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Crazy RAM prices

sahni130

sahni130

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 25, 2008
677
416
Atlanta, Georgia, United States
Hello,
So i was looking to buy more memory for my iMac and realized DDR3 prices have gone up significantly. matter f fact, have they not doubled? in December of 2012 i purchased 8GB of PC12800 (2x4GB) Samsung branded so-dimms for $40 from amazon and from what I remember, 16GB was around $80. What the heck happened and can we expect prices to come down at all?

-jay
 
They used some weather anomaly to get the price level back to a decent one for doing business. Guess there was no profit any more on RAM last time you bought it, and then it is nice if Mother Nature helps you reset the business to normal conditions. But Moore will start munching into the price soon again.
 
There was a fire at an SK Hynix plant in China, that's why.

The prices started to go back down now.
 
sahni130 said:
Hello,
So i was looking to buy more memory for my iMac and realized DDR3 prices have gone up significantly. matter f fact, have they not doubled? in December of 2012 i purchased 8GB of PC12800 (2x4GB) Samsung branded so-dimms for $40 from amazon and from what I remember, 16GB was around $80. What the heck happened and can we expect prices to come down at all?

-jay
Click to expand...

Additionally to the reasons stated above, the point is: PC sales are dropping. So at first you might think prices would drop because the market is over saturated, but this would be the case only for a short period. Companies produce less modules, but the production costs don't go down as much, because its efficiency drops as well.

This is not isolated to RAM prices, this is going to happen to PC prices as well. The less people buy them, the more expansive they get, the more people buy tablets or consoles for their personal needs, the less people buy PCs.
 
8 months ago I bought 16 gb 1600 mhz 2 x 8 gb for 99 dollars. now its 144-150 bucks. 160 if you want decent timings. im not paying that much of a markup I can wait.
 
I know a lot of us like to get good deals but you're paying say $50 more than you would have paid last year. Who cares.. you use your computer everyday, $50 for a nice speed bump, I wouldn't hesitate or "wait" for prices to come down. If I used my computer once a month then I would hold out but not for a daily use device.
 
oh, I definitely went ahead and ordered more ram, actually from a forum member RW3, here. 16 additional gigs for $130, can't beat it. I was just wondering what happened in the ram industry.
 
Yep, I definitely have noticed the spike in prices, I've put off a 16GB purchase for a machine for awhile until they come back down.
 
Unfortunately, we are vulnerable to an overly-concentrated supply for a number of computer commodity components, including, particularly, RAM and hard drives. Any disruption to this overly-concentrated supply will be costly and create strategic problems. Earthquakes, tsunamis, war, accidents, etc. etc. can be quite disruptive in such a market.

I'm surprised governments haven't stepped-in to diversify supply. It's not just a matter of prices, but it can affect health and safety. What if you simply could not buy RAM or hard drives at any price? (Of course, there is always a price, but it has to come out of *somebody's* supply...)

We've gone overboard with economy of scale.
 
+1 on the Apple store being cheaper (or at least not a rip off). I exchanged my base Retina MBP for the mid-range model. I realized with today's crazy prices $200 for an extra 4GB paired RAM and 128GB flash storage is actually a good deal!
 
Apple Store not being a rip-off depends on a few factors. I went for 16GB installed from Apple on my iMac but only because I use the Store for Education and get that discount and I wanted to be able to add another 2x8GB without needing to remove/replace anything. For me, that made the higher price, even considering the edu discount worth it. YMMV

As I write this the Crucial 16GB (2x8GB) set for the Mac is $139 at Amazon. I got it when it was $135, about $55 less than what I paid for the Apple stock RAM.
 
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sahni130 said:
What effect do you think that the introduction of DDR 4 will have, if any, on the prices of DDR3? When do you think prices will decrease to previous levels?
Click to expand...

Most likely the prices will go up as more DDR4 is used. Just look at how expensive it is to buy DDR and DDR2 these days.
 
alphaod said:
Most likely the prices will go up as more DDR4 is used. Just look at how expensive it is to buy DDR and DDR2 these days.
Click to expand...

Yes, once any technology becomes obsolete the prices will rise as fewer companies make or stock it.

Back in the 1990's when I was using "white box" PCs I built, I went to add RAM to one of them and the price of the "obsolete" memory was so high that it was less expensive to replace the motherboard, processor, and buy entirely new current RAM than add the old RAM.
 
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