Technology @lemmy.world floofloof @lemmy.ca 10 mo. ago

DRAM And NAND Chip Makers Are Determined To Drive Up DDR5 And SSD Prices

hothardware.com DRAM And NAND Chip Makers Are Determined To Drive Up DDR5 And SSD Prices

There are factors at play that could drive up system memory and solid state drive (SSD) prices throughout the course of 2024.

86 comments

You keep raising the prices and I keep not buying.
- They are rising from rock bottom, I just bought a 4tb gen 3 nvme for $230 Cad
  
  It's like gas prices early in the pandemic, but not quite as bad.
  
  They grossly overproduced, sat on a stockpile that couldn't sell which costs them a ton and had to sell them for nothing. There's nowhere for the price to go but up.
  
  How fast is it? A lot of m.2's are cheap because they're slow.
  
  Seriously, a lot of weirdly negative comments here.
  
  Yeah, it's not great that prices go up, but a few months ago was the lowest price for memory and storage we have ever seen in all of history. 40€/TB at the low end for SSDs. That's absolutely insane. It was entirely expected for prices to rise a bit again.
  
  Where?
And then in 5 years they'll all settle for a few million dollars in a class action for price fixing. Rinse, repeat.
- Of course, the customer payout will eventually amount to $5/affected customer, but only those who replied to their rather invasive survey, paid out over 3 payments over the coming year.
  
  Don't forget it's usually just US citizens who even get the chance to jump onto such class action suits. The rest of the world don't even get their $5.
- Just the cost of doing business. Just ask all the hedgefunds that break the rules time and time again and simply pay a small fee to FINRA (if at all)
What a surprise, capitalists can’t keep making more money quarter after quarter so instead they just rack up the prices for no reason other than the c-suite wants more bonus money.

Fucking PATHETIC and reprehensible
- So, price fixing doesn't exist in communism?
  
  Love how everyone's argument for capitalism is just 'well communism sucks too'.
  
  Good job regurgitating half a century's worth of propaganda, no one mentioned communism and there's more than just 2 ways to run q society
  
  Can you price gouge in a moneyless society?
  
  How about pragmatism: real solutions to real problems.
Nobody is buying so let's increase the price. Makes a lot of sense. Good job guys.
- If people generally atent buying, there’s still People that need to buy (businesses, oems, etc)
  
  They’re just doing the ol covid ratchet. Tightening the thumbscrews on the people who can’t opt out.
  
  Doesn’t affect their bottom line much if nobody’s choosing to buy.
- Yup, Meta is buying $9 Billion of GPUs but no SSDs. Nope!
  
  They store the fake news in GDDR6X.
- They drastically increased production after covid, and then with inflation and the economy slowing down, demand crashed, meaning they had a fuckton of NAND and nobody to sell it to. They needed to get rid of it so they sold it all at a steep discount below the break even mark, losing billions of dollars in the process (I don't think any NAND manufacturer had a profitable 2023?). Now, they're cutting back production to profitable levels that actually meet demand, so prices will increase and return to normal.
So, uh, collusive behavior?
- It wouldn't even be the first time for them.
  
  Probably not even the tenth time.
- They lost billions of dollars due to production being way higher than demand during 2023, it's only collusion in the sense that they all want to actually make some money on the NAND they manufacture.
Demand is way down, so they raise prices. This is the cycle that keeps repeating, and nobody should be surprised.
- That's.... thats's not how this works.
  
  It's exactly how this works, and during a quarterly review with Samsung, they literally told me they were doing this. Nobody in the industry is surprised by this.
  
  Not sure why you'd deny what you literally see happening.
- They also drastically cut supply.
  
  By cut supply, you mean several fabs have suffered catastrophic losses and turned down production for nearly a year? Because that's what happened.
  
  And yes, nobody makes products when there's no demand for them. It's the basics of how they turn the screws to buyers at all times.
The main factor is normally panic article like this.

"Hey, the price is going to go up later this year!"

*people buy now*

*demand goes up*

*price goes up*
Well, I saw this coming and got a new 2TB SSD before 11.11 even. Though now thinking if I should have gotten 4TB instead. xD

Also, this kinda is like collusion, no?
- Maybe that's their real play here? Put out a bunch of news about upcoming price hikes, and watch everyone scramble to buy up their current stock.
They're not even going to make an excuse for it like "the power went off for a split second in one room at one factory ~~because we flicked a switch~~"? Regardless, I'm fine with waiting years for them to tire themselves out with all the screaming about how prices must rise. It gives me great pleasure to not reward this behavior while they're pulling this shit. Raise the prices all you want, I'm not buying.
Of course they are because they see line go up.
Oh look, more stuff I just won't buy if prices go up.
In the US there is enormous investment in new NAND and other chips manufacturing. The government does not want these products and materials to be expensive or scarce. So the good news is the US gov will likely jump on this immediately.
I feel like China enacting protectionist policies on lithium will do more to drive up chip prices. People are broke right now, so choking out the retail supply of chips to artificially raise prices will just result in miserable quarters for Micron, Hynix, and Samsung.
Too late, I was buying up a bunch of high TBW solid state drives the last ~2 years, even this Black Friday/Boxing Day there were a few last deals.

My focus was mostly on Intel Optane leftovers, but also Samsung Pro (NVMe, SATA, even microSD), Kingston enterprise (DC500M/DC600M/DC1500M, NVMe, SD/microSD), even some Seagate Nytro SATA/SAS enterprise drives, Crucial MX500, WD Red, and a bunch of other brands.

I'm a data hoarder organizer for family/relatives/friends I regularly give tech support for and myself. I love to recycle old PC I've build previously into NAS, media center, NVR or whatever new projects or ideas they come up with.

Unfortunately, I may have missed out on some great DDR4 and DDR5 deals I saw but was thinking it was not immediately necessary 🫤... oh well... we win some and lose some.
i wouldnt mind to snag a deal on some premium ddr3. but if they raise the price, then nvm. i'll wait till next year.

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