Framework stops selling separate DDR5 RAM modules to fight scalpers | PCWorld
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  • tal@lemmy.todayOPEnglish
    65·
    10 hours ago

    I remember when it wasn’t uncommon to buy a prebuilt system and then immediately upgrade its memory with third party DIMMs to avoid paying the PC manufacturer’s premium on memory. Seeing that price relationship becoming inverted is a little bonkers. Though IIRC Framework’s memory-on-prebuilt-systems didn’t have much of a premium.

    I also wonder if it will push the market further towards systems with soldered memory or on-core memory.

    • SkunkWorkz@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      3 hours ago

      The Framework desktop already has soldered ram. That’s because AMD only sells that CPU like that.

    • djdarren@piefed.socialEnglish
      5·
      6 hours ago

      I’ll never forget buying my first MacBook in '07 and asking the guy how much it would cost to bump the RAM from 1Gb to 2Gb. He told me in no uncertain terms that I’d be better off looking online for a cheaper price.

      Well, in the intervening years they certainly have closed that loophole.

    • monkeyman512@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      10 hours ago

      I don’t see how it would push manufacturers to do that. I can see how it would make consumers more open to soldered RAM if RAM is so expensive there is no way you are going to upgrade it later. But, I would be interested to get your thoughts as I miss stuff that feels obvious I’m hindsight all the time.

      • tal@lemmy.todayOPEnglish
        8·
        10 hours ago

        If consumers aren’t going to or are much less likely to upgrade, then that affects demand from them, and one would expect manufacturers to follow what consumers demand.

        • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          71·
          9 hours ago

          RAM prices will come down sometime after the AI bubble bursts and they start making more DDR5 again.

          • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zipEnglish
            132·
            9 hours ago
            1. Prices rarely, if ever, go down in a meaningful degree. Stuff like this is partially necessity and partially a REALLY good excuse to see what the price ceiling actually is… and then turn that into the floor moving forward. Just look at gas prices
            2. The “AI Bubble” is likely to be on the same level as the Dotcom Bubble and the like. It is going to be brutal and a LOT of people are going to lose their jobs… and then much of the same tech will still dominate just with more realistic expectations. And that will still need large amounts of memory
            3. If the “AI Bubble” really is as bad as people seem to want it to be: A LOT of the vendors who make the parts you are buying RAM to use are going to be gutted. And then RAM production will drop drastically. Which will decrease supply and…
            • Diplomjodler@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              2 hours ago

              In 1995 I bought 4 MB of RAM for DM 200, which, adjusted for inflation probably works out to about €200 in today’s money. I’d say, prices have come down quite a bit, since.

            • dan@upvote.auEnglish
              8·
              7 hours ago

              Prices rarely, if ever, go down in a meaningful degree.

              In 2011, there was a large flood in Thailand that impacted ~40% of hard drive manufacturing. As a result, hard drives significantly increased in price. This was back when SSDs weren’t mainstream yet.

              A year or two later, when manufacturing capacity was restored, prices were essentially back to what they were before the disruption.

              Apart from disruptions like that, HDDs, SSDs, and RAM have always been going down in price.

              • Eskuero@lemmy.fromshado.wsEnglish
                2·
                3 hours ago

                people say go back in time to pick the correct lotto number

                I say go back in time and sell my 8TB disk for 80 billion