What happened to memory prices?

I've been out of the PC game for a while...

I bought 16gb/DDR3 in mid 2012 for ~$70, I remember it not being the best deal out there ether...


The cheapest 16gb set I've found is $135?!!! What happened? I thought tech was suppose to get cheaper

 

RAM has slowly been creeping up, I don't think there's been like a mass shortage. Always goes up when you want to upgrade right..

 

RAM modules are one of the few components that get expensive over time due to supply and demand. It's always ideal to buy them when they're reasonably cheap, even if you don't use it you can actually make a good profit back when reselling later.

 

Because of the fire at the Hynix plant. Same reason HDD prices skyrocketed after the Thailand floods.

 

Thailand floods affected more than one manufacturer, it affected WD and Seagate. Hynix is only one of many DRAM fabbers. I could see price increases for a few months...but the trend has been getting more expensive.

 

there are 4 guys that do dram...

anyway, its because of the same thing that happens everytime there is a ram change, the prices go up

 

Right, 1/4 goes out, there are still other huge companies that fabricate DRAM, Micron, Samsung, Nanya, Elpida (purchased by Micron recently).

 

Supply and Demand does not justify the kind of price flip flopping that goes on nowadays in the market. Its sad, but economics fail to put more emphasis on greed and how that works and can manipulate the price of products.

Did they speak about it in your economics classes? Neither did they in mine. And yet we all know it exists and experience it everyday especially at the gas pump.

You don't need supply and demand to push a button on the display board and in crease the price of fuel by 10%. I guarantee you, someone will always pay it. And yes, I know all about competition, but 10 % is unlikely to motivate you go across the street to that other guy especially when this guy has such pretty counters.

But even if they do eventually switch in time, he still got the additional income he wanted at the consumer's expense.

See how easy that was? And no supply or demand paradigm needed. But you can apply a theoretical one, if it make you feel better about your loss.

 

If we assume that they do have an equal share, 20%, that's a pretty huge hit in the market.

Aside that you are right there are 5 guys who make sdram, samsung, SK hynix, micron and nanya

dosed, mixed and stirred, not shaken, from taptalk

 

That's crapnomics 101

dosed, mixed and stirred, not shaken, from taptalk

 

Then there's no greed in the system after all and everybody's honest?

And droves of people just felt like running out and buying more RAM and causing a demand because...they suddenly remembered that 64 bit can accept more?

No wait, the price hike was due to a typhoon? That's always works. Really?

Please see last sentence from previous post.

 

I'm glad I'm not a teacher

dosed, mixed and stirred, not shaken, from taptalk

 

Haven't Google about it for a while, but I thought the hynix thing is real old and the price increase was due to ddr2 need and all the cheap tablet and phone?
Any Google-fu expert please enlighten us?

 

Still think that its the natural price hike during the transitioning

Lpddr2 is used for phones lpddr3 should be used soon and we have the ddr4 incoming

dosed, mixed and stirred, not shaken, from taptalk

 

EtremeTech did an article on this (about a month old as of this writing).

http://www.extremetech.com/computin...rock-bottom-prices-will-probably-never-return

 

It's cyclical. Once DDR4 comes in full swing, those prices will drop over the following couple of years then rise again as the next RAM iteration comes into play. It's still a relatively cheap and easy upgrade for DIY. At this point in time I wouldn't buy any less than 16GB when buying a system especially if you're going to use it for a few years.

 

According to the ExtremeTech article, the fire was two months ago. Yet prices have been steadily rising for twelve months. So the fire might explain the recent hike, but not the overall trend. I do recall hearing that RAM prices were really low in late 2011 due to an oversupply, so that might also be part of it.

So the DDR4 theory is that with RAM manufacturers investing in DDR4 facilities, they're raising DDR3 prices to fund it?

I still expect that eventually RAM prices will fall, per-GB. It might take awhile until it reaches $30 for 8 GB again, but if capacities keep increasing, it should eventually happen. It's a bummer if you're buying RAM now, though.

 

Flash memory seems to be cheaper though.

John.

 

not price hiking to pay for the DDR4 implementation just losing manufacturing capability to DDR4, since the fabs are being converted to make DDR4, new machines for smaller manufacturing and so forth

SK Hynix Profit Misses Estimates After China Plant Fire - Bloomberg

SK Hynix microchip fire: pain and gain | beyondbrics

Strong chip prices offset SK Hynix output after factory blaze - FT.com

now a cartel price fixing is also probable after the all time low prices, however to prove a cartel is rather a very very tricky business

Flash memory pricing is due to other factors we have samsung trying to get more market share and thus pushing for more die efficient products that may or may not be cheaper

 

Heh, this happened with DDR, then DDR2 and now DDR3 - next time I'll buy a bunch of DDR4 memory when it's at its lowest price and resell it later for a profit. Fool me thrice, can't fool me again, lol...

 

By low, sell high. I know about that too.

 

Me too, but I didn't know what to buy, and still don't. Or I wouldn't be posting here.

 

I got a Gskill 4gig 1333 ddr3 stick for 8$ on ebay , keep searching then you can hunt a good one.

 

Ram prices are always high then drop like a rock after a couple generations of new ram comes out,,,128MB when it first came out was $100 a stick. now its $5 or $10 bucks or they are giving it away as no one uses it anymore. DDR3 desktop and laptop is in right now,,DDR2 is cheaper.

CPUS are priced the same way,,I upgraded my Lenovo for $12 to T6500-brand new,,a few years ago oems were $90 each.

Cheers
3Fees

 

All obsolete hardware eventually becomes worthless...

 

A hynix factory burnt down so they used that as excuse to ramp up the price on ALL ram. they did with hard drives too.

 

RAM prices tend to have a distinctive boom/bust cycle, but the overall trend is still downwards. For example in 2010 I bought 4GB of DDR3 for $100, which was just when the memory boom back then was ending. Here's a neat chart to visualize this: Graph of Memory Prices Decreasing with Time

To understand this you have to realize a few things. The major buyers of RAM are not people like you and me, they're OEMs like HP, Dell, Apples, etc. Their demands are driven by overall consumer trends, but they also have some buffer since they can stockpile parts. The supply side is also a bit inelastic since they can't arbitrarily turn RAM manufacturing on and off. Instead they try to forecast demand and manufacture towards that forecast.

It's not too hard to trace the story of RAM prices from 2010. Demand was high because Windows 7 had come out and everyone loved it and needed to get rid of their old XP machines. Intel was coming out with some great chips too, further stoking demand. Supply was low because the manufacturers had cut supply in response to the previous bust. RAM prices were at an all time high because of this lopsided supply and demand, and manufacturers were enjoying hefty margins.

The RAM manufacturers responded by increasing output. This works because eventually companies get greedy and try to take market share from their competitors. Whatever loss they take on the huge margins they had could easily be made up for in volume. And if your competitor starts undercutting you then you'd need to lower prices too and increase volume or no one will buy your RAM. This continued on for a while and eventually prices began normalizing. Around mid 2011 you could get 8GB for <$100.

Eventually the market started becoming oversupplied. This wasn't helped by the fact that tablets were cannibalizing PC sales, thus lowering demand for RAM (mobile ram is manufactured on different lines). The supply/demand had become lopsided the other way, and now prices were dropping dangerously low, as low as 16GB for $50 around mid 2012. At this point RAM manufacturers were losing money on every stick of RAM they sold. The situation was so bad that Elpida was forced into bankruptcy and eventually sold to Micron.

However Windows 8 was just around the corner, which would be the savior of the PC industry. OEMs started stockpiling RAM in anticipation of the huge sales that would result, and the manufactured obliged by not cutting supply as much as they should have (remember they can't easily restore supply so they risk losing market share).

Unfortunately Windows 8 was a dud. No one wanted to buy new PCs, and now OEMs were sitting on this huge stockpile of RAM with no incentive to buy more. Demand dropped precipitously and manufacturers responded by desperately cutting output. Eventually the OEMs ran out of stock and had to start buying memory again, at which point prices started normalizing. By around mid 2013 prices had about doubled from a year before. Margins were at least positive at this point, even if far short of the spectacular prices in 2010.

Demand was still pretty low however, and eventually the prices started stabilizing. However then fires hit hynix in September, which cut supply by quite a bit, spiking up prices some more. Although nothing as dramatic as hard drive floods. The manufacturers responded tepidly since demand was so low and they were still battered financially. It can also be quite costly to restart a manufacturing line.

But at this point supply has almost recovered and prices should fall a bit. Wait a few months and there's a chance prices will drop a bit (although not a lot). Wait a few years and prices will almost certainly fall again.

Basically there's a lot of in-elasticity on the supply side, and the demand side transitions from fairly elastic to fairly inelastic. The result is that the RAM market is highly susceptible to market shocks, which result in the boom/bust cycles you see.

 

Ya I remember getting a 8GB DDR3 ram for $43 at Newegg.com back around end of 2010 but now they are like around $70 or so I wonder why is ram more expensive. I thought tech stuff goes down since it's getting cheaper. Notebooks are going cheaper but ram is going up seems like. I hope it won't be going higher in the future. I hope it will go back down like few years agao.

 

You might be confused with the dates. I bought two 4GB sticks of DDR3-1333 for $65 a pop in November of 2010 and it was the best deal on Newegg at the time. I know that after that, memory prices dropped like a rock. Oh well, I am still using them.

 

Theres more too it than that.. I had a chat with a memory salesman, a few email, he concluded after all the time he has put in I know more than he does,,lol..

Memory market is not what you think, its like the stock market, in Taiwan and elsewhere there is an official group and only so many members, each member buys for lots of cash a seat at the table,,these persons buy directly from the manufacturers and do the reselling to the majors(samsung makes there own because of this), when I checking out ram and cas #'s, I found one man whom made the cas 2 ram for infineon and others-the one firm was a contractor firm that made ram and branded many different names on it, its more complicated circuitry for lower cas's than the higher ones thus higher price,,the more you buy the cheaper they can make it.....Oh right we dont talk about that.

With Mobo making is slightly different, usually a rent a facility and different companies bring there workers in contracted or not and make there stuff and then split the scene...there is basic equipment there, the chips and pcb boards, sockets and all hardware on it is assembled and packaged there for distro,ect,ect,etc,

Now in Taiwan there two persons who make most the stuff for Desktops is Terry Gou and laptops Barry Lam, The saying is if you have a desktop you got parts in it from Terry Gou, if you a notebook or laptop you got parts in it from Barry Lam, add Dr. to each of there names.

3Fees


Has anyone seen the girl in the short red dress and black top on, tell her I got a job for her, sharpening my pencils.

 

This seems like pretty standard fare, not to mention that with 64-bit OS's being so common capacities are going up like crazy.