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Crucial exiting the consumer memory market

You can try to change the memory settings in BIOS. In my rig I have two sets of 2x8GB, one is Corsair and the other set is Crucial. They are 3200MHz rated but one of them, I do not remember which one, do not work when XMP is enabled. So I have the memory frequency set to 2933MHz and everything is fine. I've run memtest for 24 hours and they do not fail at 2933MHz.
 
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You can try to change the memory settings in BIOS. In my rig I have two sets of 2x8GB, one is Corsair and the other set is Crucial. They are 3200MHz rated but one of them, I do not remember which one, do not work when XMP is enabled. So I have the memory frequency set to 2933MHz and everything is fine. I've run memtest for 24 hours and they do not fail at 2933MHz.
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Yes, I won't bore the thread to death with the details, but while I haven't tried every setting, I can't get these DDR5-6000 kits to run at anything close to their advertised overclock speed of 6000mhz. More importantly, they've been causing system instability even at their lowest speeds of 4800mhz. I found settings that work OK most of the time, but that's not good enough. Weirdly, the kit that was NOT on the motherboard QVL has less severe issues than the one that WAS.

The finicky nature of memory choice during the PC build process was not something I anticipated.

And to the point of this thread, losing a major consumer memory vendor is is going to make it that much harder to put together a good system in the future even if we ignore the ludicrous price inflation situation.
 
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Lord Blackadder said:
Even if an AI-bubble burst causes memory prices to crash, there are so few memory manufacturers that they are sure to be seen as too big to fail, in which case they'll be bailed out at taxpayer expense. They now have nothing to lose by abandoning consumers entirely.

The end result of this collusion between governments and the critical electronic component manufacturers is that everything is on the cloud and we own nothing, control nothing. We can't even switch to Linux, because we can't buy hardware.
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Or not.

The crash won't hurt the memory manufacturers. It just means their excess profits will go away.
The crash will hurt the speculators who invested in the AI companies.
 
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Non-Euclidean said:
The crash won't hurt the memory manufacturers. It just means their excess profits will go away.
The crash will hurt the speculators who invested in the AI companies.
Click to expand...

It could hurt everybody. But I agree that the chip fab industry currently serving the AI boom sems pretty well-insulated from failure at the moment. If we've learned anything from the AI bubble, it's that no matter what happens next, it seems like there will always be a big appetite for CPUs and memory from somewhere. If AI-driven purchases peter out, people will still be buying PCs, phones, tablets, smart devices, cars with infotainment systems etc etc.

So the relatively few makers of these precious chips probably feel like they're in a permanent win-win and don't really have to play nice with anybody. Ever.

This reminds me of the ammunition shortage that began during the COVID lockdown (stay with me here). Supply chain shortages and rising costs, coupled with profiteering and panic-buying, led to popular cries for manufacturers to set up more production lines. The manufacturers maxed out their existing capacity but generally refrained from big investment in new production capacity, citing capital costs and uncertain future demand. The shortage lasted about three years or so, though price inflation has never really gone away.

During this same period, bicycle manufacturers essentially did the opposite, greatly investing in expanded production to meet soaring demand for bikes. Different markets, but today the bicycle manufacturing industry is in a crisis, with many smaller manufacturers going bust or just clinging on (and this was before the Trump administration tariffs worsened things).
 
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Lord Blackadder said:
Yes, I won't bore the thread to death with the details, but while I haven't tried every setting, I can't get these DDR5-6000 kits to run at anything close to their advertised overclock speed of 6000mhz. More importantly, they've been causing system instability even at their lowest speeds of 4800mhz. I found settings that work OK most of the time, but that's not good enough. Weirdly, the kit that was NOT on the motherboard QVL has less severe issues than the one that WAS.

The finicky nature of memory choice during the PC build process was not something I anticipated.

And to the point of this thread, losing a major consumer memory vendor is is going to make it that much harder to put together a good system in the future even if we ignore the ludicrous price inflation situation.
Click to expand...
You are running the latest bios?
 
Lord Blackadder said:
Yes, I've done several bios updates over the course of my tinkering. I've looked around the internet but have not been able to confirm an example of anyone else successfully running an identical memory/mobo combo.
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The crazy part is the memory controller is on the cpu so the motherboard shouldn’t have as much sway on correctly spec’ed memory working as it seems to.
 
Lord Blackadder said:
It could hurt everybody. But I agree that the chip fab industry currently serving the AI boom sems pretty well-insulated from failure at the moment. If we've learned anything from the AI bubble, it's that no matter what happens next, it seems like there will always be a big appetite for CPUs and memory from somewhere. If AI-driven purchases peter out, people will still be buying PCs, phones, tablets, smart devices, cars with infotainment systems etc etc.

So the relatively few makers of these precious chips probably feel like they're in a permanent win-win and don't really have to play nice with anybody. Ever.

This reminds me of the ammunition shortage that began during the COVID lockdown (stay with me here). Supply chain shortages and rising costs, coupled with profiteering and panic-buying, led to popular cries for manufacturers to set up more production lines. The manufacturers maxed out their existing capacity but generally refrained from big investment in new production capacity, citing capital costs and uncertain future demand. The shortage lasted about three years or so, though price inflation has never really gone away.

During this same period, bicycle manufacturers essentially did the opposite, greatly investing in expanded production to meet soaring demand for bikes. Different markets, but today the bicycle manufacturing industry is in a crisis, with many smaller manufacturers going bust or just clinging on (and this was before the Trump administration tariffs worsened things).
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No, we aren't seeing 5.56 at .33/round regularly from NatchezSS, but it did start to get below .50/round. Some of that price inflation has gone away. Primers have come down a bit also. To say the inflation has never gone away doesn't reflect the market. You aren't paying Covid prices now. Aside from Covid, huge demand swings were also native to the firearms and ammo industries because of politics and who was (or was expected to be) in office. A bunch of firearm friendly decisions in the courts and 2 Trump victories have kept a lot of expected price hikes in check. Right now ARs are the cheapest they have been at the bottom of the market, reliable ones (PSA, et. al.). It has caused some contraction in the industry where some players didn't see large enough margins remaining and left/sold out (Anderson).

When the AI bubble pops, prices will return to normality. Maybe not all the way, but significantly. There is a ton more innovation in storage tech compared to firearms. That drives competition and has been overall keeping things competitive. So no, I don't think your analogy works and I believe the current AI demand driven market effects will reverse to a significant degree. We were already seeing it in consumer GPU pricing. Obviously not at the top end where NVidia is selling cards without lube but at other price points, which were all stupid during the crapto mining craze.
 
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Non-Euclidean said:
No, we aren't seeing 5.56 at .33/round regularly from NatchezSS, but it did start to get below .50/round. Some of that price inflation has gone away. Primers have come down a bit also. To say the inflation has never gone away doesn't reflect the market. You aren't paying Covid prices now. Aside from Covid, huge demand swings were also native to the firearms and ammo industries because of politics and who was (or was expected to be) in office. A bunch of firearm friendly decisions in the courts and 2 Trump victories have kept a lot of expected price hikes in check. Right now ARs are the cheapest they have been at the bottom of the market, reliable ones (PSA, et. al.). It has caused some contraction in the industry where some players didn't see large enough margins remaining and left/sold out (Anderson).
Click to expand...

I agree that some of the inflation has gone away. But not all of it. Admittedly, I haven’t been keeping tabs over the last twelve months and am surprised to see they’ve really dropped in 2025. So the COVID panic took about 5 years to wear off.

Non-Euclidean said:
When the AI bubble pops, prices will return to normality. Maybe not all the way, but significantly. There is a ton more innovation in storage tech compared to firearms. That drives competition and has been overall keeping things competitive. So no, I don't think your analogy works and I believe the current AI demand driven market effects will reverse to a significant degree. We were already seeing it in consumer GPU pricing. Obviously not at the top end where NVidia is selling cards without lube but at other price points, which were all stupid during the crapto mining craze.
Click to expand...

I agree that is possible, and I hope you’re right. But I can also envision a post-AI bubble market where consumers are increasingly forced to relinquish the ability to buy and own things, and corporations get more and more products and services (appliances, cars) completely unnecessarily tied to tiered-feature cloud subscriptions. Planned obsolescence enters a new phase of all-encompassing intensity. Data center demand for hardware remains high, consumer supply is constrained, consumer costs stay high.
 
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Within our current economic system, consumers are locked into a buying cycle - when manufacturers and governments collude to constrain supply, raise prices, and reduce product life cycles, we’re stuck.

Boycotts don’t work. The only ways out are for consumers to vote for regulatory changes or for new manufacturers to enter the market offering products that are some combination of lower cost, more durable or repairable, and less attached to silly cloud subscriptions. All of which fly in the face of current corporate thinking. And in the case of memory even that’s not good enough, since if it can be used in a data center it will be gobbled up at any price.
 
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chrfr said:
The rumor was that Samsung was stopping production of SATA SSDs, not all SSDs. They have since denied this rumor.
Click to expand...

The rumor could still be credible, stemming from real internal discussions - Samsung could bow out next month or next year or who knows when - but this denial is a tiny piece of potentially good news. It would be better to hear this message confirmed at the executive level though, and not just from a spokesperson.
 
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Lord Blackadder said:
Yes, I won't bore the thread to death with the details, but while I haven't tried every setting, I can't get these DDR5-6000 kits to run at anything close to their advertised overclock speed of 6000mhz. More importantly, they've been causing system instability even at their lowest speeds of 4800mhz. I found settings that work OK most of the time, but that's not good enough. Weirdly, the kit that was NOT on the motherboard QVL has less severe issues than the one that WAS.

The finicky nature of memory choice during the PC build process was not something I anticipated.

And to the point of this thread, losing a major consumer memory vendor is is going to make it that much harder to put together a good system in the future even if we ignore the ludicrous price inflation situation.
Click to expand...

Are you using DIMMA2 and DIMMB2 for two stick memory slots?
 
Screenshot 2025-12-18 070843.png
 
Hardware Unboxed had a show with topics related to DRAM. One question that was asked are they thinking about selling all of their DDR5 and closing up shop? With prices going up on DRAM, SSD and GPUs, there may be far fewer people doing builds with current hardware.

I'm even wondering if the value of my iMac Pro has stopped declining as it has 32 GB of RAM, 1 TB SSD and the 5k screen. I still need to figure out how to get Windows 10 or 11 running on it.
 
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Just to close the side conversation for those that made suggestions: I swapped out my ASUS ProArt CREATOR B650 motherboard with an MSI MAG TOMAHAWK B650 Wifi (these manufacturers must have caps lock on whenever they name their products...).

That appears to have solved my memory stability/EXPO overclocking issues. The MSI BIOS actually recognized my non-RGB G.Skill Trident Z5 memory kit and suggested a settings profile for it for 6000Mhz. I haven't tested the other (RGB) memory kit that has slightly different timings (and was NOT on the ASUS mobo QVL). Obviously time will tell if this configuration is stable long-term, but it's booting, not taking forever to POST, and running at 6000MHz (which never worked with the ASUS board).

So to sum up: ASUS's QVL for the ProArt CREATOR B650 lists the G.Skill 64GB (F5-6000J3238G32GX2-TZ5N) kit will work, and it never did me - with both DIMMs in it wouldn't boot at all, and with one in it was fairly - but not totally - stable, but then only at 4800MHz. Notably, G.Skill's QVL does not list this memory kit as being compatible with this board. The other similar kit I bought (NOT on the QVL) (F5-6000J3238G32GX2-TZ5NR) differed in its timings and had RGB, and would boot with both DIMMs but was not completely stable either, and also refused to overclock.

They say experience is cheap at any price. At least I was able to get my $700 memory kit working after a $200 motherboard swap. It's a shame, the Pro Art seemed a very nice board, well laid out, full of features and good looking. The MSI loses a PCI slot but otherwise there's little difference between the two. Incidentally, for whatever reason the app that suffered the most from my unstable memory was Zoom - constantly kicking me out of meetings, which is obviously highly irritating...

So I guess these days, when planning to build a PC, you are going to be building the entire thing around the memory kit and GPU first. Everything else can be found on sale or replaced for reasonable money...

pshufd said:
Hardware Unboxed had a show with topics related to DRAM. One question that was asked are they thinking about selling all of their DDR5 and closing up shop? With prices going up on DRAM, SSD and GPUs, there may be far fewer people doing builds with current hardware.
Click to expand...

I don't know what the overall inflation roughly comes to at the moment, but with GPU prices in some cases doubling and memory prices tripling over the last 12-24 months, it's definitely going to at minimum make people much more careful with their PC purchases. But because this inflation is also trickling into all other electronic devices, I am not sure if people will shift towards mobile devices/consoles, or if people will just start getting priced out and not buying at all, or much less frequently.

Planned obsolescence + massive price inflation is going to be a catch-22 for most non-wealthy consumers. I can't use my PC because it's been arbitrarily End-of-Lifed by the manufacturer, but I can't afford to replace it with a much more expensive new one....
 
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Lord Blackadder said:
Just to close the side conversation for those that made suggestions: I swapped out my ASUS ProArt CREATOR B650 motherboard with an MSI MAG TOMAHAWK B650 Wifi (these manufacturers must have caps lock on whenever they name their products...).

That appears to have solved my memory stability/EXPO overclocking issues. The MSI BIOS actually recognized my non-RGB G.Skill Trident Z5 memory kit and suggested a settings profile for it for 6000Mhz. I haven't tested the other (RGB) memory kit that has slightly different timings (and was NOT on the ASUS mobo QVL). Obviously time will tell if this configuration is stable long-term, but it's booting, not taking forever to POST, and running at 6000MHz (which never worked with the ASUS board).

So to sum up: ASUS's QVL for the ProArt CREATOR B650 lists the G.Skill 64GB (F5-6000J3238G32GX2-TZ5N) kit will work, and it never did me - with both DIMMs in it wouldn't boot at all, and with one in it was fairly - but not totally - stable, but then only at 4800MHz. Notably, G.Skill's QVL does not list this memory kit as being compatible with this board. The other similar kit I bought (NOT on the QVL) (F5-6000J3238G32GX2-TZ5NR) differed in its timings and had RGB, and would boot with both DIMMs but was not completely stable either, and also refused to overclock.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty surprised that the ProArt board gave you problems.

I did a lot of work looking at Motherboards and we settled on MSI and are very happy with it. I think that every manufacturer gets a bad batch now and then so a company can have a great reputation and just have some that don't work out. Glad you worked it out.
 
pshufd said:
I'm pretty surprised that the ProArt board gave you problems.
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I was too. It was a somewhat more premium positioned option (albeit on the B650 chipset) with a lot of good features. The lesson I learned is, when combining two products, check the QVL list from BOTH manufacturers when possible, and try to confirm that others are using that combo with success.
 
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