With Black Friday deals, some 32GB DDR5 RAM sticks are JUST a bit more expensive than a PS5 DE

Zathalus said:
You can still find some 32GB ram for under $200, but it used to be under $100. No idea how long this will last. If it doesn't normalise soon phones and consoles will start spiking in price as well.
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Oh yeah, I'm sure Samsung/Apple etc. are already salivating at the thought of being able to raise prices yet again.

Brb "Record profits in 2026, here we come!"
 
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Windom Earle said:
I bought 64GB (KF560C30BBEK2) in January for half the price it is now, absolutely crazy.
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Yeah, paid like $290 for mine at a decent CL level to boot, in late September. This is insane.

Time to buy 10x PS5s, hack them and run AI models! 😉

On a more serious note, prebuilts are actually a decent value now (until old inventory sells out).
 
DonkeyPunchJr said:
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At least these are affordable. I'm going to grab a pair to impress my friends with this status symbol.
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Ooh, I am going to hang these as the top of my Christmas Tree right alongside a picture of Sam Altman, Satya, Jensen and the rest of AI unmentionables in Last Supper style.

The question is who is Judas? I am thinking Elon. Altman is coming in as Jesus! 😉
 
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A.Romero said:
Oh shit, how old are you?

I thought I was on the upper end of the age scale here but I'm 42 and I was 12-17 when the doctom happened. I was aware of it but didn't understand all the implications (and by the time I was 17 I was very into computers).

I'm also outside the US. Did it have an impact in consumer grade equipment?
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Turned 46 a few months back. I think most of the forum skews around this age. Could be wrong though.
 
A friend shared his computer RAM purchase back in 2023 when DDR5 was newer. He had to replace some broken sticks, so he didn't have the benefit of timing it with sales, so this was the default MSRP back then ($150 less vs now):

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To be fair though, this RPG Corsair Vengeance I think is having stock problems, because it's higher than everything else.
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some folk were trashing me for buying 64 gigabytes of ram at the start of this year talking about it being a dumb financial decision.


they're still not entirely wrong though, i'm not looking to sell those sticks. A good gaming PC is priceless no matter how much they'll jump the component prices to feed their terrible AI servers
 
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64gigabyteram said:
some folk were trashing me for buying 64 gigabytes of ram at the start of this year talking about it being a dumb financial decision.


they're still not entirely wrong though, i'm not looking to sell those sticks. A good gaming PC is priceless no matter how much they'll jump the component prices to feed their terrible AI servers
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I wish I bought 128gb extra. Was planning to upgrade home lab later this year. Welp…
 
LOL, I just looked up by highest price in Best Buy:

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There were even a 4-pack of G.Skill 64gb each sticks that were selling for $2089.99.
 
yogaflame said:
I never thought I would say this, but with the ways things going, those who purchased Ps5 pro are justified.
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Console prices haven't budged yet but they likely will when existing stock sells through and new stock manufactured with the new costs start entering the supply chain and Sony/Nintendo are forced to raise prices to compensate

I'm thinking of trading my PS5 in for a PS5 Pro right away while I can still get a Pro on the BF price of $650 that price isn't going to last through 2026 when GTA6 is either released or delayed again
 
Was thinking of upgrading my 13700k and finally going AMD, but definitely not worth it for now with the RAM prices. I will rock that badboy until it degrades and decomposes into thin air.
 
LordCBH said:
Fuck this timeline bro. You could get 32GB of decent DDR5 for like $160 JUST OVER TWO MONTHS AGO.
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It will get so much worse very soon.

We're now entering the era of the "RAM Wars", however this isn't a war fought with guns, but with bidding wars and long-term contracts. Companies like Amazon, Meta, Microsoft etc have near limitless capital for their AI build-outs. They are signing massive, multi-year contracts that guarantee them access to a huge percentage of the memory manufacturers' output.

PC builders, laptop manufacturers, and gaming companies just can't compete with the purchasing power of these giants, leaving the consumers to fight over the scraps. You already touched on the high cost already. Retail prices for consumer DDR5 RAM have recently surged by what? 100% or more? That's just the start. Many predict prices will continue to rise well into 2026 and possibly until 2028.

There isn't an easy fix either. I suppose you might expect major memory manufacturers to start investing to meet demand, but they're probably not going to invest billions building new factories if the AI bubble pops. That would just cause a huge oversupply down the road. Instead, it's AI first, then consumers get the whatever crumbs are left over.
 
kruis said:
Well. when that AI bubble finally bursts RAM, SSDs and graphic cards will be affordable again. Too bad we can't enjoy those good prices because when a trillion dollars goes up in smoke that will crash the stock markets, banks and ruin the economy....
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Do you think there is an AI bubble that will burst? Serious question as well because I want that fucker to pop.
 
IDKFA said:
Do you think there is an AI bubble that will burst? Serious question as well because I want that fucker to pop.
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it's been going on too long that at this point I don't think it's happening very soon. Big Tech companies are quite smart and probably can come up with infinite excuses and promises to keep the bubble going.

Look at Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk's companies. worth more than most other companies, and all they have to show for it are bullshit promises. Been going on for 20 years. Who says it has to burst?
 
Best Buy is offering me $300 trade in value on the PS5 that I bought for $450 + tax 3 years ago now...

I think that's a pretty good deal, my net cost to upgrade to a PS5 Pro for $650 is uh $350 + tax

Yeah I think I'm gonna do this while the doing is good, PS5 consoles use the same GDDR6 RAM that GPU's use
 
IDKFA said:
It will get so much worse very soon.

We're now entering the era of the "RAM Wars", however this isn't a war fought with guns, but with bidding wars and long-term contracts. Companies like Amazon, Meta, Microsoft etc have near limitless capital for their AI build-outs. They are signing massive, multi-year contracts that guarantee them access to a huge percentage of the memory manufacturers' output.

PC builders, laptop manufacturers, and gaming companies just can't compete with the purchasing power of these giants, leaving the consumers to fight over the scraps. You already touched on the high cost already. Retail prices for consumer DDR5 RAM have recently surged by what? 100% or more? That's just the start. Many predict prices will continue to rise well into 2026 and possibly until 2028.

There isn't an easy fix either. I suppose you might expect major memory manufacturers to start investing to meet demand, but they're probably not going to invest billions building new factories if the AI bubble pops. That would just cause a huge oversupply down the road. Instead, it's AI first, then consumers get the whatever crumbs are left over.
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My belief is GPU prices will also skyrocket. So I bit the bullet and bought an upgrade today.
 
Immediate issues from sky rocketing prices aren't what is concerning. It's the little changes that happen in planning which cascade many years later that I worry about.
Pricing on steam machine effecting foundation sales.
Total memory for next gen systems like ps6 and nextbox.
Successful console gens have usually translated to prosperous pc cycles. More ports, pushing more power, better hardware etc etc.

We get a stagnate console gen and you are going to see pc hardware also stagnate. Why push cpu limits if ram is too expensive to take advantage of the other components.
 
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ReBurn said:
Seriously. The RAM I bought for $221 in March of this year is listed for $769 now.


It's more expensive on other stores. I'm not in need of any parts at the moment and I'm pretty glad about it. It's insane.
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I have 32GB and really I still don't see a need for more than that, but even if I did.....I sure as hell am not paying these prices.

I can wait for the industry to unfuck itself or the AI bubble to pop. Either way...I'm good
 
DonkeyPunchJr said:
If the AI bubble pops then our economy is pretty fucked. But it'll be fun to buy a bunch of dirt cheap computer parts.
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If the AI Bubble bursts (which it will), PC parts is likely going to be the last of people's concerns....

But yeah, PC part prices will crash

Autistic_Pancake said:
Point is, it's going to get only worse, since those assholes developing AI can't find a way to make their models more efficient. Everything they release now aims to 'know everything' and they feed more and more training data into their AI. All enthusiasts who want to use AI locally, beg the developers to give them smaller and faster models. That's also where all the fears about "AI everywhere (like in Windows)" come from: people know that only gigantic, huge AI is somewhat smart. And you can't put such a thing in every PC around the world, not now in 2025 at least - so, if Microsoft ends up shoving some kind of agentic garbage down the people's throats, it's going to be erroneous, non-reliable trash that would cause more harm than good. Probably smarter than local 24B - 32B models, but still shit, since there's just not enough hardware and electricity to saturate the whole world with 'good' AI.
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The thing is - as far as we are aware impossible to make AI more efficient, because it's not really AI - It's a Markov Chain on Steroids.

Nvidia is doing the smart thing on their side which is increase compute and energy of their AI chips and sell as much as they can before the whole thing pops. You can like you said - Quantize the models to make more efficient, which is the smart solution.

OpenAI is trying to beat Anthropic and Google in the game, at our expense.

So expect a DDR5 RAM kit to cost $999 by 2026.
 
Topher said:
I have 32GB and really I still don't see a need for more than that, but even if I did.....I sure as hell am not paying these prices.

I can wait for the industry to unfuck itself or the AI bubble to pop. Either way...I'm good
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I upgraded to 64 GB because of development stuff, but I'd it weren't for that I would be fine with the 32 GB I had. I should probably sell the old RAM while prices are up and make some bank.
 
Glad I didn't listen to people saying to go am5 with my upgrade and just went to a larger am4 cpu. It's been great 5700xt and 32gb ddr4.. I could of spent more and been f'd. Prices like that are a no go for me. I play at 1080p anyway. This is as bad as the mining bs.

Do these companies aver stop this shit? Ai bubble can't burst soon enough.
 
Draugoth said:
The thing is - as far as we are aware impossible to make AI more efficient, because it's not really AI - It's a Markov Chain on Steroids.
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It's so funny reading complete utter nonsense like this, that is stated so confidently by people who clearly have no idea what they're talking about.

If you said this to somebody who works in the field they would laugh in your face.
 
Montauk said:
It's so funny reading complete utter nonsense like this, that is stated so confidently by people who clearly have no idea what they're talking about.

If you said this to somebody who works in the field they would laugh in your face.
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I never said I was an expert, but if you have papers and sources for it I will happily take a read,

Because as far as true experts and I'm aware, 'Artificial Intelligence' does not exist, yet anyways.
 
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Shadowstar39 said:
Glad I didn't listen to people saying to go am5 with my upgrade and just went to a larger am4 cpu. It's been great 5700xt and 32gb ddr4.. I could of spent more and been f'd. Prices like that are a no go for me. I play at 1080p anyway. This is as bad as the mining bs.

Do these companies aver stop this shit? Ai bubble can't burst soon enough.
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yeah added another 16GB ddr4 ram to my system for 30 bucks last summer
these prices are crazy
I'd just go with the ps5 pro at this point
 
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PixelatedBeast said:
Outside of Counter Strike, DOTA, Half life, Banana and old games no one cares about?

Joe Biden Yes GIF by The Democrats


Often times with better optimization as well too....
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Slightly better optimization counts for very little when a PC is just faster. A mere 9060 XT will play every single multi platform game released this year better than even a PS5 Pro.

As for exclusives, depends on what you play. Racing games for example heavily favour PC. So do strategy games, where even games that are released on console (like Stellaris) are cutback and a year out of date. Never mind the indie scene.
 
Draugoth said:
If the AI Bubble bursts (which it will), PC parts is likely going to be the last of people's concerns....

But yeah, PC part prices will crash



The thing is - as far as we are aware impossible to make AI more efficient, because it's not really AI - It's a Markov Chain on Steroids.

Nvidia is doing the smart thing on their side which is increase compute and energy of their AI chips and sell as much as they can before the whole thing pops. You can like you said - Quantize the models to make more efficient, which is the smart solution.

OpenAI is trying to beat Anthropic and Google in the game, at our expense.

So expect a DDR5 RAM kit to cost $999 by 2026.
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Well, NVIDIA in this situation is like a manufacturer of shovels during the gold rush, except instead of gold people are digging graves for themselves. If AI fails, then the companies are screwed. If AI improves, then millions of regular people lose their jobs to bots. Someone is getting screwed either way.

As for the bubble... it's LLM bubble, not AI bubble. In the long run, I'm sure they'll find another, better approach to AI. Will it take years or dozens of years? That's the question. Currently, though, it's just a rat race.
 
Haha this sucks. They hedge is to buy your shit now and take good care of it. Whether its a ps5 pro or a pc, and dust it. You will be able to play games nicely for a long time.
 
I'm seriously thinking of buying a PC in the next few days. How important is it to get 32Gb over 16Gb regarding gaming?
 
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