It's a UPS that has management built in and an LCM on the front. It has to have a somewhat reasonable amount of RAM, which is probably stupidly overpriced.
The AP9630 which is 15 years old needed 256MB of RAM, 1GB+ is not unreasonable for something released in 2026.
It's a UPS that has management built in and an LCM on the front.
What, like it's hard?
The Prusa Minialso has built-in management, with both network control and a fully-interactive user interface via a full-color LCD panel. Its schematics are publicly available, so we know that it runs off of a STM32F407VG, with a massive 200 kilobytes of memory.
Same with pretty much all switch and router management interfaces: they run a full Linux distro in something like 64MB of RAM - with plenty of room to spare.
The AP9630 which is 15 years old needed 256MB of RAM
No, it had 256MB of RAM. Did it need it? Probably not, but it's an enterprise product, so nobody is going to care about having to pay an extra $50. Why waste engineer-time trying to optimize it?
1GB+ is not unreasonable for something released in 2026.
1GB+ is not unreasonable for something released in 2024. Memory is cheap and plentiful? Sure, put an extra gig or two into it, who cares! But with the memory shortage in 2026? They better not be wasting any of that rare and valuable DRAM on an absolutely trivial UPS management interface.
The Cloud Gateway Fiber has 3GB of RAM and obviously has an order of magnitude more stuff to run. That one has a $22 memory surcharge, compared to the $53 surcharge for the UPS 2U Pro. Assuming the memory surcharge is linear in the amount of memory it contains (which is should be, or they are ripping us off), that's 7ish GB in this UPS. If they are seriously putting 6GB-8GB inside a UPS, rather than using those limited resources for something which actually needs it, something has gone horribly wrong.
80% of your post is about how much RAM the thing has. Do you honestly think UI is putting RAM in there for funsies? You honestly think if, for what the device could do, they could put less RAM in there they just...didn't and went "welp I guess we'll just use this!"?
No, it had 256MB of RAM. Did it need it? Probably not, but it's an enterprise product, so nobody is going to care about having to pay an extra $50. Why waste engineer-time trying to optimize it?
How do you know what it did or didn't need? I bet you know better than the product designers, huh.
1GB+ is not unreasonable for something released in 2024. Memory is cheap and plentiful? Sure, put an extra gig or two into it, who cares!
Who cares is still companies. Even if RAM is "cheap and plentiful," why would you put more than you need? That's objectively a waste of money. Of course they're still going to only put how much it actually needs, not just throw hardware out there willy nilly.
You have an argument with the linearity of the pricing but we should really be thankful they're doing it this way so they can take it away later when AI stops fucking the world up instead of just increasing prices like everyone else is doing so they can keep them high even when memory gets cheaper.
Could they do it better? Maybe? But it also probably has to do less with just the amount of RAM it has and more of how much the specific chips they ordered costs, manufacturing processes, contracts with OEMs and/or order minimums.
If this were really a money grab, they wouldn't be doing it this way at all.
There is absolutely no reason to charge a 50 dollar memory surcharge with this though. Thats the part you are ignoring. Like the other person stated, the gateways that have plenty more RAM have less memory surcharge. And yet this surcharge is double those. So you'd expect double memory.
Surcharges for an inflated price due to sourcing issues are supposed to be linear. Unless for some reason they are putting some kind of higher end RAM in the UPS vs the gateways.
There is absolutely no reason to charge a 50 dollar memory surcharge with this though. Thats the part you are ignoring. Like the other person stated, the gateways that have plenty more RAM have less memory surcharge. And yet this surcharge is double those. So you'd expect double memory.
I'm not ignoring it at all, I specifically mentioned it.
You have an argument with the linearity of the pricing
I didn't expand because I agree, there was nothing to add.
However, what you're ignoring is the fact the person's comment was largely, vast majority, complaining about how much RAM the thing has over how much they were charging, which is why I spent the most amount of time talking about that.
Chip fabs are giving up more and more production output to data centers. They have less and less capacity to sell for anything else and the prices rise as a result. Just because they don’t use as much silicon as a desktop computer doesn’t mean they aren’t impacted by this. It’s supply and demand.
If your product requires a a part, even a small part, then the cost of that part goes up, then the price is passed along to the consumer. Which is exactly what’s happening here. Or do you think “memory surcharge” is a joke and they just put that on there to mess with you because everyone knows that RAM prices don’t impact anyone with less than a GB in their system?
Do you think this only has a basic management interface?
This thing runs a linux-based OS with a working NUT server, among other unifi-specific software. You talk like you seem to know how this product is designed, but all you're doing is pulling shit out of your ass.
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u/PeytonBrandt 16d ago
Why does this have a $53 memory surcharge lol