that have it are barebones or far more expensive. Even laptops are heading that way. Yuck.
tal@lemmy.today 12 hours ago
Yeah, honestly, if it becomes enough of an issue, maybe eBay and similar should create separate sections for machines with memory and those without. I mean, there are reasons people would want to get a system without memory too, especially if one’s looking for other parts, but I do totally get that it’s super-obnoxious if there isn’t a way to filter those out and one is looking for one with memory.
checks
It doesn’t look like eBay has a “0 GB” memory category, annoyingly enough, but they do have a “Not specified” category with a ton of listings. That’s not absolutely the same thing, since I’m sure that it might also exclude some listings that have an unknown amount of memory, but I’d guess that that’d get you most of the way there, and I do see people clearly listing machines with no memory in that category.
Novis@lemdro.id 16 hours ago
I get where you’re coming from but
meaning that prices of DDR4 HAVE TO GO UP in the first place for companies to even want to try to sell their old stock. So we’re still going to be suffering from increased prices as a result of AI.
So good that now there might be a market for people to NOT throw away their sticks, but it’s still going to get rough for people trying to make a new machine in 2026 and beyond.
tal@lemmy.today 16 hours ago
I mean, there was a pre-existing used memory market, so some scavenging was already happening, but yeah, I’m not saying that increases there will fully cover the shortage. Just reduce it, which will reduce the degree to which prices rise relative to the scenario where the only memory available is newly-manufactured.