The RAM crisis and the PC apocalypse

[Candleicious Ghost]

I always run memtest for all the RAM I buy and let it run a couple of days.

Memtest86+ | The Open-Source Memory Testing Tool

Memtest86+ is an advanced, free, open-source, stand-alone memory tester for 32- and 64-bit computers (UEFI & BIOS supported)

memtest.org

That looks like a very useful thing. Thank you for the link

 

[SatrianiRules]

question for you guys that seem to have much more tech savvy than myself....Do you think it's possible that we could see the end of local storage, and everything becomes cloud based? I mean we already have that with the reduction of physical media where everything is streamed instead of owned...

could the same paradigm be applied to personal computing? the elimination of hard drives and everything is stored remotely...tech companies would love this because everyone would have to buy subscriptions to storage plans (google drive on a huge scale)
i hope not as this is a scary thought!!!

 

[F. King Daniel]

question for you guys that seem to have much more tech savvy than myself....Do you think it's possible that we could see the end of local storage, and everything becomes cloud based? I mean we already have that with the reduction of physical media where everything is streamed instead of owned...

could the same paradigm be applied to personal computing? the elimination of hard drives and everything is stored remotely...tech companies would love this because everyone would have to buy subscriptions to storage plans (google drive on a huge scale)
i hope not as this is a scary thought!!!

That is 100% what they are planning and what some are already offering (with Nvidia already capping their service to 100 hours a month)

I would like to have my games on my physical hard drive. In my house.


I cant even stand OneDrive and would permanently erase it from my computer if I could.

 

[Owain Taggart]

I would certainly hope not, but it's technically possible. The #1 concern of course would be privacy and security and what happens should these servers no longer become accessible for whatever reason, ie data corruption, service closure, etc. I don't feel that cloud-based storage should ever be the only option, I feel like they should be only ever treated like a secondary option. The moment we lose local access is the moment we're at the mercy of the servers.

 

[Candleicious Ghost]

question for you guys that seem to have much more tech savvy than myself....Do you think it's possible that we could see the end of local storage, and everything becomes cloud based? I mean we already have that with the reduction of physical media where everything is streamed instead of owned...

could the same paradigm be applied to personal computing? the elimination of hard drives and everything is stored remotely...tech companies would love this because everyone would have to buy subscriptions to storage plans (google drive on a huge scale)
i hope not as this is a scary thought!!!

I truly hope not, but it kind of does feel like that's what some companies want.

We might have laptops in the future that are little more than the keyboard, screen, RAM, and CPU and GPU with nothing else. The only option being wireless and Ethernet. What a dull scary world that would be.

Chromebooks are pretty much this already

 

[Owain Taggart]

Chromebooks are kind of in a category of their own though. They're not what I'd call fully fledged computers even though you can technically install a different OS onto it, but many of the dependencies are very much like how consoles operate. And it used to be even more limited before Google allowed Chromebooks access to the Play store. My Mom recently retired an older Chromebook and the Play store only got introduced about midway into the life of the Chromebook.

 

[Candleicious Ghost]

Chromebooks are kind of in a category of their own though. They're not what I'd call fully fledged computers even though you can technically install a different OS onto it, but many of the dependencies are very much like how consoles operate. And it used to be even more limited before Google allowed Chromebooks access to the Play store. My Mom recently retired an older Chromebook and the Play store only got introduced about midway into the life of the Chromebook.

Yes but as far as storage and working offline they are pretty limited aren't they?

 

[Owain Taggart]

Yeah, but that's my point. They require the online aspect for them to function unlike other types of computers. While they do have very limited local storage, they aren't geared for working offline.

 

[bdub76]

question for you guys that seem to have much more tech savvy than myself....Do you think it's possible that we could see the end of local storage, and everything becomes cloud based? I mean we already have that with the reduction of physical media where everything is streamed instead of owned...

could the same paradigm be applied to personal computing? the elimination of hard drives and everything is stored remotely...tech companies would love this because everyone would have to buy subscriptions to storage plans (google drive on a huge scale)
i hope not as this is a scary thought!!!

This isn't practical.

I have 9TBs of data on my NAS. My upload speed maxes out at 30Mbps. And I have a cap of 1.2TB a month for data. It's not practical for my to move my NAS data to the cloud.

 

[Santaman]

No, we're not going to see the end of local storage, in 1989 a Seagate ST-225 was 230 dollar for 20MB and a 4096 80MB drive was 630 Dollar and if you roll back the inflation you'll see that this was a pretty hefty price.. same with computers themselves, they were much more expensive, a high end IBM XT was 5K.
We'll adapt and get used again to higher prices, safe up a year or maybe more before buidling new machines, buy refurbs, for most people cloud storage is indeed not suitable for their needs, gamers are the ones hit hardest because they require the more high end components, for non gamers it's much different, a Dell, HP or Lenovo will be fine and not as expensive as trying to build a machine yourself.

 

[flyerdog]

That is 100% what they are planning and what some are already offering (with Nvidia already capping their service to 100 hours a month)

I would like to have my games on my physical hard drive. In my house.


I cant even stand OneDrive and would permanently erase it from my computer if I could.

No, we're not going to see the end of local storage, in 1989 a Seagate ST-225 was 230 dollar for 20MB and a 4096 80MB drive was 630 Dollar and if you roll back the inflation you'll see that this was a pretty hefty price.. same with computers themselves, they were much more expensive, a high end IBM XT was 5K.
We'll adapt and get used again to higher prices, safe up a year or maybe more before buidling new machines, buy refurbs, for most people cloud storage is indeed not suitable for their needs, gamers are the ones hit hardest because they require the more high end components, for non gamers it's much different, a Dell, HP or Lenovo will be fine and not as expensive as trying to build a machine yourself.

I hope so, as I recall, during the pandemic, I remember the price of GPUs exploded and availability was scarce. My local PC/Parts store was having a lottery. They would get 1 or 2 new GPUs in stock every couple of months, and draw your name from a hat of hopefuls...

but recently it seems both availability and price have normalized a little..granted prices have not returned to pre pandemic levels, but that is to be expected...maybe the same will play out in a couple of years

 

[Marc]

I hope so, as I recall, during the pandemic, I remember the price of GPUs exploded and availability was scarce. My local PC/Parts store was having a lottery. They would get 1 or 2 new GPUs in stock every couple of months, and draw your name from a hat of hopefuls...

but recently it seems both availability and price have normalized a little..granted prices have not returned to pre pandemic levels, but that is to be expected...maybe the same will play out in a couple of years

With the pandemic you have supply chain issues, workers at home in lockdown and crypto mining taking up demand for GPUS.

now you have ai takine up demand for GPUs, ram and and storage forcing prices way up and consumers are being screwed.

and when it crashes there will be fuckton of e-waste because all HBM form factor GPUs, Registered ECC DRAM and U.2 form factor SSDs won't go into the average user's PC.

 

[Owain Taggart]

And yeah, that's another issue. There seem to be a lack of foresight in the entire thing. None of what doesn't get sold can be used by consumers, if I understand correctly, so what about consumers? It's not like it's suddenly a market not worth serving, but rather that there's another more lucrative market opening up. AI seems to be the new trend every industry is chasing, and like Crypto, I'm sure there will be a bubble, not to mention there was a burn-rate where equipment would often need to be replaced. All through that, the consumers are being sidelined.

 

[Candleicious Ghost]

If only the AI and cryptop bubbles could pop

 

[Owain Taggart]

Well, the Crypto stuff has been waning in terms of mainstream adoption, especially when it comes to NFTs and such, thankfully.

 

[bdub76]

If only the AI and cryptop bubbles could pop

Why do folks think this is a bubble? It's a new market that's building from scratch like the Internet did a long time ago.

 

[Candleicious Ghost]

Why do folks think this is a bubble? It's a new market that's building from scratch like the Internet did a long time ago.

Because every market grows for only so long then plateaus. they either level off and thrive or pop hence the term bubble. I wish it was just a fad that people got sick of but nup we are never that lucky

 

[bdub76]

Because every market grows for only so long then plateaus. they either level off and thrive or pop hence the term bubble. I wish it was just a fad that people got sick of but nup we are never that lucky

It's really only starting. We haven't even adapted AI bots at work. They're all banned for now.

 

[flyerdog]

Because every market grows for only so long then plateaus. they either level off and thrive or pop hence the term bubble. I wish it was just a fad that people got sick of but nup we are never that lucky

I suppose it's like everything else, people hear/read about Crypto- billionaires and think "I can do that!!!" and we're off....
much like teens and young adults have aspirations of being the next SM multi-millionaire influencer, but probability dictates that only a very few will ever reach that level of success.

hell, how many young boys pick up a football and think THEY will be the next Tom Brady?

different disciplines but the same mindsets

 

[Owain Taggart]

Why do folks think this is a bubble? It's a new market that's building from scratch like the Internet did a long time ago.

Because certain trends burn out. Take the Crypto and NFT trend, where for over two years developers were trying very hard to convince players that somehow NFTs in games were a great idea. Last year they they had backpedaled on them to the point that it's no longer talked about. The only adoption was via the industry, and even then they were facing an uphill battle for their use.

AI seems to be facing better adoption, but it remains to be seen wether it will have staying power. Tech comes and goes all the time.