Good time to stockpile some DDR4? Prices going up or down? Seems to me like they are just going up.

[VirtualLarry]

Just wondering. Six months ago, you could have purchased a 32GB (16GBx2) kit of DDR4 (ok, not great freq. / timings) for $100 or so. Now, 16GB kits of DDR4 (at better freq. 3000) are $100, and trending higher.

Newegg, in their latest flyer, has some DDR4-2400 16GB kits for ~$70, and their ebay store has some too, different brand / model kit, but similar specs for similar money.

Assuming that I could make use of some kits of RAM soon, for builds, or upgrades of my current rigs, would it be wise to purchase now at $70 per 16GB kit, or will prices soon go down? I've only really seen them going slowly up, week after week. (As well as SSDs.)

I was able to stock up on SSDs over the last year, as prices slowly trended downwards, but I don't have much in the way of RAM stockpiled.

Last time I bought RAM, I got some DDR3-1600 16GB kits for $50 ea. (Team Dark).

I did break down and just a few days ago, bought some Mushkin ECO2 DDR3L-1600 16GB kits, for ~$80 ea. The next kit up was like $86, and then most of them were around $95-100 for more mainstream models.

But that's DDR3. I could use some more DDR4.

Last time I bought DDR4, I bought some 8GB Geil kits for somewhere in-between $30-35 ea., so like $70 for 16GB, but in four sticks, which doesn't really help on H110 boards, that only have two slots.

 

[hojnikb]

It was a good idea to stockpile ssds and ram up until june/july where prices where at all time low. From there onwards prices started climbing (at least here in EU). I'm guessing there could be some price fixing going on /tinfoilhat

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Stockpile? Meh. Just buy it when you need it and charge your customers what it costs. $5 one way or the other isn't worth your time.

 

[XavierMace]

Stockpile? Meh. Just buy it when you need it and charge your customers what it costs. $5 one way or the other isn't worth your time.

So much THIS.

 

[Essence_of_War]

Are you trading on the commodity market or building machines for sale?

Unless you're exploiting very short-term market arbitrages (how?), these markets move fast enough that anything you're not using right away is effectively losing value and eating up space in your workshop/living room/whatever and aging out its warranty while it isn't in use.

Unless you're the size of someone like Dell or Newegg, there is never a "good" time to "stockpile" anything.

 

[UsandThem]

C'mon VirtualLarry, you've been around PCs long enough to have sees the constant up-and-down price of RAM over the years. Even if prices continue to go up, all it will take is one little DOJ investigation to bring it right back down.

Plus, Newegg always has some type of DDR4 speed in that price range. I get a "10% memory, today only" email from them once a week. Sure, it still comes out to be about $20 more than it was at it's lowest this past spring, but still not as bad as it was when Skylake first launched.

 

[plopke]

For me the prices of DDR4 have gone up to much since this summer to stockpile now , standard was 50-60 euro for 16GB 2400DDR4 CL16 , or 115-130 euro 32GB. Now that is 70-80 ,130-higher.
DDR4 or memory in general was/is increasing for multiple reasons , some switched to flash production , DDR4 becoming standard for all devices. SSD is becoming standard for all devices so SSD prices will very likely stagnate or increase a little bit. The world is finally dropping DDR3 which will make it more expensive and adopting SSD as standard. 500GB < 100$ seams to have been the tipping point for OEM to forget about mechanical.

But almost every single manufacturer said they are building or expanding their manufacturing capacities end 2017-2018. So 2017 might be a expensive SSD/DDR4 year but has happened before.

UPDATE : I mean stuff like :
https://www.techpowerup.com/227218/ddr4-prices-increasing-over-smartphone-chip-demands
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10706/market-trends-q2-2016-ssd-shipments-up-41-percent-yoy

The idiot I am did not buy the crazy monday amazon deal a few weeks ago mx300 was 750GB for 110-120euro on all amazon regions.

 

[Johnny Lucky]

Hi Larry!

I stockpiled early in the year. Newegg had the Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 3200 on sale and I had a coupon. I used the memory for my own personal case mod project and several customer gaming builds.

BTW - This is off subject but remember the threads you started about cooling M.2 ssd's? Both copper and aluminum heatsinks are now readily available.

 

[JimmiG]

It was a good idea to stockpile ssds and ram up until june/july where prices where at all time low. From there onwards prices started climbing (at least here in EU). I'm guessing there could be some price fixing going on /tinfoilhat

From what I understand, there are shortages of both RAM and NAND chips, and all the manufacturing capacity is being used by the mobile market. For example, I purchased my 850 Evo 500 GB in October 2015 for SEK 1848 = €192. Now they're SEK 1990 from the same store. Of course that might just be Samsung exploiting their advantage. The 850 Evo was a low-end "budget" drive in 2015, now it's nearly high-end (for SATA anyway) due to all the planar TLC junk that's coming out.

I don't think prices will be going up by much, but if you know for certain you'll be needing some DDR4 or SSD storage, now might be a good time to buy. I'll be upgrading to a DDR4-based system some time in the 1H 2017, so I'm considering ordering 16 GB's of DDR4 right now. I doubt prices will go down...

 

[cbn]

Virtual Larry, have you considered used Workstations (rather than builds) in some cases?

Reason: 32GB (8 x 4GB ECC Registered DDR3 1333) is like ~$40 shipped now for used name brand (Samung, SK Hynix, etc)

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Virtual Larry, have you considered used Workstations (rather than builds) in some cases?

Reason: 32GB (8 x 4GB ECC Registered DDR3 1333) is like ~$40 shipped now for used name brand (Samung, SK Hynix, etc)

1) it would be more interesting if it were 4x8GB.
2) You have to be a little careful with ECC and server parts. Many workstations/server boards are very, very picky about RAM. (The very short list of 4GB DIMMs I know work with my server are all still $20-$30 each on eBay.)

That said, since most all AMD CPUs support ECC, and are a bit less picky from what I understand, you could probably put together a pretty nice FX-powered workstation for cheap.

 

[cbn]

1) it would be more interesting if it were 4x8GB.

I've seen that as well. It is more expensive though.

.....but with 1P WS having eight slots 8 x 4GB would still work for me. (32GB RAM!)

2) You have to be a little careful with ECC and server parts. Many workstations/server boards are very, very picky about RAM. (The very short list of 4GB DIMMs I know work with my server are all still $20-$30 each on eBay.)

Thanks for bringing that up. I made the following thread to investigate compatibility:

https://forums.anandtech.com/thread...us-ecc-ddr3-registered-compatibility.2495946/

 

[energee]

Just wondering. Six months ago, you could have purchased a 32GB (16GBx2) kit of DDR4 (ok, not great freq. / timings) for $100 or so. Now, 16GB kits of DDR4 (at better freq. 3000) are $100, and trending higher.

Damn. I was just looking to buy another 16GB (8GB x 2) kit of Kingston HyperX Fury DDR4-2666, and it's now more than $120 at every major retailer. The price has increased more than $35 in roughly a month. There are lower priced kits with equal or superior advertised specs for sure, but I prefer matching sets when possible. I'm also particular about brand when it comes to memory. Kingston, Crucial/Micron, and Samsung are safe bets.

We should stock up six months ago, it seems.

BTW, does anyone know whether Newegg stopped sending those post-purchase X%-off-category deals?

 

[cbn]

(The very short list of 4GB DIMMs I know work with my server are all still $20-$30 each on eBay.)

Yeah I noticed 4GB DDR3 ECC UDIMMs are still a good deal more expensive than 4GB DDR3 ECC RDIMMs and that Server board you have (LGA 1150 with C224 chipset) doesn't list compatibity with ECC RDIMMs:

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C220/X10SLM-F.cfm

(If I am not mistaken to get compatibility with DDR3 ECC RDIMM you would need a LGA 2011 board with a C602 chipset*........I believe the 2P LGA 1366 boards are compatible as well)

*Not sure about X79.....with or without a Xeon.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I noticed earlier this morning that some of the 8GB DDR3-1600 GSkill kits were $55.99 or so. Above $50, for 8GB? Ouch!

(I bought some 16GB DDR3-1600 kits for $50 just a scant few months ago.)