RAM Price explosion.

[StainlessS]

Guys, dont know if you are aware but prices of RAM have shot through the roof.
About 5 weeks ago I bought 2 x Crucial 2nd hand (used) 48GB DDR5 SODIMM (laptop) sticks at £90 each,
today in same shop £185 each.
Even DDR4 has ramped up, due to these AI data centers swallowing all supplies and news that Crucial is gonna drop out of the market
with parent company Micron concentrating on the more lucrative data center stuff and shutting down their consumer brand 'Crucial'.
Crucial closure in not gonna happen for a year or so, but seems to be hitting prices already.
Also, looks like the SATA SSD's are gonna be hard to come by (Samsung dropping out of consumer market), same more lucrative DATA center market to blame, and
prices of these jumped on the likes of Amazon, together with NVME drives, and of course GPU's are hellish pricy too.
Keep your eyes open for places slow to change prices.
Looks like some people may be gonna hang on to older machines without upgrade, until some sanity returns to the system.

EDIT: And the shop where I got the DDR5 SODIMMS are out-of-stock, even @ £185 each.

[VoodooFX]

Originally Posted by StainlessS

Price explosion

Usual December in the computer hardware / IT equipment trade.

[GeoffreyA]

Yes. We're heading through a tough few years in terms of upgrading. It's going to be best to sit happily with our present computers, or grab a deal fast if one spots it.

The ending of the Crucial brand is a shame. That name has been synonymous with excellence for decades.

[StainlessS]

Yesterday I ordered a
VeeKey Firewall Mini PC, 4 Port i226 2.5GbE LAN Fanless N6000, DDR4, HDMI, DisplayPort, Gigabit Ethernet VPN Openwrt Home Media Server Compatible with pfSense/OPNsense (Barebone (No RAM, No SSD))
{Above looks to be mistake in Amazon description}
before I had realised that DDR4 prices had also risen, and same for SSD's,
Luckily, I probably got a few suitable DDR4 sticks spare, or can move some sticks around in machines, and also have several small nvme's 128GB and 256GB, so I think I can get away with it.

The machine with the 2x48GB DDR5 sticks is the GMKTec Mini PC--NucBox K9, with Ultra 5 125H (or it may be 225H, not sure).
I also bought (about 5 weeks ago) a 2TB Crucial NVME, p310 4th gen, so I guess I was lucky with my timing there.
Actually, just checked my amazon account, was NOT 5 weeks ago, was back in August, time flies faster the older you get.

No idea what I wanna do with the GMKTec thingy (impulse buy before it was sold to someone else), was thinking AI or something, but dont have a clue really what to do with it.
It has (I think) ARC integrated GPU. {Ultra 5 125H is I think a moblie/laptop version}.
I aint switched it on since a day or two after buying it and fitting the RAM and SSD.
Any ideas what I might use it for ? [EDIT: Ideally Win10 or Linux based, currently got W11 only installed, I dont want anything Micro$oft AI based, will Be W10/Linux multi boot]

EDIT: I've never actually gotten around to using any AI at all except for VoodooFX posted Whisper-Faster subtitle extractor. {which works just great}

[GeoffreyA]

Perhaps you could do some compute or encoding on it? The Arc SoCs have got quite nice media engines. I'm of the suspicion that their AV1 encoder is a hardware implementation of SVT-AV1, the quality being similar. In any case, now that W10 is locked down, it's as good a time as any to install a fresh copy from the final October ISO.

[StainlessS]

Actually, I was maybe thinking of install of W10-1909 on some machines, permanent offline, and I already have 1903-1909/x64/x86 WSUS Offline update files so can update final for 1909 without online Windows Update.
The last few updates of W10-22H2 really exploded size of drive footprint and my experience is that "Properties/Drive Cleanup" leaves multi-gigabytes of Windows Update Installer Files not being deleted, maybe M$ decided to F*ckItUp
just like some eg phone manufacturers do on the final version of Android phones, leaves phone near unusable and you have to go buy another new one.
I'm doing re-encodes of BD in x265, prev x264, maybe I could use it (GMKTec m/c) for Plex server with H/W encode to SVT-AV1 for view.
Re-encode due to mature x265 and also my usual encode script which now also limits Aspect Ratio to 2.21(chopping off extra wide stuff), I hate eg 2.5 AR and even wish modern Phones were all 16:9 (but you try finding one).

Thanx for the input.

EDIT: OK, I think I misunderstood what Plex server was for, so maybe not that.
I gotta think of something where 96GB of RAM is pertinent to use.

[GeoffreyA]

Disk Cleanup doesn't seem to work properly removing old updates. There is a DISM rebase command that helps a bit.

I've also switched to x265 recently, so am refining the parameters. Results are good so far: I think marginally better than x264 and quite a bit smaller.

[StainlessS]

Agree, but think x264 still better for 720p or smaller.
[I'm also gonna redo all DVD stuff in x264 again, with simiar AR cap to 2.21]

EDIT: AR cap to 2.21 avoids nasty little sliver of video in middle of screen, allows for fuller use of screen, and makes player software 'touch from inside", "touch from outside"
options work better than if left at full original ultra wide AR.
[Also, I think my S20 Ultra is about AR 2.21]

[Sunspark]

The hardware price increases are a problem, but I think people should not panic buy. After all these years most of us already have "good enough" systems and hardware like consoles, etc.

[Z2697]

When was the last time we saw PC hardware prices go boom?
It feels like we are in a circle. (or circus)

[GeoffreyA]

We're in the circus, and the circus-masters are cracking the whip

[Sunspark]

Just don't buy.

I mean, my first computer had a single-sided 140 KiB floppy disk that I had to flip over to use the other side.

If you don't care about archiving a vast collection of media, then what you have is good enough. Most everything has been hardware-accelerated for video decode for years now except for the newest codecs.

It's only AI and the leading edge of slop "AAA" games that need ridiculous setups.

China will be mass-producing semiconductors soon enough.

[Z2697]

Originally Posted by Sunspark

China will be mass-producing semiconductors soon enough.

That doesn't mean the prices will certainly go down, like YMTC did make the SSD price to went down (or just a coincidence, I don't really know) only for it to went up again.
CXMT has the capability to produce DDR5 memory right now, does it stop the price go skyrocket? No.

[GeoffreyA]

Originally Posted by Sunspark

Just don't buy.

I mean, my first computer had a single-sided 140 KiB floppy disk that I had to flip over to use the other side.

If you don't care about archiving a vast collection of media, then what you have is good enough. Most everything has been hardware-accelerated for video decode for years now except for the newest codecs.

It's only AI and the leading edge of slop "AAA" games that need ridiculous setups.

China will be mass-producing semiconductors soon enough.

Post-Sandy Bridge, most computers have been tolerably fast. It's mainly encoding and gaming that bring out the limits. So yes, enthusiasts don't need to buy, but will want to.

[ChaosKing]

I bought my 64GB Ram for ~160 €, now I see my ram kit for 600€ in online shops :/

[StainlessS]

@ChaosKing: You Lucky Lucky boy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5i1cJIwE7M

[Columbo]

+1 to the tin man.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oq3bLe6I_L4

[StainlessS]

Youtube, Posted 2 hour ago,
RAM Prices Finally Stabilize! Will RAM Prices Go Down in 2026?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRWkVM_RXkE

The current DRAM market in the US.

EDIT: Not looking good till 2028. [60 second rant]
SK Hynix responds publicly about RAM
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/A1q-rmcuvLA