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Question Is the cost of RAM going up everywhere?

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Steltek said:
The manufacturers are all changing lines over to produce HBM memory for AI accelerators since it is a far more lucrative market than producing standard DRAM.
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I read that elsewhere too.

But I wonder if it really can explain all of it. I mean the amount of HBM memory needed for AI should still be far less than the amount of DRAM for laptops/mobile/PCs/etc, right?

Just mobile phones alone sell ~1.5B units per year, and they have ~8 GB RAM each. How many GPUs are sold per year for AI?
 
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Fjodor2001 said:
I read that elsewhere too.

But I wonder if it really can explain all of it. I mean the amount of HBM memory needed for AI should still be far less than the amount of DRAM for laptops/mobile/PCs/etc, right?

Just mobile phones alone sell ~1.5B units per year, and they have ~8 GB RAM each. How many GPUs are sold per year for AI?
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You underestimate how much memory that the AI companies are hoarding. And, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and every OEM that wants to stay in business is being forced to follow suit. I wouldn't be shocked if your next phone, and everything else that uses computer memory, is significantly more expensive as a result. There are already rumors that GPUs and SSDs will be the next victims.

It is literally the DRAM version of the Covid toilet paper apocalypse.

And, in the past, every time the memory manufacturers have expanded production to cover perceived shortages, they paid for it when the economy went bust.

As a result, they've apparently decided that this time, like Homey D Clown, "Homey don't play that" (anymore).
 
Steltek said:
You underestimate how much memory that the AI companies are hoarding.
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So what do you base that on? How many GPUs are you expecting to be sold per year for AI use, and how much HBM memory per GPU on average?
Steltek said:
And, in the past, every time the memory manufacturers have expanded production to cover perceived shortages, they paid for it when the economy went bust.

As a result, they've apparently decided that this time, like Homey D Clown, "Homey don't play that" (anymore).
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There’s a flip side to that coin. After the current insane price bumps of around 3x, their margins must be huge. If they could sell with a profit at 1/3 of the current price before, their current margins should be at least 2/3 of sales price.

So there’s a lot of total amount of money to be made by increasing capacity. They can of course hope that not increasing capacity will keep the margins at this level. But eventually someone will jump in and increase capacity, when margins are as huge as currently.
 
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Fjodor2001 said:
So what do you base that on? How many GPUs are you expecting to be sold per year for AI use, and how much HBM memory per GPU on average?
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Mostly, articles I have been reading on both the tech and investment sides.

Data centers are sprouting up like shanty towns around the US. And, for instance, AMD's upcoming MI450/MI500 AI modules require at least 432GB of HBM4 memory for each unit. The server running it will require multiple times that in main system memory. I'm not as familiar with the nVidia side, but current products use lesser amounts of HBM (though I think it is HBM3, with them going to HBM4 in next-gen products) and more DRAM.

Consumer GPUs are going to be hit because GDDR6/7 and later memory lines will be repurposed to produce HBM memory. It is much, much cheaper for a memory manufacturer to repurpose an existing line for different production than it is to build a new one.

Fjodor2001 said:
There’s a flip side to that coin. After the current insane price bumps of around 3x, their margins must be huge. If they could sell with a profit at 1/3 of the current price before, their current margins should be at least 2/3 of sales price.

So there’s a lot of total amount of money to be made by increasing capacity. They can of course hope that not increasing capacity will keep the margins at this level. But eventually someone will jump in and increase capacity, when margins are as huge as currently.
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DRAM margins are presently huge, but HBM margins are even higher. The major memory manufacturers have all already stated categorically on the record that they have no intention of increasing their production capacity. Tons of companies can make DRAM modules, but the companies that make the actual DRAM chips needed to make modules are far fewer.

I really hope that I am wrong, and I hope you get to come back in a year or two and rub my face in it.

I'm not holding my breath for it, though, unless the AI bubble bursts. And, if it does, we'll all have a lot more serious problems to worry about economically than GPU/memory module availability.....
 
Steltek said:
The manufacturers are all changing lines over to produce HBM memory for AI accelerators since it is a far more lucrative market than producing standard DRAM. Further, none of them are planning to increase capacity because they are both enjoying the hugely increased margins and also are hedging against expanding manufacturing due to the potential AI bubble.

Some experts are saying that, absent an AI bubble crash, this has the potential to last for the next decade.

In short, all the manufacturers of non-AI related computer equipment are totally and absolutely screwed.
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Define "experts". Anyone who can claim to know what demand will be 10 years out is not an "expert".
 
Steltek said:
Mostly, articles I have been reading on both the tech and investment sides.
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You need to put actual numbers on it if we should be able to judge it. So approx how many GPUs for AI use are sold per year, and what is the average amount of memory per such GPU?

For comparison, just mobile phones alone sell ~1.5 billion units per year and have approx 8 GB RAM each. Then you have laptops, PCs, consumer GPUs, consoles, etc on top. I don’t think the number of GPUs sold for AI use is anything close to the sum of all those units. Yes, each GPU for AI use has more memory than e.g. a phone, but the difference in number of units sold is nowhere enough to compensate for that.
 
Fjodor2001 said:
You need to put actual numbers on it if we should be able to judge it. So approx how many GPUs for AI use are sold per year, and what is the average amount of memory per such GPU?

For comparison, just mobile phones alone sell ~1.5 billion units per year and have approx 8 GB RAM each. Then you have laptops, PCs, consumer GPUs, consoles, etc on top. I don’t think the number of GPUs sold for AI use is anything close to the sum of all those units. Yes, each GPU for AI use has more memory than e.g. a phone, but the difference in number of units sold is nowhere enough to compensate for that.
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Missing an important point. A minor reduction in supply to a market so as to not satisfy available demand has an amplified increase on prices. You don't have to prevent the eg; phone market from getting memory, you just have to cut their supply to below needed quantity. Bidding war starts, with lowest margin markets suffering first.
 
maddie said:
Missing an important point. A minor reduction in supply to a market so as to not satisfy available demand has an amplified increase on prices. You don't have to prevent the eg; phone market from getting memory, you just have to cut their supply to below needed quantity. Bidding war starts, with lowest margin markets suffering first.
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This I agree with. That said, if it’s only a minor reduction in supply, then it should also be relatively easy to ramp up production to cover the additional demand.
 
I've seen a couple of troubling experiences on reddit lately. Users needed to RMA faulty sticks of DDR4. They were told by the companies that they were OOS and would be giving a refund instead. I smell BS. They are going the cheapest route, since they can currently sell the ram at inflated prices. Don't give me any of that "Well DDR4 production is going EOL. Maybe they really are out of those SKUs." either. I've already decided it's purely due to greed, and won't be entertaining any arguments to the contrary. 😛 Have to wait and see if these are isolated cases, or this become SOP. Give you the money back, instead of their precious ram.
 
DAPUNISHER said:
I've seen a couple of troubling experiences on reddit lately. Users needed to RMA faulty sticks of DDR4. They were told by the companies that they were OOS and would be giving a refund instead. I smell BS. They are going the cheapest route, since they can currently sell the ram at inflated prices. Don't give me any of that "Well DDR4 production is going EOL. Maybe they really are out of those SKUs." either. I've already decided it's purely due to greed, and won't be entertaining any arguments to the contrary. 😛 Have to wait and see if these are isolated cases, or this become SOP. Give you the money back, instead of their precious ram.
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Dark days. Ram is in everything. Less ram + more expensive ram means less things sold with the entire existing production/distribution chain suffering. Profitable companies will start losing sales and for some, start experiencing losses, just to keep the money pit AI CAPEX train rolling.
 
DAPUNISHER said:
I've seen a couple of troubling experiences on reddit lately. Users needed to RMA faulty sticks of DDR4. They were told by the companies that they were OOS and would be giving a refund instead. I smell BS. They are going the cheapest route, since they can currently sell the ram at inflated prices. Don't give me any of that "Well DDR4 production is going EOL. Maybe they really are out of those SKUs." either. I've already decided it's purely due to greed, and won't be entertaining any arguments to the contrary. 😛 Have to wait and see if these are isolated cases, or this become SOP. Give you the money back, instead of their precious ram.
Click to expand...
We'll see. I just had a 32 GB kit of G.skill DDR4 go bad out of the blue and I initiated an RMA today... I sure hope they cover it with RAM because I'm now out of stash.
 

Samsung, SK Hynix join OpenAI’s $500 bn Stargate project with HBM supply pacts​

The creator of ChatGPT has requested volumes equivalent to as many as 900,000 wafers a month, twice the current global production capacity​

By Jeong-Soo Hwang and Chae-Yeon Kim
Published October 1, 2025 at 9:17 PM(KST)

The two South Korean chipmakers signed letters of intent on Wednesday with OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman to supply high-bandwidth memory (HBM) semiconductors for the US start-up’s so-called Stargate initiative, a program to construct a network of hyperscale AI data centers around the world by 2029.


The San Francisco-based company, the creator of generative AI ChatGPT, has requested volumes equivalent to as many as 900,000 wafers a month, more than twice the current global production capacity.

Analysts estimate the commitment amounts to more than 100 trillion won ($72 billion) of incremental demand for the Korean chipmakers over the next four years.


https://www.kedglobal.com/artificial-intelligence/newsView/ked202510010013

Via

OpenAI orders $71B in Korean memory chips​

CEO Altman orders $71 billion in HBM chips for Stargate project.
Robert Clark, Contributing Editor, Light Reading
October 2, 2025

https://www.lightreading.com/ai-machine-learning/openai-orders-71b-in-korean-memory-chips

h/t MLID
https://twitter.com/x/status/1993120496557474112
 
People are going absolutely crazy in fear of missing the AI train/race. Massive deals are being done purely on hope and promises. When this bubble pops, it will hurt so many companies.
As for DRAM, hasn't there been like a huge price hike about every decade or so? I wanted to upgrade the RAM, but then decided to wait to see what the sweetspot for zen6 is. Hopefully 32GB is enough for however long this price hike lasts.
 
dlerious said:
Not that I can see. I go to the site, click Products drop down and choose memory. Under form factor and Type, everything is greyed out except DDR5 options.
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Did you clear your browser cache? Running no script or something? As it works normally for me.

Screenshot 2025-11-25 105723.png
 
I've seen several discussion lately of people finding select kits of 96GB or 128GB for lower prices that haven't been updated. For people with that kind of money and fearful of the next couple of years, it might be worth looking through various retailers listings.
 
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