Michael Crider’s headline at PCWorld Today perfectly captures the absurdity of memory shortages in personal computers: Stores like Central Computers in the San Francisco Bay Area are starting to sell RAM at market prices, as if you were paying for your daily snack at a seafood restaurant.
“Costs change from day to day as manufacturers and distributors adjust to limited supply and high demand,” reads a message posted on the store’s display case. as Steve Lin pointed out. “For this reason, we are unable to display fixed prices at this time.”
Micro Center apparently does the same: “Due to market volatility, please contact the seller for pricing,” reads an intercepted store message via Redditor CassTexas (By Tom’s equipment).
It’s strenuous to overstate just how quickly the lack of RAM is changing the affordability of computers – and it could soon have an impact on other areas as well, like everything from gaming consoles for smartphones require RAM to run.
Three months ago yesterday, I bought 32GB of memory for my gaming PC, and since then the price of the kit has more than tripled. Now it costs $300 more. ($440 compared to $130if you are curious; a more popular version of the same set followed from $105 to $400.) Some prices have doubled since October, and while some 32GB kits can still be found for as low as $230, a 64GB DDR5 kit can easily cost $700, $800, or even $900.
The price of memory may influence the launch of some high-profile products. Valve indicated a RAM failure one of the reasons why he could not yet promise a specific price for his steam engine.
Claiming that Leaker Moore’s Law doesn’t work that Microsoft may have to raise Xbox prices again to compensate, but Sony has stockpiled enough RAM to last the PS5 for a few months.
This is Epic CEO Tim Sweeney recovery from a RAM crash due to AI can take years. He says that “factories are targeting cutting-edge DRAM capacity for AI, where data centers are offering significantly higher rates than consumer device manufacturers.”