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They're garbage. The kit I'm using now (8GB DDR3-2133 CL9) cost me $45 in 2013. A rough equivalent scaled to the modern day (16GB DDR4-3200 CL16) now goes for $120. Ideally, I'd be getting some ECC DDR4-2666, but the only source I see for that is $210. What's more, prices look to be up ~$20 across the board from just a couple weeks ago.

I don't recall ever hearing a good explanation for this - why are prices rising again? (Other than lack of competition, of course.) More practically speaking, over what timeframe and vertical scale do we expect them to keep rising? If the last couple weeks are any indication, I should be buying RAM for my Ryzen build now, not next month when I'm actually doing the build.

Speaking of buying RAM early, I've got a few options here. First up, I'm seriously reconsidering whether ECC is worth it to me. I still think everything should have ECC by default, but as I'll be using this system, ECC is more about peace of mind than anything actually important. That, and the peace of mind would enable ramdisking more stuff, but that's secondary to gaming-ish performance. If the tradeoff were just an extra $50 out of my wallet, I'd still be all over it. The trouble is that the tradeoff is looking more like $90 plus a small performance hit or $30 plus a really sizable performance hit, plus having to wait longer to upgrade either way. That peace of mind doesn't seem worth a 2400 CL17 vs 2933 CL15 performance gap, if 2933 is workable and ECC 2666 is unreasonably pricey. RAM performance does matter for stuff I do, and I know I'd be happier gaming with 2933 (silicon lottery gods allowing).

Currently under consideration (not necessarily these exact kits, but these appear representative):
Kingston, 2400 CL17, ECC. Slow and reliable. Meh. What kind of reputation does Kingston have with gerbils? I know they were good a decade ago, but have no idea now.
Crucial, 2666 CL19, ECC. Holy pricetag, batman. It doesn't look like any of the usual (cheap) sources carry ECC 2666.
G.Skill, 3000 CL15, non-ECC. Cheap and fast.
G.Skill, 3200 CL15, non-ECC. Less cheap, but the extra headroom seems like it would make 2933 more likely. Getting 2933 instead of 2666 would definitely be worth $25 to me.

Thoughts?

.... I feel like I'm forgetting something important I was going to say, but I have stuff to do in meatspace and all of the above looks coherent enough, so I'll just go ahead and post this.

My go-to RAM has been Kingston ValueRAM for more than a decade now. One DOA stick and (IIRC) one flaky one, in close to 15 years and countless builds. That's a better track record than the other brands I've tried (Crucial, Corsair, and a few others). Note: I tend to run my RAM at stock speed and use ECC if the system supports it.

Looks like PCPartPicker is in agreement with you....

https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/

Not sure how they're calculating what the "average" price is, but if those graphs are accurate and this year is anything like the last prices should start leveling off soon. Even still, I'm kinda glad I'm not in the market at the moment.

Is this somehow due to Ryzen launch? Or is there some other reason?

I doubt it has to do with Ryzen (stupid name). It's probably general market fluctuations.
It seems the recent low was mid-2016.

southrncomfortjm wrote:

Is this somehow due to Ryzen launch? Or is there some other reason?

Yup it is intel's fault!
Another grand conspiracy!

southrncomfortjm wrote:

Is this somehow due to Ryzen launch? Or is there some other reason?

Regardless of the reason it's going to keep me from building a Ryzen PC. I've got roughly 128GB of DDR3 RAM in various machines that wouldn't transfer over.

I might need to get a DDR3 Skylake board and call it a day.

Aranarth wrote:

southrncomfortjm wrote:

Is this somehow due to Ryzen launch? Or is there some other reason?

Yup it is intel's fault!
Another grand conspiracy!

More like collusion between the memory makers and it's not the first time, nor will it be the last. Ah, the joys of "free market" oligopolies.

RAM prices have been predicted to rise in 2017 since as early as last fall when prices leveled off and began to rise. http://www.dramexchange.com/WeeklyResea ... /4546.html

Best case you can expect prices to level off, worst case they are going to creep a bit higher. https://www.techpowerup.com/230188/dram ... -over-2017

Most 32GB DDR4 kits on Amazon have seen a $60-100 or even higher price increase since the summer of 2016. Thanks to Ryzen I'm pretty sure it's only going to go up this year.

Kougar wrote:

http://www.dramexchange.com/WeeklyResea ... /4546.html

So it *is* just the oligopoly doing what oligopolies do.

RAM prices will go up,but shouldn't it be the other way round??

southrncomfortjm wrote:

Is this somehow due to Ryzen launch? Or is there some other reason?

The story as I hear it-
Last year RAM was in over supply causing prices too be too low to be profitable.
NAND was starting to be in short-supply-So manufacturers transferred some
production from RAM to NAND.Result-rising RAM prices.

Predictions are that RAM and NAND will continue to rise this year-settling down
and possible price drops in 2018..........................................

So yeah, if you're hoping for lower prices soon...don't hold your breath.

The impeding toshiba failure looks like it is going to make a big splash in the dram and flash markets, especially the stuff off contract aka what us regular people will be paying for it. HP/Dell/etc weather these swings with long contracts negotiated well in advance, like 12-18 months.

Toshiba failure?

peter007 wrote:

RAM prices will go up,but shouldn't it be the other way round??

DRAM industry (and prices) has always been pretty volatile. While the long-term trend in cost/byte has always been downward, month-to-month it bounces all over the place based on supply and demand.

synthtel2 wrote:

Toshiba failure?

$5 billion loss, and company is in danger of being delisted. They're trying to sell off pieces to prevent complete collapse.

Toshiba wrote:

There are material events and conditions that raise substantial doubt about the company's ability to continue as a going concern

They made a large bet on nuclear power about a decade ago, by acquiring US reactor producer Westinghouse Electric. Then Fukushima happened, and the nuclear industry tanked. Sucks to be them.

Unfortunately this will have ripple effects far beyond the nuclear industry.

https://betanews.com/2017/04/13/toshiba ... l-results/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... p-business
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/new ... 100323986/

just brew it! wrote:

$5 billion loss, and company is in danger of being delisted. They're trying to sell off pieces to prevent complete collapse.
They made a large bet on nuclear power about a decade ago, by acquiring US reactor producer Westinghouse Electric. Then Fukushima happened, and the nuclear industry tanked. Sucks to be them.

Unfortunately this will have ripple effects far beyond the nuclear industry.

What I read is cost overruns on reactors under construction in US are main cause.
But who knows how long their dodgy accounting has been going on.
Sad thing is-If they have to sell profitable operations(NAND fabs) that will make things worse.

Huh, somehow I missed that news. That sounds problematic, yeah.

synthtel2 wrote:

Huh, somehow I missed that news. That sounds problematic, yeah.

You weren't the only one. Thanks for the links, JBI.

I know tons of phones have switched to DDR4 so that probably created more increased demand than anything else. Plus RAM prices have always fluctuated a bit.

I'm glad it isn't just me noticing this. I wanted to upgrade from 8 to 16 gigs and have been horrified at the cost.

I'm so glad I bought my 16GB DDR3 kit when I did. Back in December of 2015 I wasn't sure if I should put more money into my 2500K system or plan to save up for a Skylake\Kabylake\Zen build with DDR4. I decided that my system was still doing quite well and that I could use my 8GB of DDR3-1333 in another system, so I splurged for a 16GB GSkill Ares DDR3-2133 kit for $59.99. That same kit is $109 on newegg now, 17 months later!

I have it underclocked to 1866Mhz so I can run it at a comfy 1.5v, to avoid adding any stress to my stable overclock.

These prices are really awful though.

Toshiba going down in flames? Oh man, that is BAD. Aside from being one of the major DRAM/flash manufacturers, it'll wreck the hard drive market.

Pricing wise, meh. I had to pay $150 for my 16 gigs because the move to 64 bit happened during the great memory shortage of 2013, so I don't wanna hear no complainin' from you kids and your cheap $100 memory.

I paid $200 for 2x16GB Corsair LPX 3200C16 this Jan and it's now $325.

One should also know PC oriented parts are now increasingly an afterthought in the grand scheme of things and mobile is now first priority, especially when Apple sells more iPhones per quarter for than all dGPUs combined yearly for quite some time already. This isn't even counting the other gazillion Android gadgets sold every year.

Memory prices have always been in-flux. I think people are just spoiled from the times that got really good deals but later come up in price a year or so later.

We are in a transistion period where you see more of this (DDR3 => DDR4). DDR3 prices are going probably go up as production shift towards DDR4 as the de facto standard.

NovusBogus wrote:

Toshiba going down in flames? Oh man, that is BAD. Aside from being one of the major DRAM/flash manufacturers, it'll wreck the hard drive market.

Pricing wise, meh. I had to pay $150 for my 16 gigs because the move to 64 bit happened during the great memory shortage of 2013, so I don't wanna hear no complainin' from you kids and your cheap $100 memory.

It will certainly be spun as a reason for higher prices, but in the long term it won't be that bad.

Why? Because Toshiba will end up selling that (successful) business to another company.

You people and your bitchin' about $10/GB RAM...

Way back in the day, I paid $16/KB. Yup, kilobyte.

Now get off my lawn!

just brew it! wrote:

You people and your bitchin' about $10/GB RAM...

Way back in the day, I paid $16/KB. Yup, kilobyte.

Now get off my lawn!

Kids these days... they are really spoiled

For historical reference...

Bought on 12/30/16
G.SKILL TridentZ Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3866
Then: $160
Now: $230

Bought on 2/3/17
G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3200
Then: $100
Now: $125

Heh, my first RAM purchase was 4 megabytes for $180. It was so I could play DOOM without stuttering on my 486. Wow, 1993 dollars.

kvndoom wrote:

Heh, my first RAM purchase was 4 megabytes for $180. It was so I could play DOOM without stuttering on my 486. Wow, 1993 dollars.

Yeah my $16/KB was in 1979 dollars. So I guess more like $50/KB accounting for inflation!