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Wow on memory prices spiking again

HumblePie

HumblePie

Lifer
So the last time I had to buy any sort of memory was in 2012. I bought several different sets for different builds including my main pc. My main PC has 32GB (4 x 8GB) of GSkill ripjaws rated at 1866. I paid $110 for the lot of 4 sticks. I bought several lots of 4GB as well for about $20 a stick. So basically I was buying 8GB sticks of DDR for about $26ish and 4GB sticks for $20.

Today, the same sticks all go for almost triple that price. WTF?
 
Gas is cheaper than it was two years ago.
Most people buy way more fuel than they do DDR3, so it all balances out.

BTW, I've paid $309 for 2 x 128MB sticks of memory.
😛 I should really feel cheated, but I don't.
 
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I've read that the low prices were due to oversupply at the time. Today, there are fewer DRAM makers and a lot of the capacity has switched over to NAND manufacturing. So now we have expensive RAM but cheap SSDs
 
Sure do miss those low prices in 2012 but it is still better then the c2d days.

I bought 2x4GB for $40. and 2x4GB for $33 in 2012.
I bought 3x4GB for $100. and 2x8Gb for $130. in 2013.
By 2013 the prices started going up.
 
Yep, prices started going up in 2013 but they really took off at the end of 2013... I managed to pick up several 8GB kits (1600,1833,2133 speeds) all for around 50 bucks each back in October. Looking at the prices now, I'm very happy with the deals I got :biggrin:
 
I recall when I recommended 16 GB of RAM for budget builds, 32 for mainstream. It was ridiculous cheap, so much that there was no reason to NOT go 32 regardless if you actually used it or not. Same scenario than when HDs were dirt cheap - and same thing happened afterwards.
 
zir_blazer said:
I recall when I recommended 16 GB of RAM for budget builds, 32 for mainstream. It was ridiculous cheap, so much that there was no reason to NOT go 32 regardless if you actually used it or not. Same scenario than when HDs were dirt cheap - and same thing happened afterwards.
Click to expand...

I haven't tracked my Mem usage much past some early glances when system was used heavily, but from what I saw 16gb was ridiculously more than I need. :biggrin:

I doubt I have ever used more than 6gb. Perhaps sometime in the future 16gb will be useful for me or the average user, but 8gb is currently fine for the vast majority.
 
Damn, sucks to hear, I'm planing on building a VM server and I'll want to load that up with tons of ram (64GB or maybe even 128GB). Guess I'll either have to bite the bullet and pay, or put a smaller amount and hope the model of ram I pick is still available when/if prices come down. (don't want to mix ram types on a server)
 
my modded skyrim does not use more than 8 gb. does use up all of my 2 gb of vram although.

the next generation games will likely push the ram usage up although
 
sandorski said:
I haven't tracked my Mem usage much past some early glances when system was used heavily, but from what I saw 16gb was ridiculously more than I need. :biggrin:

I doubt I have ever used more than 6gb. Perhaps sometime in the future 16gb will be useful for me or the average user, but 8gb is currently fine for the vast majority.
Click to expand...
Joe Average doesn't need nor will ever use 16/32 GB of RAM, but you see lots of them with Core i5/i7 where even a lowly Pentium would happily suffice. There are tons of builds that are overkill. However, there are ways and ways about how to do so if you're generous with the budget.
When RAM was dirt cheap, 4 GB was standard and 8 GB of RAM was considered "high end", but those 8 GB were a tiny fraction of the budget compared to everything else, specially on high end machines (300 U$D Processors, 300 U$D Motherboards, 400 U$D Video Cards, 50 U$D RAM...). I recommended going big on RAM just because the price was pretty much record low, same with HDs before the Western Digital plant flood (Even when many people through 1-2 TB were "impossible to fill"). Maybe you ended up never using it at all, but for the price, if you had the budget, you couldn't simply say no.
 
zir_blazer said:
Joe Average doesn't need nor will ever use 16/32 GB of RAM, but you see lots of them with Core i5/i7 where even a lowly Pentium would happily suffice. There are tons of builds that are overkill. However, there are ways and ways about how to do so if you're generous with the budget.
When RAM was dirt cheap, 4 GB was standard and 8 GB of RAM was considered "high end", but those 8 GB were a tiny fraction of the budget compared to everything else, specially on high end machines (300 U$D Processors, 300 U$D Motherboards, 400 U$D Video Cards, 50 U$D RAM...). I recommended going big on RAM just because the price was pretty much record low, same with HDs before the Western Digital plant flood (Even when many people through 1-2 TB were "impossible to fill"). Maybe you ended up never using it at all, but for the price, if you had the budget, you couldn't simply say no.
Click to expand...

Makes sense from a Cost perspective.
 
I was getting 2x4GB DDR3-1333 GSkill without heatspreaders for $30 a kit on Shellshocker, a few times. Got a few 2x4GB DDR3-1600 GSkill "Sniper" kits for $35-40 too. Now they're like $80-85! It's crazy. Good thing that I bought ahead and stocked up.

Edit: It wasn't always that good though. I remember buying two 2GB DDR3-1333 sticks, branded, at MC, for $35/stick. That was like 6-8 months before the bottom fell out of RAM prices.
 
I remember being tempted with the thought of upgrading to some 8GB sticks when prices were still at an all time low, but I already had excess kits of 4GB sticks lying around from when they were almost $20 a stick, so I never pulled that trigger.

Don't really regret it too much because I have plenty of RAM if I need it, but it would have been nice to have overstocked even more so that I could sell some off and profit :twisted: :whiste:
 
Sad that I have to build myself a pc right now. In March 2013 Crucial Ballistix Tactical Tracer 8GB (pair of 4s w/ blinky lights) was $68. Today it's $109!
 
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FeuerFrei said:
Sad that I have to build myself a pc right now. In March 2013 Crucial Ballistix Tactical Tracer 8GB pair (w/ blinky lights) was $67. Today it's $109!
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Yup, unfortunate timing wanting to build a FreeNAS server with 16Gigs. Cheapest decent pair of 8's I could find was $133.

But like Blain, I remember paying $240 for 64Megs of PC-133 SDRAM...
 
Lucky I stocked up a bit on memory and harddrives when they were both cheaper. I completed a few builds for friends and I was nice enough to sell my extras off I had sitting around for close to the price I paid. Which is a steal compared to prices today. I sold him 2 sets of 8GB (2 x 4GB) gskill 1866 speed DDR3 sticks for $30 a stick. More than what I paid, but still a lot cheaper than what they go for today. Crazy. I could have really stocked up and made some extra money if I had known then how the market was going to play out today.
 
...heh... I remember the $100+ price tag for the 4 chips required to take my Tandy 1000SX from 384k to 640k 😀

I still have a pile of 256k x 4 DRAM chips if anyone has a Gravis Ultrasound they'd like to upgrade! 😀
 
PliotronX said:
Yup, unfortunate timing wanting to build a FreeNAS server with 16Gigs. Cheapest decent pair of 8's I could find was $133.

But like Blain, I remember paying $240 for 64Megs of PC-133 SDRAM...
Click to expand...

I just built a FreeNAS server with 4x 16gb ECC RDIMMs 🙁

I was out about $600.
 
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