Hi Accession,
On <Wed, 11 Nov 25>, you wrote me:

I do not play online games though, and I believe that is where the

I do, and am definitely interested in the state of things nowadays.

I hope someone with that kind of gaming experience will speak up.
For the single player games I play, I have graphics cranked all the way
up and everything runs smooth.


... Biology grows on you.


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Everything is to damn expensive these days.

Reading this a month later makes me sad that RAM prices _still_ seem to
be skyrocketing:

pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory

Are tariffs to blame?

It's not only new equipment, and of the retro equipment is priced so high it makes zero sense to purchase. Amiga speaking...

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In this case, no.

Yes, tariffs have increased costs, but this memory price thing is hitting worldwide, not just in the US.

I heard something about the producers trying to do something to slightly increase prices, but I don't know enough to know if that's a conspiracy theory, or the industry back to its old price fixing tactics.

But the demand from all the genAI buildout appears to be the actual
cause for the increased prices, followed by companies buying up
everything they can before the prices go up further, thus causing the prices to go up further.

Right.. Didn't even think about AI. All the companies are throwing a ton into this, so that makes sense.

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I heard something about the producers trying to do something to slightly increase prices, but I don't know enough to know if that's a conspiracy theory
or the industry back to its old price fixing tactics.

But the demand from all the genAI buildout appears to be the actual cause for the increased prices, followed by companies buying up everything they can before the prices go up further, thus causing the prices to go up further.

And the fact that one of the three companies making RAM decided to exit the consumer business to focus on genAI customers doesn't help, either.

I think you found the nailhead there. The demands of data centers, and the focus of the suppliers, is causing shortages (and higher prices) for the rest of us.

As for the OP's mention of retro equipment, I would suspect that persons
who are selling that have also noticed the high prices of new things and
figure they can get more money for the retro stuff. If people are willing
to pay it, I guess they are right. ;)


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Re: Re: ESXi
By: Dumas Walker to ADEPT on Thu Dec 11 2025 10:10:55

Hi, Dumas.

And the fact that one of the three companies making RAM decided to exit the consumer business to focus on genAI customers doesn't help, either.

I think you found the nailhead there. The demands of data centers, and the focus of the suppliers, is causing shortages (and higher prices) for the rest of us.

I hope when the wheels fall off all this generative AI stuff that all the high performance RAM and GPUs flooding into the markey can be snapped up for a pittance by cancer research organisations or something actually useful.

Or even just bought by the gamers who got costed out of the market...

BobW
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And the fact that one of the three companies making RAM decided to exit the consumer business to focus on genAI customers doesn't help, either.

I think you found the nailhead there. The demands of data centers, and the
focus of the suppliers, is causing shortages (and higher prices) for the rest of us.

I hope when the wheels fall off all this generative AI stuff that all the high
performance RAM and GPUs flooding into the markey can be snapped up for a pittance by cancer research organisations or something actually useful.

Or even just bought by the gamers who got costed out of the market...

I hope it does, too, but more because I do not believe that the people in charge of the future of AI are trustworthy, smart, ethical, whatever enough to keep any potential harm in check.


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Bob Worm wrote to Dumas Walker <=-

I hope when the wheels fall off all this generative AI stuff that all
the high performance RAM and GPUs flooding into the markey can be
snapped up for a pittance by cancer research organisations or something actually useful.

Y Combinator had an article about a guy who bought an AI system from
Nvidia used for $7500 - it had been poorly converted from water cooling
to air cooling and ran on 48V; can't find the link now. It would have
cost at least high 5 figures new.

Unfortunately, I'm guessing that it'll be like the bitcoin GPU wars of
the early 21st century, where the market price was driven up by miners,
then they flooded the market with used, cooked GPUs for the same price
or slightly less than they sold for new before the gold rush.



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