[HN Gopher] There Is a RAM Shortage
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       There Is a RAM Shortage
        
       Author : paulpauper
       Score  : 23 points
       Date   : 2026-04-04 16:38 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
        
       | jcalvinowens wrote:
       | It is truly unbelievable. A 2x32GB DDR5 kit I paid $150 for last
       | July is listed for $885 today. Even DDR4 is getting hit, a 2x16GB
       | kit I paid $105 for a year ago is $230 today.
        
       | Zee2 wrote:
       | They're a bit behind the curve. Prices are dropping.
        
         | derstander wrote:
         | The article is from February.
        
       | harpiaharpyja wrote:
       | Do these companies that are buying up all the supply actually
       | need all that RAM _right now_? Or are they buying it all up in
       | anticipation of future need? If the latter, honestly this might
       | be a case where some kind of regulation really ought to step in.
        
         | ZiiS wrote:
         | Depends what you mean be 'need', but it is mostly going into
         | powered on systems not being stockpiled.
        
         | nostrademons wrote:
         | To the extent that most of this is going into AI and people are
         | having their ChatGPT and Gemini requests throttled because of
         | lack of capacity, they need it _now_.
         | 
         | AI is dramatically more compute- and memory-hungry than past
         | computing models, so if that's what people are using, it's
         | going to require a large build-out of computing capacity to
         | support the requests that are being made right now.
        
         | Havoc wrote:
         | They're not directly buying up RAM sticks per se, but rather
         | placing orders for say a GPU resulting in wafer capacity
         | getting redirected
         | 
         | And since enterprise GPUs have enormous leads times right now
         | yeah it is in anticipation of future needs
        
         | rcxdude wrote:
         | Some of the spike is speculation, and the overshoot seems to be
         | correcting itself now. But the deal that sparked it was a
         | contract promising to buy _future capacity_ , not just doing a
         | big block order for a bunch of stock 'in case' (which isn't
         | unusual: if you're a big buyer, you will almost certainly buy
         | most things this way).
        
       | ChrisArchitect wrote:
       | February 21st OP?
       | 
       | Some more recent impacts/discussions:
       | 
       |  _RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs_
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47161160
       | 
       |  _Apple 's 512GB Mac Studio vanishes_
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47296302
       | 
       |  _First Western Digital, now Sony: The tech giant suspends SD
       | card sales_
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47565075
        
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       (page generated 2026-04-04 23:02 UTC)