Why are ram prices so ridiculously high now?

Why are ram prices so ridiculously high now?

Use google you fucking retard

Where have you been the past 6 months?

1.) increase in the price of raw silicon wafers
2.) more production capacity being used for flash and phones
3.) active collusion by manufacturers (hey guys, lets all agree to raise prices so we make more money)
4.) passive collusion by manufacturers (where they don't talk to each other but are all in a situation where they prefer higher margins to cutting prices to gain market share)

pick your preferred combination of these factors.

Not buying ram

Not keeping an eye on technology either then?

Hand in your Sup Forums card

All the free RAM download sites got shut down.

They sensed I was looking to upgrade and jacked up the price in anticipation.

Always happens.

KEK

who the fuck has time to sit around all day watching RAM prices? Not people who are actually doing stuff with their tech.

"Keeping an eye on technology" is knowing that AMD brought out a new processor recently that is supposed to be a vast departure from their previous efforts, or knowing we're on DDR4 now not DDR3. Knowing RAM price fluctuations is just "I liek computerz but don't do anything on them besides rice my gentoo".

>6 months
been longer than that

DDR4 is and has always been a meme

If you had been on your favourite Mongolian imageboard the past 6 months you would have been more informed because we have a thread like this every. fucking. day.

I'm not counting the hours.

how can i invest?

>DDR4 is and has always been a meme
Whatever, if you want a new CPU then you'll need a new motherboard and DDR4 RAM. And it's really expensive compared to .. previous pricing.

I paid almost twice as much for 32 GB DDR4 RAM for my current rig compared to what I paid for 32 GB DDR3 when I built the system I used before.

This price collusion really is quite annoying. And it's specially bad when the price of mid-range GPUs have gone up as much as they have. A nvidia 1060 isn't a high-end GPU but it's priced like high-end GPUs were not that many years ago.

good fucking god last time I looked at a 32GB kit it was like 300ish and now its almost $450 what the fuuuuuck

Before any of that it was like 150

even DDR3 costs twice as much now as DDR3 cost a few years ago. DDR3 support isn't dead or anything, it's just not going to save you any money to get effectively identical specs with a lower number.

Demand increasing faster than expected which means production is lagging behind. It should return to normal in 3-5 years.

>Buying from a retailer
Good goy.

I always get my ram from local classifieds (kijiji/craigslist) and it's cheap af.

This doesn't exactly explain why a DDR3 kit costs about twice as much today as it did when it came to market.

Your point could be valid for DDR4, except it's not - it's just price collusion. But if we just look at DDR3 then there's clearly holes in your story. Demand for DDR3 is lower, much lower since people aren't buying tons and tons of DDR3 RAM to upgrade older systems and they ain't buying it for newer systems and the production capacity is there - and it's been there for years and years.

DDR3 is legacy now and is subjected to high prices just like DDR2 was/is. And what production remains is largely for DDR3LP for laptops.

3-5 years when I can finally build a PC, oh wait the processors will be on ddr5 by then.

what a time to be alive

Main reason: all that big data has to go somewhere; the actual demand for memory has outpaced the predicted demand for memory.

Additionally, memory fabs dedicating their output to flash means relatively fewer wafer starts for DRAM.

Buy shares in Micron a year ago. Or today, whatever floats your boat. This could easily go on for another year. Just remember not to buy high and sell low.

There's nothing stopping you from building one now. It's just that RAM, SSDs and GPUs will run you more money than they should.

I hadn't actually considered that all the SSD and flash production would cut in on RAM production, that's a good point.

yes let me pay an extra $500 for essentially nothing other than shitty market timing

>
3

>3.) active collusion by manufacturers (hey guys, lets all agree to raise prices so we make more money)
>4.) passive collusion by manufacturers (where they don't talk to each other but are all in a situation where they prefer higher margins to cutting prices to gain market share)
it's undoubtedly one of these

which is like an additional 40% of my budget

>4.) passive collusion by manufacturers (where they don't talk to each other but are all in a situation where they prefer higher margins to cutting prices to gain market share)
There's no marketshare to be gained though if they're selling 100% of what they produce.

Don't bring gentoo into this.

...

...

This is bullshit

Bump

I'll bet 1 and 2 mainly. Maybe 3. Not 4 certainly: if they raise their prices they don't get marketshare, people will just go for DDR3 like I almost did (but then I found a Ryzen sale with 50% off in a local store, so now I need DDR4, fuck).

Who needs market share when there are only 3 RAM manufacturers in the world. They have no competition, and likely never will. Just stop competing with each other and when one raises prices, you also raise your prices.
???
Profit

There's still a fuckton of DDR3 compatible decent equipment available. I agree there's a triopoly present, but even tripolies need marketshare to actually profit.

I should’ve invested in Samsung, Hynix, and Micron two years ago. FML

DDR3 cost in 2009/2010 was like nothing man

>There's no marketshare to be gained though if they're selling 100% of what they produce.
They're only selling 100% of what they produce because they refuse to expand production capacity (because it's far more profitable to create a supply bottleneck and keep raising prices).

> floods in Taiwan
Source : Some user.
Go fetch more sources anons.