Hynix FAB 1+2 on fire.

[ShintaiDK]

http://www.kitguru.net/components/memory/faith/hynix-fabs-on-fire-after-chemical-explosion/

Reports are still coming in, but the effects are immediate – with memory prices already shooting up by 10% in the first hour after reports started.
This is one of the main factories for nVidia GDDR5 we are told, so expect a major issue for the green team with production and pricing. That said, As nVidia begin to switch to other sources, so AMD’s price for Radeon RAM will also jump up.
Hynix makes 30% of the world’s memory in this area, and now it will lose half its production, so world production will drop by 15%.

Ouch!

 

[Eureka]

Good thing I just finished my build.

Damn. There goes my hope for cheap memory. Is SSD pricing going up too?

 

[ShintaiDK]

Good thing I just finished my build.

Damn. There goes my hope for cheap memory. Is SSD pricing going up too?

I wrote wrong previously. The answer is yes, since they prioritized NAND over DRAM.

 

[fleshconsumed]

Yeah, not fun... I'm only building one PC this year and I already got RAM, so I'm good, thank god.

If I'm reading the article correctly that fab only manufactures GDDRAM, so SSD's should not be affected, otherwise I'll be sad.

 

[blackened23]

Awesome. Time to make some cash with some DDR3 1866/2400 kits I have laying around.

 

[aigomorla]

Good thing I just finished my build.

Damn. There goes my hope for cheap memory. Is SSD pricing going up too?

no...

they dont do ssd's.

they do GPU Ram... so Dedicated Videocards will explode in price because vendors now feel they have a reason to inflate the prices on an already inflated market.

So the average consumer... no.. we dont lose out on anything as the average consumer doesnt need anything greater then 512megs of dedicated ram on GPU... infact most IGP's can handle the "average" consumer.

Its a sad day for the gamer tho.. cuz it means.. nvidia has a excuse to increase the price on a titan when its already majorly infalted.

 

[dangerman1337]

Don't expect massive price rises like the Thailand floods did to HDD prices or supply: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/04/china-hynix-idUSL2N0H013R20130904?irpc=932

(Reuters) - South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix Inc said on Wednesday a fire at its Wuxi, China, plant caused no "material" damage to critical chip-fabrication equipment, and it expects to resume production shortly.

"Currently, there is no material damage to the fab equipment in the clean room, thus we expect to resume operations in a short time period so that overall production and supply volume would not be materially affected," company spokesman Seongae Park said in a statement.

Park added the company will continue to assess the extent of damage from the fire, which broke out during equipment installation.

The actual fab equipment has not been damaged, maybe a supply shock for a few weeks but overall come October everything will be back to normal probably.

 

[Eeqmcsq]

Let's hope he's not downplaying the damages. I would hate to see prices skyrocket like HDD prices, which, while pretty decent nowadays, still haven't fully recovered from the floods.

 

[beginner99]

GDDR5 for the PS4? I bet MS hired someone to do some shenanigans to hurt Sony.

 

[MontyAC]

I'm set on ram. Hope the manufacturers don't jack up prices too much.

 

[blackened23]

Don't expect massive price rises like the Thailand floods did to HDD prices or supply:

I don't buy it. History has proven time and time again - when a tragedy can potentially create capitalistic opportunity, it will happen. I'm nearly certain that DRAM prices will rise, just because manufacturers have an excuse to do so.

 

[RU482]

keep in mind that this is the busiest time of year in the industry. will be interesting to see how this plays out

 

[N-A-N-0]

Sigh, nVidia might try and take advantage of this to raise its already exorbidant prices.

Course I got beat to saying this.

Fab equipment is fine though and production should start shortly, we'll see...

 

[N-A-N-0]

With that said, HDD prices aren't too far off pre-flood at all now after price drops.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Sigh, nVidia might try and take advantage of this to raise its already exorbidant prices.

Course I got beat to saying this.

Fab equipment is fine though and production should start shortly, we'll see...

First of all, AMD would do exactly the same if they got the chance.

Secondly, its not nVidia buying the memory. Its the AIBs. So any price increase would come from Asus, Gigabyte, MSI etc.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Don't expect massive price rises like the Thailand floods did to HDD prices or supply: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/04/china-hynix-idUSL2N0H013R20130904?irpc=932

The actual fab equipment has not been damaged, maybe a supply shock for a few weeks but overall come October everything will be back to normal probably.

Thats very good news. If its a concrete structure. The fire on the roof should be rather "cosmetic".

 

[N-A-N-0]

I know AMD would behave the same, I just don't like nVidia's behaivour, no console gamer and many PC gamers don't.

They outright lied about the RSX GPU in the PS3, which is basically a GeForce 7800. There are many more off-topic arguments we could have.

Glad this wasn't a huge incident, SSD's were starting to really take off for one.

 

[ShintaiDK]

The first effect:

http://www.dramexchange.com/

DDR3 spot prices up 10-20%.

 

[seitur]

Yeah, spot prices behave like stock market prices - every small accident, rumor or an excuse to change prices is taken advantage of. Crowd psyhology.

Anyway - since it seems damages were "cosmetic" and roof only and like they said clean room is completly unaffected inside - then everything should be back to normal very soon and prices increases short and nullified.

Which is good.

 

[fleshconsumed]

With that said, HDD prices aren't too far off pre-flood at all now after price drops.

Except that
1. It took TWO full years to get to this point
2. Hard drive sales are hard to come by
3. Even on sale they're still more expensive on per TB basis than during pre-flood. Preflood/Preconsolidation I paid $30/TB, the lowest price I've seen this year was $32.5/TB, normally it's $33.3-35/TB on sale. And while it does look like prices are almost back to preflood/preconsolidation levels, it means that in 2 years we've made zero progress on price per TB metric.

 

[seitur]

Except that
1. It took TWO full years to get to this point
2. Hard drive sales are hard to come by
3. Even on sale they're still more expensive on per TB basis than during pre-flood. Preflood/Preconsolidation I paid $30/TB, the lowest price I've seen this year was $32.5/TB, normally it's $33.3-35/TB on sale. And while it does look like prices are almost back to preflood/preconsolidation levels, it means that in 2 years we've made zero progress on price per TB metric.

Good points. :thumbsup:

 

[aigomorla]

FIRST OFF...

HYNIX DOES NOT MAKE SSD's nor have they made high end DDR3 for a while now.

They got hit by the EU, a while back ago, and havent really been a big player in the market outside GPU DDR.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/05/17/eu-cartel-dram-idUSBRU01082120100517

You worry when samsung has taken a hit...
Then u can expect the SSD prices to skyrocket.
Because right now primary samsung is fueling the price drive on SSD's.
(look at Samsung prices vs all the others.)

Magnetic hard drives are not affected at all.
If anything... and somehow SSD's prices do get effected, i expect magnetic HDD's to FALL to fill demand and try to recover some of the lost market.

DDR3 desktop ram wont matter, cuz we dont use this ram in SSD's.
DDR3 isnt even used in GPU DDR.
DDR3 will have 0 impact.

If u see price gouges.. its:

1. The vendor trying to use miscommunication on the consumers part to make extra profit.
2. The vendor hoping miscommunication spreads and gives him a valid reason to increase prices.
3. The people who learned though miscommunication will go off on a SSD hording spree, when its not merited again.. driving the supply up and making the price rise.

If u see a vendor raise his prices... DONT BUY PERIOD... just hold off if u can and make them suffer.

Except that
1. It took TWO full years to get to this point
2. Hard drive sales are hard to come by
3. Even on sale they're still more expensive on per TB basis than during pre-flood. Preflood/Preconsolidation I paid $30/TB, the lowest price I've seen this year was $32.5/TB, normally it's $33.3-35/TB on sale. And while it does look like prices are almost back to preflood/preconsolidation levels, it means that in 2 years we've made zero progress on price per TB metric.

ur not seeing the benifit of this situation at all.

HDD prices rose.. this made people go elsewhere..
They looked at SSD's... SSD's started becoming more mainstream.
SSD's then started taking over shares in HDD.
Now, there are more SSD's in consumer systems (if u include laptops) then magnetic hard drives used as boot drives.

This wouldnt of happened if the price per gigabyte was still high.
Its cause we had a shift in need, which was supplied else where that we got this kind of break.

And personally im glad the HDD market got inflated... otherwise SSD market wouldnt of gotten deflated as quickly as we saw.
2 years ago... a 500gig SSD would of been 700 dolllars..
Now its 350 for a samsung 840 500gig...

Yeah.. im really sad cuz HDD prices rose... *goes kicking a can* i'll go tinker with my cheap SSD's.

If its the other way arround... *goes barking up a tree* so SSD's are expensive.. i'll expand my NAS with cheap HDD's once they take over market share again.

 

[Hellhammer]

HYNIX DOES NOT MAKE SSD's nor have they made high end DDR3 for a while now.

SK Hynix does make SSDs and more importantly, they manufacture NAND.

Now, there are more SSD's in consumer systems (if u include laptops) then magnetic hard drives used as boot drives.

That is just not true, not even by far.

 

[aigomorla]

SK Hynix does make SSDs and more importantly, they manufacture NAND.



That is just not true, not even by far.

well i stand corrected..

I havent seen Hynix ram being sold to consumers in a while after they got ding'd.

I do see them in the server side with FB Reg's however that fab is completely different from the fab that blew up.

I was also adding onto tablets in my statement, as im sure those records didnt account for the exploding tablet and handheld market.

However i dont refute the evidence you have provided so i'll take a "OOPS" position.

 

[N-A-N-0]

Except that
1. It took TWO full years to get to this point
2. Hard drive sales are hard to come by
3. Even on sale they're still more expensive on per TB basis than during pre-flood. Preflood/Preconsolidation I paid $30/TB, the lowest price I've seen this year was $32.5/TB, normally it's $33.3-35/TB on sale. And while it does look like prices are almost back to preflood/preconsolidation levels, it means that in 2 years we've made zero progress on price per TB metric.

Good points. Thankfully SSD took off at the same time or I could see more than a $5 max difference today.

You're spot on on the price per TB metric, the whole thing definitely stagnated but at least prices did drop quite a bit from the flood panic levels, right back to where we started (almost.)
Reason RAM prices just shot up a bit was more to do with companies stopping shipments to wait to see if they could cash in more than anything I think. Hynix's fabs suffered minor damage but that was according to their PR guy so take that with a grain a salt.

Someone in tech is usually willing to go cheaper to maximize profit and contracts (Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Apple, AMD, nVidia, HP, and others know this very well from their cheap contracts,) don't panic just yet. HDD prices went back down closer to Earth because this whole area of the market is completely different than say, the rising price of oil and gas, not out of the goodness of any companies hearts, but out of supply, innovation, competition, and demand.