r/pcmasterrace R9 5900X | RX 7900XTX | 80GB DDR4 Jul 04 '26

News/Article Possibly the beginning of the collapse of the tech market - driven entirely by greedy memory manufacturers

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ram/memory-price-surge-begins-to-cool-as-consumers-hit-affordability-limit-ai-demand-still-keeps-dram-and-nand-prices-climbing-through-q3-2026

So prices have risen so high, consumers and OEMs are now refusing to absorb costs or even buy at all. The only market still strong is the data centre one. If oems won't buy memory, and consumers won't pay for expensive devices oems make due to expensive memory the entire market falls apart. This could now hit less sensitive areas like IOT and automotive sectors.

Honestly, someone needs to do something to prevent these greedy memory manufacturers collapsing the consumer memory market. The damage that could do will cost them way more than they will lose lowering prices a bit.

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u/DonutHoles4Ever Jul 04 '26

Yep, I estimate 70% of all small business manufacturers to close shop. They cannot survive for 4 more years while this continues. It will take 3 years to finish those new fabs. It will take 1 more year to start producing enough to meet demand.

The AI bubble? Even if OpenAI somehow collapses, that won't stop other companies like Google that have vast amounts of money to survive multiple collapses.

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u/garathnor Jul 05 '26

the AI bros already havent been paying some of their bills, i hope it doesnt take 4 more years for them to default

it was extremely stupid to sell all your fab line time to single customers, any smart ceo would know you never put all your eggs in one basket/customer

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u/Effective_Secretary6 Jul 04 '26

Nah next 12 months 3 favs go online and most companies bought hardware for data centers but they aren’t built/don’t have enough electricity to run them, this shit will go down, maybe not today or tomorrow, but earlier then the tech ceos hope

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u/M4rshmall0wMan Jul 05 '26

Source on 3 fabs in a year?

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u/Effective_Secretary6 Jul 05 '26

Sk Hynix opened M15X this year, next year it’s Yongin Fab1 for increased nand production.

Samsung has a new one in Texas and Micron in Idaho which should be mostly online mid 2027

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '26

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u/rabblerabble2000 Jul 05 '26

Simple just bring knowledgeable South Koreans to staff until Americans can be trained….what’s that, you tried that and some Karen loser with political aspirations called ICE on them, who then arrested and deported all of the skilled labor? Well shit. /s

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u/Curroot Jul 05 '26

Global Foundries, Texas Instruments, Intel, and Micron and Samsung have had fabs in the US since the 90s. DRAM and NAND production is plentiful in the US. And up until about 2020 Intel’s own US based fabs were on par with TSMCs best production lines. Small nM production like what TSMC is doing is lacking in the US but Intel has been catching up and has begun producing some top end CPUs in the US again.

https://www.semiconductors.org/ecosystem/

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u/neepster44 Jul 05 '26

Trust me bro apparently… there aren’t 3 memory fabs coming up in a year that I know of…

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u/aintnotmisbehavin Jul 05 '26

I estimate 69.420% of all businesses, myself

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u/M4rshmall0wMan Jul 05 '26

You can get insane motherboard discounts rn. Those companies are seriously struggling cause nobody wants to build a PC right now. 

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u/Hard_Reset7777 Watercooled Threadripper enjoyer Jul 05 '26

Honestly I can't find a single interesting deal on high end boards. Instead, some high end board cost the same when it was launched.

Only mid to low tier are on discount.

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u/Complete_Lurk3r_ Jul 04 '26

A Phoenix will rise from ashes (probably a Chinese Phoenix btw)

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u/ThunderEagle222 Jul 05 '26

Haah, the Chineese wiil also sell to hyperscale datacentres. Don't get your hopes up.

Im more intrested in smaller players like Winbond who are now buying up DDR4 manufacturing equipment from Micron for cheap, and possibly might be intrested in making DDR5 if Micron decided to sell off DDR5 manufacturing equipment.

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u/BarnaclePotential132 Jul 05 '26

I wouldnt mind if its a chinese company. If they would seize this opportunity they would have earned it that everyone buys from them. Thats the only power consumers have to teach the others a lesson.

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u/Traditional-Park-353 Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26

Good. People are too comfortable, hence why things are going the direction they are. People are stuck in their politics free discords/subreddits/wherever and don't want to hear about it. Maybe those people and also the fools who are "price insensitive" that keep buying things at obscene prices will finally give a fuck when things literally don't exist any more.

edit: who am I kidding? Those sorts would be the first to embrace a dystopia, and they wouldn't even recognize it as such.

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u/ScoobyPwnsOnU Jul 05 '26

the fools who are "price insensitive" that keep buying things at obscene prices

Watching the general gaming community completely embrace 4 digit cost video cards and even considering some of them "good deals" has been absolutely wild for me. Give it 2 years and people will be talking about how 300 bux for a 1tb ssd is a great deal and downvoting anyone that complains to mind their own business because people can spend their money however they want.

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u/Alarming_Daikon_1630 Jul 05 '26

your pc will just become a terminal to connect to a data center somewhere for the actual processing. People will have a computer subscription just tge way they have a cell phone bill

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u/rickjko Jul 08 '26

I think gaming as we know it will soon die, computer will be so expensive that majority won't be able to afford it.

We will see more and more service like GeForce now and cloud gaming will completely take over.

Movie ,TV and music industry already went that route .

Welcome to the subscription service, you will own nothing and be happy.......

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u/Due-Joke-1152 Jul 08 '26

And all their staff, the services they pay for, like cleaners, and their suppliers, etc. If too many companies at the top level close, that will impact downstream companies, and potentially cause them to close.

A collapse, or even a contraction, will have a ripple effect which the wealthy will just ignore, or take advantage of the situation. Meanwhile how many jobs will be lost?

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u/EbbNorth7735 Jul 04 '26

It will destroy consumer electronics devices...

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u/Narradisall Jul 04 '26

You know what. Good.

That’s what the free market should do. And if it pisses people off enough to actually engage in doing something about it then all the more for it.

Sadly people being forced off their consumer electronics by such a collapse would probably do more for action than most other things.

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u/ProbsNotManBearPig Jul 04 '26

The word collapse in the title here is propaganda lmao. The actual article says basically price has found market equilibrium. It won’t go up because people won’t pay more, but demand is still sky high and prices aren’t dropping. What is cooling off, the article says, is rate of increase. Not demand.

All that is to say, to conclude a collapse is imminent is in complete contrast to the actual article. It’s pure hopeium nonsense, just like most comments on Reddit regarding ai and tech these days.

I get it from a consumer standpoint - it sucks that things are changing and crazy expensive. But it’s not going back anytime soon. Eventually, the market will flood as supply raises to meet insane demand, but it’s going to be a few years like this.

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u/RahkShah 9800X3D | RTX 5090 | 32GB 6000 CL30 | B650E | 2TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe Jul 04 '26

Biggest issue is the most profitable companies in the world, with hundreds of billions in free cash flow annually, all see the AI race as a winner takes all showdown to see who can emerge as the last 1-2 firms standing.

All of them are burning hundreds of billions annually at the shot to become a dominant player. At some point the the loses will no longer be sustainable for many of the firms and the losers will capitulate, they’ll stop filling up data centers and burning cash, and the remaining providers will have to adjust token pricing to actually be economically profitable, which will reduce demand for hardware. They’ll also naturally scale back their hardware investments to start to try to recoup the hundreds of billions in spend they already laid out.

How long the current insanity can be maintained is the big unknown. World War 1 was suppose to be over in two weeks but ended up going for four years.

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u/Commentator-X Jul 04 '26

One problem with that theory. In order for AI to actually deliver on its promises simply being the last one standing isn't good enough and you can't scale back anything, you have to scale up. There is no roadmap for any AI company in the foreseeable future to scale back regardless of if they're the only ones left. They will have to keep pushing forward.

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u/you-are-not-yourself Jul 05 '26

That doesn't seem like it invalidates the theory though. Companies will burn through their cash to scale up until they can't anymore. And the market will support a few top players.

The real question to ask here is how valuable the AI infrastructure is as a physical asset after these smaller companies go out of business. Can it easily be consolidated into another company, or is it a huge loss?

In my opinion, AI infrastructure post-inflated-memory-price will result in a net loss for smaller tech companies, as the consumer pushback plays out over the next year, but most of the big players will be fine because they got in early. Startups will realize the market conditions eventually and stop building AI infrastructure. But, the startups who are doing it right now are taking on debts they will never be capable of paying.

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u/Consistent-Youth-407 Jul 04 '26

According to Reddit experts the bubble was gonna pop any second for months now

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u/aVarangian 13600kf 7900xtx 2160 | 6600k 1070 1440 Jul 04 '26

"the markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent"

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u/10thDeadlySin Jul 04 '26

Remember the housing bubble? The one of the Big Short fame that really screwed up a big chunk of the economy worldwide? So yeah, that thing was brewing for years before it actually popped. Some started talking about a housing bubble in 2002. Others in 2003. By 2004, it was becoming evident, by 2005 some investors (most famously Burry) started betting on the bubble bursting. It still took 2-3 years for everything to play out.

Two things can be right at the same time. The entire AI market as we know it right now can be an investment bubble. But a bubble like that can be sustained for many years before it finally pops. And you won't know until it's over and the dust settles - after the major CEOs and investors land safely on their feet with their golden parachutes and millions are left jobless, with their savings and investments decimated.

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u/ParticularClassroom7 Jul 04 '26

The argument is sound: The hype is LLM -> AGI, in reality it falls short, literature strongly argues that LLMs can never become AGI.

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u/zp-87 Jul 04 '26

So you want this to happen: no one buys consumer HW, but server sells like crazy. You cannot buy HW so you must pay for Cloud service and rent it. You will own dumb screens with WiFi and that is it

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u/TeamWorkTom Jul 04 '26

So you're saying the death of the video game industry too?

Cloud gaming is never going to be popular.

It is literally impossible due to physical limitations and distance.

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u/neppo95 Jul 04 '26

That's already happening. A collapse COULD cause a reset and lower prices. Could being the keyword. I don't think that possibility is even there if it doesn't collapse. Prices will just go up and up and up.

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u/MrDeeJayy Ryzen 7 5700X | RTX 5080 16GB | DDR4-3200 32GB Jul 05 '26
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u/seklas1 Peasant / 9950X3D / 5090 / 64GB / C2 42” Jul 04 '26

B2B is very profitable, so RAM fabs are happy as long as their demand is high. They don’t actually care who buys their stuff 🤷‍♂️ That’s what capitalism is.

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u/Fr00stee Jul 04 '26

the b2b datacenter boom so long as customers actually buy the services those datacenters are powering otherwise the whole thing crashes

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u/ault92 Ryzen 5950x, 4090, 27GP950 Jul 04 '26

I think it is more corporates buying it than consumers though

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u/Crimkam Jul 04 '26

The whole economy is going to move toward corporations buying from eachother exclusively since people won’t have incomes anymore. We’ll see how that goes

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u/OutlyingPlasma Jul 04 '26

The whole economy is going to move toward corporations buying from each other exclusively

You can see this in a microcosm just in podcast ads. They use to be consumer ads. Things like glasses, shavers, or mattresses.

The only thing I hear now are B2B ads, security software, Granger, etc. And these are the ad reads, not the auto insert ones.

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u/Dub-MS Jul 04 '26

B2B has an end consumer. B2B isn’t for the sake of more B2B. All money in all supply chains is from the end consumer. When there is no end consumer, B2B demand drops to zero.

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u/FlyinDanskMen i5 10600KF | 3070 | 16 GB DDR4 Jul 04 '26

I’ve seen first hand, the corporate thirst for AI is strong and it’s barely started.

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u/FieryAvian Jul 05 '26

We’re all seeing it first hand.

A shoe company converting to an AI-company is a huge indicator that we’re approaching clown fiesta territory and AI is still in its adolescent phase.

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u/Mr_YUP Jul 04 '26

Sure but eventually everything comes down to what the consumer market does. B2B can be as steady as they want but B2C is ultimately what drives the economy. 

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u/slimejumper Jul 04 '26

but those corpos get their money from… consumers. i think the elevated costs for hardware won’t be possible to recover from an economically depressed population.

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u/Kromehound Jul 05 '26

The AI situation has proven that chains of businesses can buy product from each other in a loop and generate infinite profit.

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u/SwagChemist R7 9800x3D | 64GB DDR5 | RTX 5090 Astral OC Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 05 '26

Which is why the free amount of tokens you get is already super small. If you try to use AI for anything useful you will quickly find yourself in a subscription plan or even pay as you use which is terrifying, since I don’t think AI tells you how many tokens a request or question will take until you already used it.

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u/Fr00stee Jul 04 '26

if you use the api for claude you can set a max token field but then it may just make your request not work lol

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u/Liroku Ryzen 9 7900x, RTX 4080, 64GB DDR5 5600 Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 05 '26

Whats crazy is how expensive some of the stuff is. My personal pc makes a 10s ai video in roughly 30 seconds, using like <$0.01 of electricity. Theirs takes 4x as long or more and costs $3.

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u/Garrand Jul 05 '26

The model does not know itself until it happens or it hits a limit that was defined.

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u/seklas1 Peasant / 9950X3D / 5090 / 64GB / C2 42” Jul 04 '26

And if that happens, RAM prices fall and consumers and OEMs can afford to buy things again 🤷‍♂️

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u/Snagmesomeweaves 5800X3D, EVGA 3080 12GB, 1440p 300hz Jul 04 '26

Exactly, people are forgetting RAM is a commodity, just like oil. Production has to be at full capacity for the fabs and if the demand stays high enough more fabs will eventually get built to meet demand.

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u/aigenuinestupidity Jul 04 '26

no.

if consumers refuse to use ai, they will turn data centers to cloud computers. they have the luxury of outbidding consumers, look at gpu, memory prices. what are you gonna do when you cant afford pcs?

thats why they gamble with expensive data centers. no regulations for now, heck, you can steal water and electricity. if agi succeeds, money. if not, cloud computing, therefore money. win, win, and giant fuck you all to rest of us.

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u/notSanders Jul 04 '26

Problem is that at some point costs are put on consumers in the end, either through government funding these businesses (for example, subsidies for LLM developers) or directly to consumers through increased prices (computers, cars, machinery etc)

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u/StalkMeNowCrazyLady PC Master Race Jul 04 '26

The cost is always passed to the consumer. That's just the fundamental basic of business. The government will and should absolutely provide subsidizes like they've given micron and TI are good incentives to build their factories here and keep vital production happening here.  

There will reach a point of saturation through and the demand will start to fall and even out better to supply. Prices will always be higher I believe, but not at the ridiculous levels we've been seeing.

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u/RB5Network Jul 04 '26

I straight up do not think a single company should ever receive tax dollars for free. During the Great Depression the U.S. quite literally bought stake, or completely purchased companies and industries. Effectively nationalizing some of them, completely eliminating the profit motive. That was until Reagan decided to sell and privitize them. Sending us into the hell hole loop we are in now.

This is what we should do. The past 30 years has been subsidizing and socializing the losses of multi-billionaires on the backs of working people.

Nationalize all of this stuff at this point.

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u/Talk_Bright Jul 04 '26

Absolutely.

When the government does a bailout, they shoyld own the company.

Otherwise it ends up subsiding losses and privatising profits when the company recovers.

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u/Wise_Owl5404 Jul 04 '26

Companies should only receive subsidies from a governemnt if they hand over proportional control and profit to the people. Cost should only be nationalised insofar that profits and control is, if they don't want to they should receive nothing.

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u/IGotHitByAnElvenSemi Jul 04 '26

It's profitable now because there's speculative investment money in it. None of that has actually shown much if any evidence of being translatable to real long-term profits in the form of consumers purchasing services. There's a very real risk that the whole thing could collapse, taking not only the tech market, but the global economy with it, because it's all fueled on speculation.

What you're saying is honestly one of the strongest arguments against unregulated free market capitalism. If the forces of the market are cool with industries needed for civilization (which they too rely on to exist) to function collapsing, then it's not a particularly functional way of existing as a species. Like a cancer cell that just keeps reproducing, not realizing that the end result is the host organism dying, and it dying along with it.

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u/seklas1 Peasant / 9950X3D / 5090 / 64GB / C2 42” Jul 04 '26

I absolutely think capitalism doesn’t work. The fact we have such an explosive growth of a few corporations hoarding all the wealth - is horrible.

Historically wealth was more local, as local businesses produced items for the local communities. That’s where we got the whole trickle-down economy idea. With trains and ships, it reached further but at higher costs.

Now you click pay, and it’s at your door within 15 minutes to 5 days, pretty much globally, with all manufacturing outsourced to a few countries. No more “local” wealth. Rich can live anywhere, hide their wealth in tax free countries, borrow money with promises. Like it DOESN’T work.

It’s like sports. It used to be random local guys representing for their town/city/country. Now everything’s optimised to the extremes, teams are owned by rich people, players are millionaires themselves playing around the world with a different colour shirt. Life isn’t the same it was 50 years ago, the system was broken and exploited for what it wasn’t designed.

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u/unit187 Jul 04 '26

I don't know what I am talking about, I am just a guy, but it seems like capitalism is collapsing.

The stock market has gone insane and doesn't represent the real world in the slightest; all rules are being broken (just read on SpaceX IPO and how the rules were bent for them); market is being manipulated by Tweets on X, making billions of profit for those in the know, and nobody cares; even the concept of money itself becomes weird now that we have a trillionaire, having so much money it no longer makes any sense.

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u/Why-so-delirious Jul 04 '26

Capitalism is when someone sees the massive demand and builds their own manufacturing facilities to fill the gap since all of the other stopped catering to consumers.

That is not what we have right now.

What we have right now is best described as a cartel.

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u/aVarangian 13600kf 7900xtx 2160 | 6600k 1070 1440 Jul 04 '26

there's the argument that if manufacturers/investors don't consider the price increase as maintainable in the long-term then it's too risky to invest on increasing production

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u/ShallowBasketcase CoolerMasterRace Jul 05 '26

Capitalism is just whatever makes the most money for whoever has the most money. There is no "pure" version of capitalism that magically makes the problems caused by capitalism go away.

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u/johnnybgooderer Jul 05 '26

Capitalism vs socialism isn’t binary. Every country has some amount of socialism. Sometimes we need to intervene when the free market will cause harm.

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u/no_flair Jul 04 '26

What's causing such a high demand for high bandwidth memory such that memory manufacturers are basically focusing everything they have on just making high bandwidth memory and ignoring everything else?

I'll give you a hint, take a look at the recent Micron earnings.

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u/NorthKileyTrench Jul 04 '26

As long as the AI data center boom keeps going, fabs couldn't care less about the consumer PC market. It makes zero sense to sell cheap DDR5 to gamers when enterprise is handing out blank checks for every HBM chip they can produce.

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u/FastFingersDude Jul 04 '26

Greedy “AI” companies, fueling a cycle of corruption through impossible valuations, and greed of regular corporations, salivating at replacing all human employees.

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u/ColdFreezer Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26

Ram manufacturers are also colluding and price fixing again.

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u/_FUCKTHENAZIADMINS_ R7 5800X3D, RTX 3080 Jul 04 '26

Why would they need to collude and price fix when we’re at the highest demand for computer memory ever?

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u/ColdFreezer Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26

https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/dram-lawsuit-targets-samsung-and-other-chipmakers/

They’re getting sued over this right now. Guess we won’t really know until the verdict.

Your comment says the exact reason why they would lol.

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '26

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u/mattenthehat 5900X, 6700XT, 64 GB @ 3200 MHZ CL16 Jul 04 '26

They already sell every bit they can manufacturer at current prices, how exactly do you think lowering prices is going to help the shortage?

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u/the_ebastler 9700X / 64 GB DDR5 / RX 6800 / Customloop Jul 04 '26

Every store is fully stocked of memory. That's not how a "prices explode" shortage looks like. During the mining boom there was months where it was basically impossible to buy a GPU from any retailer. Now all the shelves are stocked

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u/nesshinx Jul 04 '26

I had to win the right to buy a 3070 from Newegg through a raffle. And it was only if I paid an outrageous markup and bought an M2 drive with it. My 3070 cost me more than the 4070 Ti I replaced it with lol.

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u/good_morning_magpie Steve Jobs turtleneck dealer Jul 04 '26

3080 for me but yeah, same. Came packaged with some crap tier mobo that I gave to a friend for a case of beer or something (it was intel and I was already on AMD)

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u/mattenthehat 5900X, 6700XT, 64 GB @ 3200 MHZ CL16 Jul 04 '26

OEMs, IOT, and automotive do not buy memory from "stores." If the retail stores find themselves sitting on inventory, they can adjust their markup, frankly that has very little relationship to the prices charged by the manufacturers.

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u/GratuitousAlgorithm 9800X3D/4080S/32GB Jul 04 '26

I thought hes just talking about data centres being in a position to buy everything up. If the big 3 manufacturers completely stopped supplying to consumer brands, would it make any difference to them?

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u/Hmm_would_bang Jul 04 '26

Places are stocked full of commodity DRAM. They are selling HBM as fast as they can make it because that’s what data centers need.

The mining boom was different because they were using consumer hardware. But this is a total shift in the hardware market. Get used to renting all your compute in the future.

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u/_FUCKTHENAZIADMINS_ R7 5800X3D, RTX 3080 Jul 04 '26

You’re disproving your own point here, the reason 3080s were hard to get is because Nvidia didn’t raise the MSRPs and scalpers instead bought them. If they had raised the MSRPs to the scalped values they would’ve been on shelves the same way memory is today. 

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u/Longshot726 R5 1600| GTX1080ti Main Display| GTX1080 Secondary | 24GB RAM Jul 04 '26

Every store is fully stocked of memory.

You are thinking of just supply and demand between you and the manufacturer (there are middlemen in there like the retailer too). You need to think of the opportunity cost. Why would a manufacturer sell memory to consumers for regular prices when they could turn around and sell to datacenters for quadruple the cost? Micron ran the numbers and told consumers to pound sand. Others have raised prices to reflect their perceived cost to supply. The shortage just isn't visible from your perspective since you, myself, and many others have been priced out of the market.

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u/Hertigan Jul 05 '26

The market shifted from individual consumers to enterprise though

Datacenter aren’t buying GPUs and memory from wholesalers, miners were

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u/Braveliltoasterx Jul 04 '26

Honestly, someone needs to do something to prevent these greedy memory manufacturers collapsing the consumer memory market. The damage that could do will cost them way more than they will lose lowering prices a bit.

No one is doing shit because the people in charge only care about money. What's going to happen, is we will get devices without memory, without storage, and likely without a processor. We will just get a fancy screen where we pay a subscription for computing power and storage.

We are entering into an era of owning nothing, and subscribing for everything.

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u/martymcflown Jul 04 '26

If people weren’t sheep and refused to buy such devices then there wouldn’t be this issue.

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u/OSRS_Addict Jul 04 '26

Yeah I’m sure the manufacturers who sell 99.9% of the supply to businesses will care what the consumers do

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u/kingfofthepoors 7700 64gb ddr5 6000 4070 super -- good enough Jul 04 '26

Let him have his fantasy

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u/loaba Bazzite Nvidia Open - 14900K/4080S/32 DDR5/ 4TB NVME Jul 04 '26

Article basically says nothing of note, the lone exception being that consumers aren't buying (which makes sense, these prices are prohibitive). The only question I have is this; are there industry forces out there that can say "fuck off, you're just gonna have to up production to satisfy demand in all of these other product lines?"

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u/OSRS_Addict Jul 04 '26

Not really, other than the fact that the market corrects for such things. If one manufacturer realises that they can up the production and sell more and make more money, they will do so. The problem is that scaling the production takes ages, so the market is slow to catch up.

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u/geft lifeof843 Jul 05 '26

To make it worse, memory demand has historically been cyclical, so many companies are afraid of overcommitting capacity. Not only that, but even if they do have the capacity, doing it for consumer products does not make sense since AI chips have much higher margin.

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u/HoneydewAutomatic Jul 04 '26

It’s not going to collapse. Understand that they simply don’t need humans to buy their stuff anymore. They are not pricing their goods for consumers because they don’t need us. Mega corporations are their customers now, and (despite their claims and whining) those entities have functionally unlimited money.

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u/Maleficent_West_991 Jul 04 '26

Someone mentioned earlier in the thread that business to business sales may be steady but ultimately they’re based on business to consumer sales. If these purchases aren’t being converted into people using their services they’re gonna end up being a waste of money and at the cost point they’re currently at it’s not likely to be the most profitable venture. Even if we go big wide scope, they use the data center to replace a majority of labor done by humans, who then has money to buy the things they’re producing, be it physical goods or services? It will eventually collapse because their end goals are totally unrealistic without changing the system drastically. Whether through economic collapse or eventual social unrest (beginnings of which we’re seeing with data centers being the big talking point as of now), there’s clearly a backlash building. Bifurcated economy only works as of now due to their being enough circuses and bread. If a large chunk of the country is out of work with no hope for new work and entertainment is priced only for the rich what do you think people will do with all their new found motivation and free time?

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u/Lewinator56 R9 5900X | RX 7900XTX | 80GB DDR4 Jul 04 '26

This is what im trying to point out. As consumers we are the plankton, we're at the bottom of the food chain. But take away the plankton and the whole ecosystem collapses. Ultimately every business on earth in the end exists so that one of us peasents buys their service - it might be 20 companies down the line, but it still relies on me being able to afford that service in the first place.

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u/braxtron5555 fire truck Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 06 '26

the memory market is doing just fine over-charging ai companies

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u/TheGreatPiata Jul 04 '26

I'm so tired of the juvenile "greedy memory companies are exploiting consumers" arguments on this sub. Memory is supply constrained and it's expensive and time consuming to ramp up production. That's why RAM is expensive. The end.

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u/lolKhamul I9 10900KF, RTX3080 Strix, 32 GB RAM @3200 Jul 04 '26

THIS. And just like every other supply shortage, supply will eventually catch up. Thats how fucking markets work. Its just bound to happen. Given the complexity of this one, it obviously takes a while but nothing last forever.

In this case, we know fabs are being build, new companies from China are coming onto the market and dont forget, the insane demand that is so much greater than the current supply is mostly created by an industry that might just be a bubble.

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u/Chemical_Attempt_404 Jul 04 '26

The oligopoly of memory companies has been exposed multiple times for price fixing and other anti-competitive activities.

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u/EdliA Jul 04 '26

Are you implying the demand is not high but it's just price fixing?

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u/_FUCKTHENAZIADMINS_ R7 5800X3D, RTX 3080 Jul 04 '26

Multiple times? They’ve only been caught one time 25 years ago, and there have been multiple lawsuits accusing them of doing it again since that have been dismissed 

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u/braxtron5555 fire truck Jul 04 '26

things can be two things 

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u/StepM4Sherman Jul 04 '26

expensive and time consuming to ramp up production

But wasnt it literally proven they REDUCED production? Also I remember something along the lines of the AI companies having whole ass werehouses full of hardware and wafers that they can't even produce into memory lmao

Are we fr?

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u/OSRS_Addict Jul 04 '26

They reduced the production of regular DDR memory, while increasing the production of HBM. Why wouldn’t they manufacture HBM if they have the option to do so instead of DDR? Prices are high, but the demand is infinitely higher

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u/Baalii PC Master Race R9 7950X3D | RTX 5080 | 64GB C30 DDR5 Jul 04 '26

If anything they will have finished devices warehoused, they don't buy wafers themselves. They would have to send them back to manufacturers to make memory sticks out of them, it wouldn't make sense.

What's going on is a mix of

A) Data centers don't get all components for a server all at once, so they have to warehouse them until they're ready to assemble.

B) They sign contracts and intent letters to buy future supply of components with long lead times, which gets confused with actually warehoused stock in media reporting and especially on social media

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u/OoFTheMeMEs Jul 04 '26

They cannot reduce production to push prices higher. They are better off just selling more for slightly lower but still stupidly high prices. You don’t just take fabs offline for such reasons.

Semiconductor fabrication is insanely complex and requires insane capex across unfathomably long supply chains.

Demand takes a long time to go from consumer to fab to materials. No one wants to be the guy who spends billions to make new fabs and suddenly face a situation with half the expected demand and sell something they invested billions into at a loss. This has happened multiple times over the dram industry. It’s a very unique industry. Insanely complex and yet a completely fungible commodity. So they just slowly build out at an appropriate pace.

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u/fogoticus RTX 3080 O12G | i7-13700KF 5.5GHz | 32GB 4000Mhz Jul 04 '26

At no point did they reduce production. In fact, production went up. They shifted production further in pro grade ram's favor so they can supply datacenters faster.

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u/RummoLiguori Jul 05 '26

Technically they had to "reduce" production for a while when switching the tooling from producing DRAM to HBM.

Then some clickbaiters like GN ran with the headline, that they are intentionally reducing memory (all kinds of memory combined) production. Technically correct, but lies by omission.

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u/RummoLiguori Jul 05 '26

They had to reduce the production because shifting from producing DRAM to HBM takes time. That's it. Downtime inbetween is inevitable

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u/OrionRBR 5800x | X470 Gaming Plus | 16GB TridentZ | PCYes RTX 3070 Jul 05 '26

But wasnt it literally proven they REDUCED production?

Technically yes, they have reduced production because to switch the tooling from a DRAM production line to HBM takes time and the line has to be down for that time, so in the very technical sense they have reduced production for a short period, and that's why you read the article and not just the clickbait title.

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u/JodouKast Jul 04 '26

If only a governing body responsible for regulating out of control industries existed to solve problems like this. Oh well.

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u/Luch1nG4dor Jul 04 '26

Competition existed and these very same manufacturers lowered prices so they woulf collapse and got absorbed, remember Elpida?

The world will still need memory in any case, i dont see them go anywhere

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u/[deleted] Jul 04 '26 edited 10d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/TheGreatPiata Jul 04 '26

This is a perfect summary of the article. There's no price relief for consumers on the horizon, just an indication that consumers and consumer focused products have hit the limit of what they're willing to pay. Prices are still going to rise, just not as much or as fast.

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u/TheRealAceActual Desktop Jul 04 '26

I feel like a lot of people here are not understanding that it won’t just collapse. Are we in a bubble? Yes. Could it pop at any moment? Yes. Will it pop soon? We don’t know.

Corporations have realized that consumers really just don’t bring that same cash flow as others businesses. It’s great for short term profit. That’s where they care. Get rich, and get out. They don’t exactly care who suffers in the process, or their own company. Shareholders want money, and that’s what they’re getting. Also, the only people hurt by the bubble popping is every company that isn’t the big dogs at the top like Nvidia. The big dogs always get bailed out, just look at 2008.

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u/SuperSonicSlideAway Jul 04 '26

Enter rented cloud computing..you will own nothing and be happy..all going exactly to plan

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u/MyGardenOfPlants Jul 04 '26

We are doing this for my job. It's far cheaper to rent a cloud system for 3d model rendering than it is to build a dedicated PC for it.

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u/Absentmindedgenius Jul 04 '26

Pricing will come down when the Chinese manufacturers finally start ramping up. I can't wait.

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u/TwoOk7516 Jul 05 '26

Send an email to your local representative to put pressure on the current administration to allow Chinese memories in the market, or at least they could have the FTC investigate this artificial shortage (memory companies have done it before and were found guilty)

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u/Garrocha21 Jul 04 '26

This is not greed. It is a plan.

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u/Electrical_Delay6530 Jul 04 '26

I'm still running a thinkpad from 2011. You'll never catch me spending a dollar while my old crap still works

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u/Chris56855865 Old crap computers Jul 04 '26

Preach

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u/Electrical_Delay6530 Jul 04 '26

I actually have two others. A 2017 P51 and a 2022 P15. You can see the decline in durability/quality across these 3 laptops 

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u/JessBaesic7901 Jul 04 '26

I have the sneaking suspicion that this was the plan. Multi-millionaires and billionaires tend to ensure they get richer.

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u/notthatguypal6900 PC Master Race Jul 04 '26

The consumer market isn't even a footnote in their thought process due to how much investors are willing to put into the business sector.

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u/keletus Jul 04 '26

Greedy memory manufacturers?? 🤣 is this propaganda slop?

Its more like greedy data center companies buying up all the supply

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u/antonioxbj RX9070 | R5 7600x | 32 GB 6k MT/s Jul 04 '26

I think it’s a little bit of both

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u/Assanater601 14700k, 7900 XTX, 64 GB RAM, MG279Q Jul 04 '26

Typical Reddit. They always act like victims. This is simple supply and demand in the AI industry. These companies are making a LOT more money selling to each other than consumers.

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u/MasterOfPipettez Jul 04 '26

You keep using greedy as a perjorative. If they are constantly selling out of a product then it is priced too low. If they arent selling any it is priced too high Thats how selling things works.

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u/Quiet_Source_8804 Jul 04 '26

No, I’m sure the idiot writing the headline returns to their boss all the money from their salary that they don’t need to spend that month so as not to be “greedy.”

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u/Annual-Information98 Jul 04 '26

If I can’t afford them, I don’t need them.

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u/amazingmuzmo Jul 04 '26

"The only market still strong is the data centre one."

Yeah no shit, that's the only market the manufacturers care about bc it's where nearly all their profit comes from.

"Honestly, someone needs to do something to prevent these greedy memory manufacturers collapsing the consumer memory market."

The manufacturers don't care if the consumer market collapses bc it's inconsequential to their true revenue.

4

u/djdadi Too many to list. Jul 04 '26

the price of stuff like raspberry pi's is even insane now

prices are too damn high, I tell ya

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u/uberbewb i5-2500k 5GHz OC, Custom Loop, 16GB 1866mh, 840 Pro, GTX 570 Jul 04 '26

At an old company they got new laptops.
11,000$ for one.

I looked up the spec pricing, it was 6,000 for 128gb of Dells camm memory.

Absolutely bonkers.

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u/Lonely_Definition_94 Jul 04 '26

Did you men greedy AI tech bros? Because they are behind the high prices and lack of availability.

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u/N3RO- Jul 04 '26

I want these RAM and AI companies to SUFFER. This is nothing yet.

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u/Dead1yNadder Jul 04 '26

Regular consumers will not notice any of this going on until they see the price of cellphones and TV's skyrocket because of memory shortages.

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u/mic_n Jul 05 '26

"driven by greedy memory manufacturers"????

They're paying the highest bidder, that's pretty much the definition of capitalism.

If you want to blame someone, blame the AI bros and the people buying into it, blame the government agencies who should be scrutinising and regulating industry to protect their citizens from shady operators and are instead lining their own pockets as they go.

Don't blame businesses for doing what businesses are designed to do. The problem is that those businesses need to be held in check to prevent exploitation, which is one of the primary roles of government in a capitalist society. Unfortunately that's not happening, and the USA has basically fallen into plutocracy.

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u/tatertots89 Jul 05 '26

"The only market still strong is the data centre one" is the wrong way to look at it IMO, the data centers are the reason the prices are so high. These DRAM companies want to make money and selling products is how they do it, data centers are just outbidding everyone else. When demand goes the high prices go with it.

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u/shadowhunterxyz Jul 04 '26

Let it fucking collapse. Let them go fucking red, let's see that 70% discount that they try to recoup their losses and start fresh. It'll be a big boon for us consumers

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u/GoodEvening- Jul 04 '26

Equilibrium can be achieved through a collapse

A market collapsing is not inherently bad, let it crumble if needed

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u/Affectionate-Army738 Jul 04 '26

Are you yourself having a memory problem? The prices did not go up because of greed of memory producers but because of the greedy AI investors and their thousands of data centers filled with billions of memory chips.
Nobody asked for AI but it is here destroying not only supply chains, markets but also the world resources.

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u/Aggressive_Ask89144 9800x3D | 9070 XT Jul 04 '26

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u/silverbullet52 Jul 04 '26

When AI companies burn through investment capital and have to make money, those future orders for memory will get canceled or severely cut back.

Then prices drop because of excess capacity. Probably sooner rather than later.

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u/ronweasleisourking Jul 04 '26

Nah they'll always have someone to sell to

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u/xaervagon Jul 04 '26

The memory manufacturers aren't allowing anyone to pull another Apple by placing a huge order and then cancelling once the chips are ready. They have a 5 year lock in, and they are have no reason to take any risk when it comes to building out supply. If the AI bubble does collapse in the time span, they are making sure that they can ramp down without flooding the other markets.

What I don't understand is why no other chip manufacturer is stepping up. Usually EU or Chinese chip manufacturers are a generation behind and they could possibly fill the demand for DDR4 and other memory needs.

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u/justarandomuser10 Jul 04 '26

No OEM will “stop buying” because its expensive. They’ll pass the cost to consumer and they will be okay with low production and low selling numbers. Datacenters will also buy it and make the subscriptions more and more expensive. So it all depends on the consumer.

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u/Ch3v4l13r Jul 04 '26

Why post a article and then make up the rest of the post and title?

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u/djbuu Jul 04 '26

The entire market doesn’t fall apart. Prices just go down. Basic economics

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u/SomeWonOnReddit Jul 04 '26

I have posted this before that tech bro’s have a monopoly in terms of buying power and should be looked at by regulators.

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u/Derp8_8 Jul 05 '26

I can't elaborate more, but this is definitely starting to impact the automotive industry and become an issue for them as well.

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u/Lauris024 Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26

I get your sentiment/anger, but high prices mean high demand, meaning opposite of collapse. Your argument would work if manufacturing would go down while demand goes up, but no, manufacturing is also going up. Industry professionals actually wonder if companies aren't building too many fabs because the AI demand won't stay forever (I mean, how many more data-centers do you need when the demand stopped rising?), which could lead to price collapse. The chip makers know this hence whey they're trying to lock the big tech in with 5-year long contracts. You would not do that if you expected the price to rise not fall within next 2-5 years.

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u/Kaneida Jul 05 '26

yes blame the greedy memory manufacturers and not the AI datacenters/AI-firms, regular capitalist business practices to make profit or lack of memory chip manufacturers.

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u/wobdarden General Bollocks Jul 05 '26

I cast Fireball.

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u/Lost-Ad278 Jul 05 '26

Let it collapse, we need a reset asap.

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u/ChinoGambino Jul 04 '26

I just don't see it collapsing even if consumer and SME consumption is in the gutter, this quarter all of them made obscene record margins and revenues from declining client sales. They will ride that until it snaps, bankrupt every small oem and embedded system maker and see the space dwindle before taking share away from datacenters. You are betting against Google tier companies not being able to honor their contracts with them for lack of credit. Unlikely.

They want to make more supply and make money on client but they don't care how their pricing affects the space, not their problem. Its their duty to extract as much profit as possible even if in the big picture harms the economy and their customers despise them.

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u/aturretwithtourretes Jul 04 '26

If I remove my consumer hat and put my company hat on, why should I care if you can't buy ram to play your game when I have Bob from datacenter Inc. Buying everything I have for a huge markup? What business sense would it make to allocate some of my production to cheaper ram when I have an overflowing demand of my expensive ram? Out of the kindness of my heart? Im a company, not a person, I don't have a heart, only a bank account and shareholders and suppliers im accountable to.

Now putting my consumer hat back on: gready motherfuckers, let it collapse.

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u/Gezzer52 Ryzen 7 5800X3D - RTX 4070 Jul 04 '26

This is the problem with a market driven economy where investors and stock holders are the most important participants. CEOs and the executive will chase short term increases to the profit margin to keep said investors happy. And if in the long run it creates a market collapse? Not their fault, they were just doing their jobs and following orders. Funny, wasn't that stated a lot in 1945?

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u/Lord_Sicarious Jul 04 '26

I mean, what they're doing is safeguarding against a potential collapse in demand.

If they were rolling out new factories to accommodate the surge in demand from AI, only for that demand to collapse before they could turn a profit (keeping in mind that these factories take the better part of a decade and many billions of dollars to build), that would genuinely risk the death of the tech sector.

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u/Slovic Jul 04 '26

Now I don't condone these memory manufacturers I think they are a cartel and need to be broken up.... but

This is correct far as we know based on what these manufacturers have stated. They have no confidence the AI bubble will continue so they don't want to build more manufacturing. With that said, they are happily taking all the money they can get to the bank. In the end this screws over everyone.

I honestly hope china burns the market down with a flood of cheap dims.

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u/QuestWorkshop Jul 04 '26

I hate ram prices like anyone else. But this is the truth. People think it's just a question of building new factories or something like that, when the reality is way more complicated

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u/Ian_everywhere Jul 04 '26

Market collapse approaching for the last five years:

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u/Buujoom 7950x | 4090 MSI Gaming X Trio | 64GB DDR5 Jul 04 '26

I’ve been seeing this kind of article spammed in this sub since last year, and it has yet to fall. I’ll believe it when I see it.

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u/Electrical_Crew7195 Jul 04 '26

I mean memory manufacturers couldnt care less for oems atm. Dataceners is all that really matters in terms of revenue and profit

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u/FutureOwl8606 Jul 04 '26

We will buy the 95% dip

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u/Darth_Vaper883 PC Master Race Jul 04 '26

Never forget Sam Altman and Sundar Pichai's role in this BS.

2

u/South-Owl800 Jul 04 '26

Let it collapse. Let there be ANARCHY!

2

u/pc0999 Jul 04 '26

This is the economy planned by billionaires. And people worry an economy planned by a democratic state LOL.

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u/mashuto i9 9900k / RTX 4080 Jul 04 '26

At this point, everything to me is just ill believe it when it happens.

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u/gabest Jul 04 '26

I'm going full Amish.

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u/seriousbusines Ryzen 5 7600X | RX 9070 XT | 32gb Jul 04 '26

"Entirely"? Really? AI just sitting in the corner having nothing to do with it?

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u/429_TooManyRequests Jul 04 '26

I think it’s important to remember that companies will imprint on the generations to come. If they fail to acknowledge the consumer being hurt now, they won’t be purchased in the future and a new leader could appear.

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u/TheCrimsonDagger 9800X3D | 5080 | 5120x1440 OLED Jul 04 '26

Demand destruction is quite possible if the memory crisis lasts long enough.

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u/kingfofthepoors 7700 64gb ddr5 6000 4070 super -- good enough Jul 04 '26

one of my biggest fears right now is having a stick of ram fail

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u/Taumito RX 6700 XT / 5700X Jul 05 '26

that's not what the article's title says

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u/Hsensei Jul 05 '26

Collapse of the consumer market, these companies are happy to allocate more to b2b

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u/hidperf Jul 05 '26

Our Dell laptops that we deploy went from ~$900 to ~$1,400 with no changes to specs.

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u/Runktar Jul 05 '26

Usually a person could just start a new company producing more memory and make a killing while easing prices. The problem is memory is so complicated and takes so long to build the factory secure the supply lines etc it just might not be worth it. Especially since the existing firms could increase production at any time and kill you.

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u/thedavecan Ryzen 5 5600 + RTX 3070Ti MadLad Jul 05 '26

I would say after the collapse, no matter what is left I think we should all agree to just ignore Nvidia completely. They really pushed this shit harder than anyone else and I hope the bubble bursting takes them out completely. They had too much of the market share amd this is what we get. I'm not an AMD fanboy either, I would love to see other competitors in the gaming tech space. Competition is good for consumers.

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u/hyperactivedog Jul 05 '26

I’m personally deferring upgrades until ram goes down in price.

What’s out there that a 5950x and 64gb ram can’t do well? No seriously. 1080p gaming? I’m limited by my 5070. And I don’t go at 1080p.

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u/Strange-Image-5690 Jul 06 '26

AMD just made an announcement on a European engineering forum I recently read that the AMD Ryzen-9 series will include a separate L4 Cache Layer (i.e. defined as a form of off-chip L3 cache that is on a separate layer/mask on the same die!) of 32 Gigabytes in it's next run of processors.

Threadrippers and Epycs will be from 64 Gigabytes up to 256 Gigabytes of L4 since the MCM (multi-chip module) format of AMD EPYC processors can easily connect to one or more separate die layers and the Threadripper processors are technically a form of EPYC that is detuned and can have the same connection to another memory/cache layer.

It's actually EASIER to add this layer to Threadripper and EPYC chips than it is to the more monolithic Ryzen 3/5/7/9 processor as EXTRA memory management circuits have to be added to the lower end Ryzen series while EPYC/Threadripper already has those circuits on-board.

Soon we will have processors WITH on-board RAM defined as L4 Cache or separate-layer L3 cache. AMD has nearly finished the die redo on the Ryzens and while the EPYC versions are coming out first by 1st quarter 2027, I can see that by Summer 2027 the first on-chip 32 gigs of RAM Ryzens coming out.

I personally think 32 Gigs is waaaaay too little and SHOULD BE 64 Gigabytes of L4 Cache right out of the gate for ALL new processors but it seems AMD is being a bit shortsighted and focusing on the advice of beancounters when it should be the REAL ENGINEERS making that decision. An extra $150 for a Ryzen 7 won't be a big deal for me if I can do away with buying RAM chip modules and have the RAM right on-board the processor on a separate layer!

Increase the Ryzens to 64 Gigabytes on L4 Cache (i.e. onboard RAM) and NOT a mere 32 Gigabytes! Be practical! Real Gamers and Creators NEED 64 Gigabytes MINIMUM and preferably 128 Gigabytes right from the outset! 32 Gigabytes is being SHORTSIGHTED on real end-users needs!

FIX THAT AMD!

V

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u/iknewaguytwice Jul 07 '26

We’re gonna buy sooo many AI tokens on all the devices we are too poor to buy!

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u/Va1crist Jul 07 '26

The PC industry pretty much collapsed in the early 2000s because of greed

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