alt.hn

6/22/2026 at 7:04:49 PM

Memory crisis is getting so bad that even retro RAM prices are going to the Moon

 https://www.theregister.com/personal-tech/2026/06/22/the-memory-crisis-is-getting-so-bad-that-even-retro-ram-prices-are-going-to-the-moon/5259627

by speckx

6/22/2026 at 8:11:19 PM

I work in e-waste recycling. Ever since the TurboQuant paper in March, I haven't been able to sell any DDR3. I'm guessing that the DDR2 and 3 this article is referring to is the actual memory chips, not modules/sticks that servers, desktops, laptops, etc. use, because the latter aren't moving.

by theandrewbailey

6/22/2026 at 8:24:04 PM

Yep. Don't expect to sell those sticks on ebay at great price. Those new chips will be likely soldered to appliances like low end routers/APs, set top boxes, various adapters, low end systems, PLCs, IPBX, NVRs and various embedded devices.

I sold 7,2 Kg of DDR1/2/3 sticks two month ago, for gold recovery. As well as expansion cards, hdd PCBs and a few other things. Got about $600 from this.

by Felger

6/22/2026 at 11:57:49 PM

Did you cut the gold fingers off or "as-is"

by jollymonATX

6/22/2026 at 10:07:12 PM

Wild guess, but maybe China has something to do with that? They've got a huge "recover->break down/strip->recondition->sell refurbs to manufacturers" industry pipeline that doesn't seem to much exist outside of China.

by kjs3

6/22/2026 at 11:33:00 PM

Indeed, I was lucky that my PC is old enough to use DDR3 sticks, when I decided to upgrade a couple months ago. I think it's still cheaper to max out your RAM than to buy a new PC.

by analog31

6/23/2026 at 9:12:24 AM

I thought the same until I calculated the cost of running DDR3. We’re at 0.35€/kWh so it adds up fast. Upgrading the motherboard and getting LPDDR4 sticks would be a net positive before the RAM prices soared.

by port11

6/23/2026 at 3:06:32 PM

Is it really that significant? We're talking watts difference and over a year maybe 100kWh difference? $35/year?

by illegalsmile

6/24/2026 at 7:57:25 AM

I don’t recall the exact numbers, and it’s not apples-to-apples but:

We have 4 sticks of DDR3 totalling 24GB. From what I remember, our home server uses about 70kWh/year to drive the memory. Buying 2 sticks of LPDDR4 would bring that down to about 5kWh (?).

At the time, I remember that a new motherboard and a couple of sticks would’ve paid for itself in 3 or 4 years, IIRC.

by port11

6/22/2026 at 8:20:59 PM

Maybe you have priced it wrong? I just checked Ebay, a 16GB 12800 Registered ECC module goes for 40-50USD ea. That is crazy! Last year they were like 5 USD each.

by olavgg

6/22/2026 at 8:28:28 PM

Except almost nobody buys them, even last years for 10 bucks each. That's almost useless ECC Reg memory for HPE Gen 8 servers and workstations (from before late 2015 / start of 2016 with the introduction of the Gen9 using DDR4).

ECC unbuffered DIMMs (9 memory chips per side, no reg buffer/controller) is less available, quite widely used on level entry systems and thus costs a lot more even second hand.

by Felger

6/22/2026 at 9:23:43 PM

Agree. I was buying DDR3 16GB sticks for some laptops at $5/pop on eBay, now $60+ each.

by qingcharles

6/22/2026 at 9:59:28 PM

Do you have any links? I remember DDR3 sodimms being maybe $.25-$.50/gb for low capacity (4gb), but 8gb+ sticks were always $.80-1+/gb.

by omgwtfbyobbq

6/22/2026 at 10:11:46 PM

I misremembered, it was $5 for 16GB DDR4 (not DDR3) sticks that I was paying on eBay. That might change the pricing.

Here's one I found in my email:

https://imgur.com/a/YWYpuzp

by qingcharles

6/22/2026 at 11:01:27 PM

That's a great price for either, especially for DDR4. Only one stick though, right?

by omgwtfbyobbq

6/23/2026 at 6:31:10 AM

Yeah, I only bought single sticks at a time as I saw good deals on them. I only needed six sticks for three laptops. Just stuck a bunch of low bids and grabbed whatever I could. At the time there were tons going for $5-10 every day. Trying to stick to ones with free postage otherwise the postage would cost as much as the RAM back then.

by qingcharles

6/22/2026 at 10:15:28 PM

That’s crazy, I bought a couple trays of DDR3 2 years ago for under $100 each.

by devmor

6/22/2026 at 11:05:58 PM

Worldwide chip pricing and it's effects on the overall economy are fascinating. I expected by now somebody with a gen -2 class VLSI plant would swing into action and make <thing> for 2/3 the cost of the majors, and clean up in volume as the market absorbs the price shock. But no, instead it suits everyone in the pipeline to whine about it, but mark up prices instead.

I am guessing the other side of this, the price drops will happen but slowly, and just like gas pricing, the profit is in rapid reaction to shortage and slow reaction to competition returning.

Chip pricing a sawtooth would make a LOT of money for somebody.

by ggm

6/23/2026 at 12:24:50 AM

Well, you are working from all sorts of misguided assumptions about how you convert, the yield, the efficiency, the shared capital, and history.

Old gen logic barely exists, and won't convert. The tools are wrong so it wouldn't yield. And there isnt the expertise (on tool recipes and integration) to do it.

Historically, memory is a sawtooth business. But history isn't a great guide here: 10 years ago, a new plant added meaningful capacity, as it came with a shrink of about 30%. Today....it doesn't. So it take huge capital to add a very small amount of capacity.

You can dream that things like 3d dram and 4f cells will help, but they are unlikely to offer enough with demand.

And finally, everyone running a dram plant has lived through these capacity boom bust cycles and the consequently layoffs and pay cuts. I suspect they are happy to take money this time. I would be in their place.

I do hope we see a new dram or dram-like designs. And that there are more efficient dedicated ai processors. And that models themselves become more memory efficient. But I don't really believe any of these come soon.

by brennanpeterson

6/23/2026 at 12:58:34 AM

I think a lot of what you say is true, but we're facing shortages for DDR3/DDR4 RAM and this isn't about increasing density or speed, it's about the pricing of what is a high yield functional commodity in todays manufacturing.

So the questions about 3D and 4D ram, they just aren't applicable.

Somebody should be making Samsung/Hynix ram chips and assembling them onto carriers 24/7 to sell to ordinary people. Instead, the entire production capacity is selling to Hyperscalers and going to AI.

(I could of course be wrong about even this)

by ggm

6/23/2026 at 3:08:04 AM

Commodities are being produced at scale and being sold to those with the resources to buy them. That's free market capitalism (derogatory).

Demand is up, prices are up, production is also up. The only "problem" is that you and I don't have disgusting amounts of money to buy in.

by vitally3643

6/22/2026 at 11:55:37 PM

Even on previous gen nodes it takes a year or two to bring a chip to full production.

by rwmj

6/23/2026 at 12:01:29 AM

Thats the kind of process issue I hadn't understood. I guess the dynamics here don't make operating a "2nd gen behind" system to make memory economic in the good times, and so nobody is ready to ramp up to meet market shortages in the short term.

EU is paying to build out "lo fi" chips for car and other needs: They decided the impact on domestic industry of supply chain logistics to TSMC was bad. A lot of people are shouting "why aren't they doing extreme UV 1nm chip design" when the decision was pretty simple: its possible to source the machines, it's probably faster to get to high yield, the exposure to supply chain risk is real, the return is hopefully high in strategic terms, you can improve density as a follow-on.

No matter what ASML is doing well.

by ggm

6/23/2026 at 8:25:14 AM

Not only that, but such a node is fully booked with existing orders, many which are long term commitments with penalties if they fail to deliver.

by jononor

6/23/2026 at 6:20:38 AM

Unfortunately from what I understood a production line that makes "normal" digital chips generally can't make memory cells with concrete physical differences in the process pipeline

by p_l

6/23/2026 at 8:08:22 AM

The memory crunch started October 2025. DDR6 will come out in 2027. At that point you're investing new capacity into an obsolete technology.

If I was a memory company, I would try to bring DDR6 to the market as soon as possible. DDR6 allows high end CPU based server platforms to reach the memory bandwidth of an A100 or half a H100 without the costly HBM.

by imtringued

6/23/2026 at 2:49:43 PM

I think the DRAM manufacturers understand this is a bubble, and the massive orders won't continue long enough to make spinning up matching new production worth it. All they can do is sell everything they can produce and let the market stabilize to that level.

by tencentshill

6/22/2026 at 8:26:38 PM

The headline made me fear that I will need to shell out a few more bucks for 4164 DRAM chips, but fortunately this does not seem to be the case.

DDR3 is not "retro", for chrissakes.

by michalpleban

6/22/2026 at 9:32:31 PM

It was introduced barely 20 years ago. By that rationale the PS3 is a retro console

by lexicality

6/22/2026 at 9:56:33 PM

In 2000 when the PS2 came out was the NES a retro console?

It was 17 years old, or 14 years since wide distribution in the USA.

What counts as "retro" basically comes down to when the person you ask was born.

by wlesieutre

6/22/2026 at 10:30:30 PM

New NES were still available in the US through at least Christmas 1992, and in Europe deep into 1995, both selling alongside the SNES since 1991.

The final new international games were released in 1994, but Europe still got new games into 1995.

Japanese Famicoms were still being sold in Japan when the PS2 released. They sold more in Japan in 2001 than in 2000.

So no, calling the NES "retro" in 2000 wouldn't have made all too much sense.

by holycrapwhodat

6/23/2026 at 9:38:49 PM

I don't have the magazine to verify, but wikipedia says

> In 2005, Retro Gamer called Snes9x "the best SNES emulator available".[12]

If there was a Retro Gamer magazine writing about SNES emulators, I think it's safe to say some people did consider even the SNES to be retro, 14 years after its US release. My personal experience having used Snes9x around that time, we also considered it retro.

Clearly not everyone though, which is my point in saying what's retro will depend on who you ask.

by wlesieutre

6/23/2026 at 5:30:11 PM

Except people definitely did call it retro back then, so clearly the facts you point out aren't the entire picture of what makes something retro.

by cwillu

6/23/2026 at 8:45:41 AM

It tracks. Let's put it into perspective:

By 2006 when the PS3 came 'round, the NES was definitely retro. It wasn't a livingroom staple anymore, and examples that survived were well-loved (either in the wear-and-tear way, in the appreciation-of-objects way, or both).

The NES was only ~21 years old at the time that the PS3 came out.

by ssl-3

6/23/2026 at 12:18:04 AM

The PS3 is a retro console.

by LeoPanthera

6/22/2026 at 10:31:16 PM

yes the ps3 is now considered a retro console.

by Kuinox

6/23/2026 at 1:22:38 PM

> yes the ps3 is now considered a retro console.

kids these days... stares at the C64 in the corner

by cookiengineer

6/22/2026 at 11:15:28 PM

I was about to say. DDR 2/3 I can still see many use cases for that stuff in modern-ish tech.

I am currently looking for some EDO sticks for a really well preserved IBM Aptiva I found on the side of the road. That stuff is expensive for a very different reason.

by HerbManic

6/22/2026 at 11:42:53 PM

There might be some Aptiva EDO RAM sitting in my parents basement... Ill have to look next time im out there. Im not sure if I ripped it out and stored it before we sent the computer off to recycling eons ago.

by voidfunc

6/23/2026 at 3:05:48 PM

Good. 4164 DRAM production should be able to keep up with demand then.

by RetroTechie

6/23/2026 at 2:08:42 AM

DDR3 era processors are severely outdated today, with the strongest d3cpu 5th gen i7 unable to match performance of 6W TDP N100

by linzhangrun

6/23/2026 at 12:08:52 PM

7th gen still supported DDR3L (with a suitable motherboard, obviously) and it's possible with 9th gen if you're willing to try "coffee time" mod.

by kasabali

6/23/2026 at 1:03:13 PM

I would argue that my old 4790K with dual channel ddr3 19200, at 10x power, is similar or better. That box lasted way longer than was reasonable.

by interloxia

6/23/2026 at 12:50:37 AM

Recently I had been struggling with a computer that kept crashing randomly. I finally figured out it was a bad stick of DDR4. I jokingly said to some friends I should put it on Facebook marketplace for free for repair. Maybe I should, who knows maybe someone can reflow the chips?

by VladVladikoff

6/23/2026 at 3:10:18 AM

Sell it outright on eBay. Someone will pull off the good chips and put them in a product.

It really is that bad out there for small businesses trying to make consumer goods. At work we had to recycle prototypes to salvage memory for a production run

by vitally3643

6/23/2026 at 6:18:03 AM

Okay, but... Are the new RAM players coming to the game? Or we'll be unable to afford a smartphone next year?

There were news that China has set up a new line, but tbh it's really bad that only a few companies are buying the ram at low low prices while others suffer. Economy and the invisible hand of the free market are failing their purpose.

by p0w3n3d

6/22/2026 at 11:43:39 PM

Added errata, homelabsales ddr4 2133/2400 16/32/64 prices are down from 3 months ago a decent amount.

by jollymonATX

6/22/2026 at 11:42:43 PM

Does anybody have an understanding of when realistically there will be supply again? I've heard some positive sentiment about new developments in China, but that's not a market I am familiar with, and I haven't witnessed any effects of it thus far.

by poly2it

6/23/2026 at 3:11:59 AM

Two years at minimum. The manufacturing process simply takes that long to spool up.

That is, unless the hyperscalers all drop dead overnight. Then we'll be swimming in more chips than anyone would care to buy

by vitally3643

6/23/2026 at 3:18:53 AM

I'm just imagining everyone counting memory usage in $ rather than GB now! hahaha

by madazz01

6/22/2026 at 11:19:38 PM

2016: OMG I found that old hard drive with bitcoin! 2026: OMG I found that old shoebox of SO-DIMMS! Lol

by wolvoleo

6/22/2026 at 11:22:24 PM

People act like RAM is thousands of dollars now. I checked prices recently and while it’s pretty high, it’s not that bad for a component you just buy once and use for a long time. I’m still more concerned about the prices and availability of decent GPUs.

by deadbabe

6/23/2026 at 3:14:06 AM

RAM prices are so bad that my business couldn't launch our product this year. RAM increases completely obliterated our profit margin, and would have required raising prices 30%. For a small business, that just doesn't work.

A lot of small businesses are getting absolutely wrecked by this.

by vitally3643

6/23/2026 at 2:46:24 PM

Just raise the prices, it works sooner or later. We are not getting the old prices back.

by deadbabe

6/23/2026 at 5:57:38 PM

> Just raise prices

Let me guess, you've never run a small business before who's existance is based around being small, nimble and inexpensive in order to compete with large corporations?

Yours is the same answer that were given to hundreds of thousands of small businesses during COVID who ended up going out of business. Now you get to shop/eat at at soulless $BIGCORP which has the same slop as every other soulless $BIGCORP.

by KetoManx64

6/23/2026 at 7:52:38 PM

No, but I have purchased from many small businesses who are all raising prices and I basically have no choice but to buy from them anyway.

by deadbabe

6/23/2026 at 3:00:32 AM

Same people complaining "no one wants to work these days".

by sudoshred

6/22/2026 at 9:18:24 PM

It trickles down.

by leni536

6/22/2026 at 11:01:32 PM

The molten toxic sludge of all the ewaste

by ares623

6/22/2026 at 11:51:41 PM

Still got 4x 128MB PC-133 Mosel-Vitelic. I'll be sooo rich soon!1!!

by LargoLasskhyfv

6/22/2026 at 9:16:35 PM

[dead]

by queeshonda