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Comment on MSI's $80 AMD motherboards with DDR4 support swoop in to rescue gamers amid the global RAM crisis

tal@lemmy.today ⁨21⁩ ⁨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.

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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:

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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.

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PancakesCantKillMe@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨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.

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- tal@lemmy.today ⁨17⁩ ⁨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.
  
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  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.
  
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Novis@lemdro.id ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I get where you’re coming from but

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.

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.

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- tal@lemmy.today ⁨21⁩ ⁨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.
  
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