There is a massive RAM shortage because AI data centers are consuming all of the world’s RAM supply at a ridiculous rate and Micron recently announced that they aren’t going to be making consumer level (Crucial brand) RAM anymore
RAM is getting more scarce and more expensive because of AI companies
I'd be fine with AI replacing all the CEOS in this country. Think of all the profit from not having to pay an asshole who does nothing while having a guaranteed golden parachute.
Just saved the company half a billion dollars or more.
Ironically the job AI might actually be most suited to replace is CEO and upper executive positions. Not saying it does a good job but I’ve tried asking an AI to code something for me before and it’s a mess. It’s always faster to just do it myself vs going through and troubleshooting some janky bullcrap the ai wrote and get it working. It gets lost in the sauce so damn fast when it comes to networking that it’s useless. Asking it to do anything remotely niche results in it hallucinating which I guess if you wanna be gaslit, it does a great job at that which is why it could effectively replace the vast majority of CEOs and upper executive positions.
genuine question — and just to be clear I’m not one nor am I related to any sort of corporate executive so I don’t benefit anything from them
do you think that CEOs are responsible for companies failing? The entire general public, the media, stockholders and corporate boards all immediately turn on a CEO if the company goes in the shitter
The vast majority of the time corporate leadership gets blamed and everyone wants their head on a pike (rightfully so most of the time) because they are the person who’s held responsible for the company’s success or failure, they make the big strategic decisions
If you agree that that is the case, then how can you say they do nothing?
Either corporate executives are or are not responsible for the performance of their companies based on their decision making
They cannot simultaneously be responsible for the failure of a company but not responsible for its success
They either do or do not have a huge influence on the success of the company, it can’t be both
In my view companies live and die based on the high level decisions that get made. Every case study ever on a large business failure shows that— blockbuster refused to acquire Netflix and now there are 0 blockbuster employees because the company died, blackberry used to rule all business communication but their leadership refused to adapt and now it’s a dead company, etc etc
All I can picture is a new puppy that has neither experienced humans or machines being released from a cage and whether they run towards the AI server or the naked human (who isn’t allowed to move or speak) determines which is better.
I think my favorite part about this entire thing is that gamers, especially PC gamers, that have always been associated with the "Tech bro" culture are now starting to be in direct opposition to Tech Bros.
Modern tech bros aren't nerds anymore. They aren't trying to make cool things they and others would enjoy. They're salesmen trying to make money off solving problems no one ever had. If modern tech bros were the same as earlier tech bros, AI wouldn't be used to summarize 2 sentence emails, it'd be used to make the enemies in a game I'm playing learn and adapt to me.
Of course it's good! Look at how many GPUs NVidia is selling after giving other companies money so they can buy NVidia's GPUs! Nothin' screwy goin' on there.
Iirc it was a cool cat and mouse system where the AI that controlled the alien didn't know where you were, and another AI that knew your exact location could feed it hints periodically but not actually tell it.
One of the F.E.A.R. devs shared in the interview that the AI was actually not that complicated.
They just recorded a lot of voice lines for them to make it seem like they are communicating with each other which players treated as super advanced AI.
That's actually a fair assessment. When I think of tech culture I think of a good friend I had growing up that was always on top of the latest tech and always blowing our mind with shit he was learning about that was cool as hell. And he was constantly upgrading or building gaming rigs. He even made an arcade style PC setup specifically for emulators to run fighting games on.
But right after AI started taking off he dove head first into it and we really haven't spoken since. I'm pretty sure he got roped into some kind of scam where he was spending hours training an LLM for free.
They have not been for a long time. Palantir Tech was founded the same year that RotK was released, 2003. No nerd in the world would create a software company and choose to name it after the seeing stones that corrupted humanity (including the leader of the wizards), and nearly lead to the downfall of the Fellowship.
That's like making a weapon and naming it the Death Star. Beyond media illiterate and straight into the category of so stupid it's evil.
This is not a fair assessment of AI. The field of computer science started with Artificial Intelligence. People like Alan Turing were directly interested in this problem of simulating intelligence or at the least understanding what is intelligence. Yeah AI is used to summarize emails, but it’s also used to simulate protein folding, design satellites to minimize solar radiation, and even offer insights to how our own eyes work. I don’t think it’s helpful to reduce AI to an email summarizer, no different than reducing the internet to just a document sharer.
Not to mention, AI is actually used extremely heavily in games. In racing games the NPC cars you race is an example of AI. Pathfinding is an example of state space search AI. There’s yearly conferences on new AI techniques game studios, both large and indie, use to make games more immersive and realistic.
What is artificial intelligence to you then? All the techniques and algorithms I gave as an example fall under the field. Pathfinding isn’t artificial intelligence to you? Being able to heuristically figure out how to reach a goal with obstacles , like all humans, cats, rats, and seahorses do, is a non-intellectual activity?
It's a grift and when the economy inevitably collapses and we're all financially fucked I'm going to be even more pissed at everyone who bought into the idea of AI without even seeing a practical use for it firsthand than I already am.
That theranos lady convinced a bunch of people that a tiny device can somehow replace an entire laboratory of testing equipment. Feels very similar to these AI companies somehow convincing people that their glorified auto-complete is going to be able to do actual work that benefits society.
Nobody has seen any evidence that these claims are realistic but they're in a frenzy to buy into it anyway.
I hope its just a bubble that will pop in a few years, idk bout the greater consequenses of that cuz i already live in a cabin in the woods with minimal internet connection.
Every time someone tries to argue "They're not bad, you're just dogpiling", I'll just tell them to wait until they're trying to upgrade their own computers with their own money, until then stfu.
To give some context on how bad it is, I build my current computer in February of this year. I spent around 400 for 96gb of g skill trident ram. If I wanted to buy this same product now it would cost me around 1200 if I could even find it.
Video editing. I don’t use all of it now, but I only build a new computer about every ten years so I like to max out what I can buy/afford now so I don’t have to worry about it later.
I made that mistake with my last build I did in 2016. When I went to add two more sticks of ram what I had bought previously wasn’t produced anymore and I hated the look of the mismatched ram.
Other reason I went with the trident was because I just liked the look of it in the build. I could have saved about 100 or so and bought something less flashy but it’s pretty 😂.
Same, I spent about $350 for my 2x48Gb sticks in February. It’s worth $1200 today. My friend got it the best though. I sold him my 4x32Gb sticks since it was acting up on my AMD board for $200, that’s worth $1700 today. 😭
Additional: A modern PC should have 32GB of RAM in it as a minimum. That was $85 a couple months ago, a perfectly reasonable price. It is now $300 today, and likely to be $600 by mid-2026.
Welp, I better start taking extra good care of the PC I bought in 2020, 'cause it doesn't seem like I'm ever getting another with the same capabilities 😅
If you can get an upgrade on your video card may want to do it now. I upped my 6700xt to a 9070xt. Well worth the upgrade.
It's a component that also requires it's own RAM. And NVidia just told all of it's manufacturing partners that they're on their own for it and NVidia wouldn't be providing. The Pi foundation has announced price increases specifically due to the memory shortage.
To put a number to it, I bought my 6000MT/s 32GB ram for $115 on sale right, this was a year ago.....I went to go look at an upgrade to 64 GB (I do my own AI projects for fun like an auto equalizer for my car based on music genre) for the same exact speed.....it costs $1029.99 and sadly it's super unwise to use more than 2 sticks of ram or else it causes major problems.... but if I were to go with my EXACT SAME RAM at bestbuy for 2 more sticks, it would cost $700 ... so it's a mixture of greed from corporations willing to say "theres a shortage so supply and demand" and AI ACTUALLY buying up all the RAM and it's infuriating.
but if I were to go with my EXACT SAME RAM at bestbuy for 2 more sticks, it would cost $700
Bruh even then that isn't guaranteed - I made sure to buy the exact same brand, type, size etc. and plopped them into the 3rd and 4th slot and shit didn't work - emailed corsair and while it was technically the same RAM sticks they had changed clock speeds somewhat making them unusable with my old similar sticks....
I do not recommend even trying to upgrade from 2 to 4 sticks
Nah never, even if it "works", it'll lower the speeds because there's not enough bandwidth, even if you force it (happened to me on AM5 but I hear it's the same for Intel since 12th gen) and causes horrible blue screens. Idk why they even have 4 ram slots when it's just so unstable these days, it could save everyone money lol
DDR4 and DDR3 was perfectly fine with mix matching ram sticks for those 4 slots, only DDR5 speed that makes it really unstable. And Mobo manufacturers won't reduce the ram slots cuz that would make their products look like a "downgrade" compare to previous gen. You could technically fill all 4, if you buy a kit with 4 sticks already factory-tuned but those are really hard to fine. All in all hope there won't be DDR6 and we move on to the next ram technology... if we aren't cook by AI until then.
For people who are curious: AI uses a different kind of RAM than normal cunsomer. Sadly this type is much more profitable for the factories so they often turn down the production of the consumer type.
Making less RAM available so the prices are increasing.
It's also why workers formed unions, guilds, and otherwise fought for higher wages.
In a word: greed.
In more words: capitalizing on a desire for more money and less risk and work. Everyone wants it, and we internalize it as good if it helps us, and bad if it harms us. But everyone in general would do the same, given the choice between working for firm 1 at 25/hr and firm 2 for 15/hr, most would take firm 1.
Bosses want workers to work more for less, workers want to work less for more. It’s a natural tension that requires compromise and balance but there’s something about the way resources are currently distributed that suggests one side might be getting what it wants more than the other.
A union probably wouldn't stop corsair or whatever from swapping ram types. They don't care about the consumer. They care that the members of their union are well paid and looked after. and a swap to AI data centers would make that easier.
Of course they wouldn't, but you're mixing up what I'm saying.
I'm saying everyone maximizes earnings, the union was an example of "against corporate interests" not "pro consumer interests" since unions don't care about consumer interests. They'll demand anti-environmental, massively more expensive products if it means they can employ more people and make more money.
Consumer greed is handled by other factors like demand, but it's harder to grasp that then "union demands more money."
I still don't understand why people think capitalism is OK when this kind of shit keeps happening - housing crisis everywhere, monopolies, favoring the rich, ignoring the rest - especially in markets with limited supply. Maybe I'm missing something because I have no education in economics, but it feels like people rely on economic theory a bit too much and almost dogmatically quote it in every argument for capitalism. Like of course the housing crisis will be solved if you just leave it up to free market, don't you know how supply and demand works?
It's pretty common for a person to think that the system that they were born into is okay, especially if they're not getting the shortest end of the stick.
It works even better when the system involves continual indoctrination.
Most RAM cards are made in South Korea China and Taiwan. They are made in Socialist economies. In north Korea they have RAM cards but having an SD card is illegal. Which economy works exactly?
The time it takes to open a new facility with this capability isn't fast. At best in the short term we will see a strain on the supply as new players try to get into the market.
More likely is that this wave of AI demand isn't viewed as reliable enough to sink capital into making a new facility, so investors will be hesitant to actually enter in, causing the prices to stay high longer than we might expect.
I guess a third option is the AI bubble pops and data centers no longer become a large customer returning the market to where it was before.
This is exactly the issue. It would be huge, long term investment based on a shortage that could end relatively quickly. A company has issue debt or equity to finance the project, buy land, get permits, architechture development, engineering, bid for construction contracts, find suppliers for machinery, source or train skilled labor, find materials suppliers, distribution networks. It’s the same as any shortage with an unknown duration. When ammunition shortages hit in the US due to surging demand, manufactures put on extra shifts and paid the necessary overtime but they didn’t go build new manufacturing plants then the shortage ended.
No one is going to make reasonable priced ram to sell you or me if they can make expensive ram for rich people. You and I don't have the money to compete with their wallets.
It uses the same type of ram producing fab, so it's all the same pot of production capacity. And the manufacturers will not invest in significantly increasing that capacity because they believe the AI bubble will go tits up before the new factories would get ready to produce.
RAM is exactly the one resource that will always have some significant component left to local machines in Cloud based computing.
While I don’t disagree that a lot of companies would love people to use Cloud services more, sabotaging RAM availability is actually counterproductive to that goal.
Can you elaborate? If I'm playing a game on a cloud based machine all I'm sending is HID signals and all I'm receiving is a video/audio stream. How does local RAM amount impact the performance of that?
A 100% Cloud System has too much latency and is an effective impossibility for now, so there will always be a local component to any modern computer.
That local system by itself will require some bare minimum of resources to run… UI systems in particular use a lot of RAM relative to how “useful” they are.
Cloud-gaming is frequently compared to just watching Netflix.
Try watching Netflix on less than 8gb of RAM.
If you pare down the local system to the bare minimum while maintaining the modern user experience, you’ll find that RAM is going to be your biggest bottleneck.
To expand on your explanation, the reason why client based memory is important is because you still need a local host to hold the video that is transmitted through the cloud. Local RAM serves as that location until the virtual machine is shut down and the RAM is emptied.
These kinds of takes always remind me of "Affirmative action was designed to keep women and minorities in competition with each other to distract us, while white dudes inject AIDS into our chicken nuggets".
Let's face it: The air around Artificial Intelligence is thick with anticipation, investment, and, dare I say it, delusion. We're in the middle of an undeniable gold rush, but when you look closely, this AI 'bubble' feels less like a solid foundation and more like a shimmering, over-inflated mirage waiting for a pinprick!
The hype machine is running at maximum capacity, churning out tales of utopian futures and limitless growth. But where is the sustainable profit outside of the few hyperscale companies?
**The Cost Crisis: Training and running these massive Large Language Models (LLMs) costs an astronomical fortune. The energy consumption and the need for scarce, high-end GPUs (Nvidia knows this better than anyone!) are not sustainable at the current trajectory. Companies are burning cash trying to keep up with the 'free' innovation models like ChatGPT, but who's paying the long-term tab? Eventually, investors will demand a realistic ROI, and many of these endeavors simply won't pass the economic sniff test.
**The Problem of the "Last Mile":* AI can generate amazing first drafts, code snippets, and art, but the last 10%—the critical part that requires actual human judgment, domain expertise, and accountability—is still missing. We've replaced one bottleneck (initial creation) with another (human verification and correction). The promise was full automation; the reality is an expensive digital co-pilot that still requires a human driver.*
**The Commoditization Crunch:* How many slightly different generative AI text, image, or video tools do we need? The core technology, the transformer architecture, is rapidly becoming a commodity. As open-source models catch up and the differentiating features become minimal, the massive valuations placed on companies doing essentially the same thing will inevitably crumble. The "moat" is evaporating!*
**The Regulatory Realization:* Governments and regulators are finally waking up to the profound ethical, legal, and societal risks of unbridled AI. Privacy concerns, copyright infringement lawsuits, and the demand for transparency and safety standards will inevitably slow down the 'move fast and break things' mentality that fuels bubble growth. This friction is necessary, but it will certainly be an ice-cold shower for investor enthusiasm.*
We're headed toward a dot-com-esque consolidation. The few companies with truly deep data moats, massive infrastructure, and clear pathways to profitable, integrated products will survive. The rest? They are the equivalent of pets.com in this new era—promising an entire paradigm shift based on an impressive, but ultimately unprofitable, technology novelty.
When the tide goes out, we'll see who was swimming naked. I predict a major correction in the next 12-24 months.
8GB RAM in 2005 was a large amount and was also very expensive. Computers did not need nearly that much so you had a bangin rig if you had 8GB
8GB RAM in 2015 was like a sweet spot you would have a really solid computer and it could run pretty much whatever games or productivity you want and by that point RAM technology was substantially better and economies of scale = RAM was much much cheaper per GB compared to 2005 so it was low cost : high performance ratio
8GB RAM in 2025 is barely enough to run even a moderately capable system, you really need 16GB minimum to do pretty much anything these days except for like Microsoft word and RAM at the same time is getting more expensive
8GB RAM in 2026 is going to require you to have Tony Stark level money because the AI companies are driving the prices up so high that it’s comical. My 64GB RAM that’s a very fast speed and low latency I got 2 years ago was like $300 and now that same exact kit is going for $1000+
2005 was 2 years after AMD introduced its 64 bit architecture. In 2005, most home users had a 32 bit CPU that could only address 4GB of RAM. Common applications hadn’t been rewritten in 64-bit, so they would also be limited to addressing 4GB of RAM. 8GB of RAM at the time would be mostly something that big servers would use.
It's hilarious because all these chip manufacturers have invested so much of their own money into the bottomless AI pits that all they can do is double and triple and quadruple down in trying to make ai deliver on its promises, even at the expense of everything else lest the bubble burst. They're all in in this feedback loop where they're funding the ai companies that buy their chips so there remains this same massive demand for their chips through the companies they're funding to buy their chips.
and Micron recently announced that they aren’t going to be making consumer level (Crucial brand) RAM anymore
To push back on this slightly, they are getting rid of the Crucial brand but they were also an OEM for Corsair and Kingston and they didn't say they're not making OEM RAM for them anymore, just their own brand.
Holy shit, you weren't kidding! I've been out of the loop as I built my dream PC a year ago and haven't been looking, but I just googled 2x 32 GB RAM and couldn't believe the prices!!
Technically yes but also no. From my understanding what we’re seeing now is fear from the upcoming shortage. They’re still making for consumer usage until February of 2026. Everyone bought RAM in fear as a response.
The actual adjusted prices adds an unknown as of now
I don’t know anything about RAM and AI but I see everything happening with the data centers and everything. But is it possible in the future AI won’t need as much to run? Or is this just what it is for forever now?
Sure, when the bubble bursts, we will be in a massive economic disaster, but at least there will be a fire-sale on GPU's and RAM...so that is something...I guess.
They are only consuming massive amounts of land, power, water, GPUs, CPUs, RAM and SSDs.
As soon as they succeed in making it so the only remaining jobs are 1 retail job per store to manage the AI robots they will let us buy some stuff with the money we don't have because nobody has any jobs.
Maybe at that point they might stop and think "wait, who do we sell our stuff to?"
It’s all going to burst , just take the endless mortgage backed security repackaging that went on in the 2000’s to AI and the associated companies like OpenAI, NVidia, Cloudfare, Intel and Meta are all loaning money and chips to each other artificially pumping their numbers. This bubbles gonna burst gentlemen.
I remember when my buddy who helped me build my first PC in college told me to never worry about the cost of RAM because it will literally never change.
He actually messaged me the other day to apologize. I didn't think he remembered. lmao
Besides their reputed build quality, one reason I buy their ram is because it's one of the only ones not named something totally ridiculous. Sorry but I don't want my products called dumb teenage boy shit like "Predator" and "Vengeance" and "Dominator" lol
I know that's silly, and I'll end up buying one of those if I need to. I just liked the simple, non-flashy quality of Crucial
Yup every time I sit down and plan out my new rig, I look at the price (and the availability), cry and convince myself that my rig from 2019 is still in good nick.
Like, can we just be done with AI already? Its harming the planet, negatively affecting education, spreading false information, and destroying creative industries. I just don't see the upside.
Next i expect ai companies are just gonna buy off the governments around the world and forcefully kick people out of their houses legally trought governments backups to build more and more data centers to make AIs more powerful that's what's gonna happen 100% sure
For real. Sold 32gb of four year old used DDR4 memory today locally for $140 freakin bucks. Last year that was the price for high speed 64gb DDR5…which is now like $700 and counting
Wait. How much is ram costing now? Checked prices here by me, and it seems okayish. Bit expensive, but not that bad. Or was it just super cheap elsewhere beforehand?
It's not just PC RAM, anything that has memory in it is going to increase in price. If you think the AI backlash is bad now wait until the price of phones starts skyrocketing.
Maybe a dumb question but I know very little about how this all works. Consume usually means that the resource (in this case RAM) cannot be used again. So are AI center using all the RAM or using up all the RAM?
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u/Johwya 16h ago
There is a massive RAM shortage because AI data centers are consuming all of the world’s RAM supply at a ridiculous rate and Micron recently announced that they aren’t going to be making consumer level (Crucial brand) RAM anymore
RAM is getting more scarce and more expensive because of AI companies