• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

The RAM crisis and the PC apocalypse

Feels like PCs are reverting.

I bought a 10TB CMR Hard Drive for $170 over the holidays. Now, it's costs $199 for 8TB CMR Hard Drive.

Absolutely nothing to do with reverting and everything to do with one of the basic concepts of economics - supply and demand.

When demand out strips supply prices go up.

You can still get 10TB drives, you're just going be paying a lot more.
 
I have to agree with Marc there, technology will go forward, that you'll pay more for it well yeah...
For example, i've got two Huidun h50 mini PC's they're still cheap and run rings around my Pentium Gold 6400 machines which are mid towers.. :cool:


DDR3 is pretty cheap :evil:
HA! got that covered, also DDR2, DDR, EDO.. even all the way down to single socketed RAM chips. :biggrin:
But I bet keeping my 20 year old Optiplex 745 around isn't a bad move.. :p :D
 
For example, i've got two Huidun h50 mini PC's they're still cheap and run rings around my Pentium Gold 6400 machines which are mid towers..

the N150 based system are pretty decent little units. I'm got a GMKtek that I use a thin client/remote terminal but in very popular in the homelab community some even using them with Proxmox.

Jeff Gerling a recent level2Jeff video that with the recent in increase in prices for ram and storage, the Raspberry Pi 5 are now the cheaper option again.
 
the N150 based system are pretty decent little units. I'm got a GMKtek that I use a thin client/remote terminal but in very popular in the homelab community some even using them with Proxmox.

Jeff Gerling a recent level2Jeff video that with the recent in increase in prices for ram and storage, the Raspberry Pi 5 are now the cheaper option again.
My router is a PN42 with a n100. Works greats. I bought the barebones version because I wanted a com port. I price it out again today. The RAM I bought costs three times as much, and the SSD is costs twice as much.
 
and it's all down to supply and demand and the point that has been made through out this thread.

Supply and demand is a boring and uninteresting answer.

Of course. But what's the repercussions of that? That's my point. Economics 101 doesn't tell us what PC sellers are going to do when their components cost more. Do they pass it all on to the customer? Do they sell less powerful systems? And then how do the manufactures react since they have corporate customers that are more willing to pay than individual consumers? Do they focus their R&D more on corporate products and spend less on developing consumer level products? What does the mean in the long run for consumer products?

Micron is an interesting example. The Crucial brand is going completely away. Micron is now focused strictly on the corporate customer. That's one less competitor in this space.
 
Supply and demand is a boring and uninteresting answer.

Of course. But what's the repercussions of that? That's my point. Economics 101 doesn't tell us what PC sellers are going to do when their components cost more. Do they pass it all on to the customer? Do they sell less powerful systems? And then how do the manufactures react since they have corporate customers that are more willing to pay than individual consumers? Do they focus their R&D more on corporate products and spend less on developing consumer level products? What does the mean in the long run for consumer products?

Micron is an interesting example. The Crucial brand is going completely away. Micron is now focused strictly on the corporate customer. That's one less competitor in this space.
Think we’re done cos you have no idea what you’re talking about.
 
^^ He does sort of have point here.
Repercussions are there, delays of certain products like graphics cards, CPU's, consoles and other related technology, Micron etc are avoiding to increase production capacity because if (when! I hope) this bubble burst they do NOT want to sit on top of an overcapacity because then you lose a shitload of money and retooling a fab for other products is complex and very expensive because during that time nothing will be made/sold and you will have to dish out the money for retooling on top of that.
Long run, 2028 is about when it all levels out again even when the bubble doesn't burst as quickly, there are more brands of SSD's, memory etc than Micron, bet the Chinese manufacturers are happy to fill that void.
So yeah, it's basically greed 101 with a dash of supply and demand with some stagnation and ridicilous prices for now.
In the long run things will get back to "normal" but there's always the next "crisis" epoxy resin factory blowing up, SSD manufacturer being flooded, zombie attack eating fab workers, you name it.
 
You can only guess.

I don't remember this happening in the past to this degree. There have been one off incidents with manufacturing, but this is manufacturers shifting production for corporate clients for data centers.

I'd like to hope the doomsayers are wrong, you have some saying this might be one nail in the coffin of consumer electronics such as computers and hobbyist building of computers to the point where you are stuck with prebuilt "plug and play" devices that are almost certainly online only, or mostly so devices tied to some kind of service.
 
I'd like to hope the doomsayers are wrong, you have some saying this might be one nail in the coffin of consumer electronics such as computers and hobbyist building of computers to the point where you are stuck with prebuilt "plug and play" devices that are almost certainly online only, or mostly so devices tied to some kind of service.
I wanted to build a PC this year, but I might end up with another work discounted laptop like I'm currently using. I think, I'll get two more years out of my current one given that I updated the RAM to 32GB last year. And I'll add another CMR hard drive to my NAS next year. I'm on a 4 year rotation with it as it's a 4 drive bay one, so I'm swapping out a drive every year keeping all the drive no older than 4 years old.
 
Feels like PCs are reverting.

Welcome to market inflation, where the customer gets less for more! You see this a lot more via foreign markets what base their prices on the US market, such as the games industry where new releases can go for up to $100 or more for a simple basic non-collectors edition version of games. It absolutely hurts the wallet. I bought a Logitech G110 years ago that pretty much made me swear off buying anything from Logitech anymore. This was a time when there weren't all that many keyboard manufacturers and Logitech was dominating the market space on store shelves, and I bought it roughly for about $200 CND, which isn't exactly cheap, and right out the box the keys were sticking. To say I was disappointed given what I'd paid for it was an understatement. The quality just wasn't there. This is why in some markets, when prices keep going up, these markets get less value for the same products.
 
Technology itself isn't reversing. Just the price went up, will self builds be possible in the future? Yes of course, you'll pay more for that but still.
 
Since "apex" graphics cards cost 2000 euro's or more and they'll sell like crazy I assume that people will save up longer before starting a new build or wait until prices come down again but yes, I assume that people like me, who build their own machines, will keep doing that, might be that I'll have to adjust a few things here and there but I probably will just take time to save up a year or longer to build a new machine.
 
Technology itself isn't reversing. Just the price went up, will self builds be possible in the future? Yes of course, you'll pay more for that but still.
It's reversing at the same price point.

Generally, if I look back in time, if I spent $1k for something, I'd get more for that one $1k every year. I'd get more RAM, better CPU, and better GPU. That's no longer the case once inventory runs out for companies that build machines like DELL and HP. You are likely to not get more year over year for the same dollars. That's the problem.

So what's the response? Do people keep the same machines for longer? And then what's the reaction on the R&D side? Do manufacturers slow down how quickly they improve stuff since it's harder for them to sell the latest and greatest?
 
Not always, in the past you'd get a top tier graphics card for 350 Euro, now that same level card is 2000 Euro, that, for example, has gone up through the years, it's not that straightforward.
Normal people might keep machines longer, corporations do not and price is irrelevant to them, they change machines after X amount of years and that's that.
R&D won't slow down, you can't afford to do that, the actual release of products, yes, that can be postponed, R&D never, stagnation means getting overtaken and again, normal people and gamers are irrelevant, that's peanuts compared to corporate buyers, why do you think that the CCD's AMD produces are the same all the way through the range? They can sell the same CCD for 10 - 20 times the price if it sits inside a server chip.
 
Nope, CCD is the part of the (AMD) chip where the actual CPU cores are located, Core Complex Die, AMD CPU's are chiplet designs, besides CCD's they also have an IO die and on some APU's a seperate grfx die, also the 3DV cache is another die that gets fitted underneath the CCD, so to get a 16 core CPU they put two CCD's in one CPU, want only 8 then only one CCD is fitted, have a big Epyc CPU then stuff for example 4 CCD's onto you CPU for 32 cores and 64 threads.
it's very cost effective, Epyc and Ryzen CCD's are all the same so no (expensive) different design for lower end and higher end CPU's.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top