alt Hacker NewsThe situation is absolutely awful for anybody who needs significant memory or storage (or devices incorporating such).
Even people who think they have enough for the next few years already could end up with an unpleasant surprise if they e.g. have a stick or two of RAM go bad or a GPU fry. I have a few machines with aging sticks that I'm hoping will manage to hold out until when/if things improve.
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This is one of the rare situations where an out-of-control homelab & PC building hobby is actually useful. With over 250GB of RAM & 90TB of storage I will be fine for a while, especially as long as DDR4 era machines remain relevant.
Yeah, it really sucks I can't even afford a computer that can have two Chrome tabs open these days.
If you bought RAM new, it should be warrantied. Most sticks are essentially lifetime support, but you’ll get a refurb. I definitely wouldn’t buy secondhand now, unless it was a very good deal. Corsair won’t honor transfers unless you’re somewhere that legally forces them to.
GPU probably not a terrible idea to pay the $20 for those aftermarket insurance plans. Do they even pay out though?
I bought a prebuilt with a 5090 a little over than one month ago, whole system was on sales.
The cost of the prebuilt is now lower than today 5090 price.
I'm glad I splurged years ago and got an M1 Max with 64 GiB RAM. Still fast enough for everything, don't plan to upgrade until this cools off.
I've been using computers for more than 40 years now and the one component I have never seen fail is RAM.
All the other bits in a computer I've seen fail.
I built my machine in 2022 with 64GB of memory and upgraded to a 4090 at MSRP in 2023 so at this point I'm good but I fear the back end of the bathtub curve. I currently expect to have to hold on until 2029 and at that point the mobo and CPU will be 7 years old, and the GPU almost 6.
before the memory cartel, I was automatically putting in 64 or 128GB for my work flow as the prices just seems absurd not to.
I would absolutely love if some startup came up right now to manufacture and sell RAM at normal prices to everyone else and put Crucial et al out of business for price-gouging everyone just because they can.
I'm saving a ton of money by simply not upgrading. I used to do upgrades every 1-2 years just to keep up on things, pass the old box down to my son or otherwise donate it. Now I intend to keep my current setup for 7+ years. Its 2 years old next month. I may even stay with it longer. I just see no reason to upgrade with things how they are.
I considered a Mac Studio a couple months ago. Price was up but might have pulled the trigger if not for the delivery date that was almost 4 months out. Sale lost. I suspect a lot of people are like me right now and we'll start seeing significant drops in consumer spending on electronics the next 2-4 years minimum.