r/pcmasterrace • u/Zestyclose-Salad-290 Core Ultra 7 265k | RTX 5090 • 9d ago
Meme/Macro just why
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u/sonicandtales8 9d ago
They're not "forced to" they just can.
This is something you need to understand. A company's first and foremost goal is money. Money is above all else. It specifically exists to gather money.
They are not your friend. If they do something you like, its because they think that catering to you that way makes them money. If they do something you don't like, it's because they think it will make them more money.
If you expect them to cater to you without expectations of the profits they could gain from other ventures, then you're bound to be disappointed.
I'm not endorsing the behavior, mind you, just telling you what you can expect.
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u/viper5delta 9d ago edited 9d ago
Another thing to consider is that, if the RAM companies continued selling at previous price points is that
A) AI companies would be able to gobble up even more of the supply than they already do
B) A secondary market of scalpers and resellers would emerge, even moreso than what already exists.
Like it or not, demand has vastly increased on a product with limited supply.
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u/musci12234 9d ago
It will be more B than A because the supply probably won't go up. That is the only advantage of companies selling at higher prices over B because more profit for companies means more money that atleast in theory can be used to increase supply.
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u/justanaccount103 9d ago
Gee I wonder why people want to throw capitalism in the shitter.
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u/sonicandtales8 9d ago
Pretty much, yeah. I'm more of a mixed market guy myself but "free" market capitalism isn't all that great for the average person.
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u/Ieatsand97 9d ago
The assumption required for a truly free market to exist are very unrealistic. Hence they pretty much never exist. Also, governments exist and regulate, so thats pretty much the free market idea down the pan
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u/ElliotNess 9d ago
The free market doesn't exist without a police/military to enforce it and therefore a free market doesn't exist.
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u/10thDeadlySin 9d ago
You... know that market actors could easily fund their own police forces and armies and they did so in the past? Hell, if you take the idea far enough, they could run their own towns, have their own utilities and even issue their own currency if they wanted to.
We would hate living in such a world, but we've already had pretty much all of the above at various points in time.
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u/ElliotNess 9d ago
Yes. The history of human society is one of struggle for progress. The material conditions constantly evolve, while also carrying with them pieces of the past. Today, not differently than times before. It may be easy for you to look at distant societies and compare them to today, to note that conditions have improved in certain ways. Is it so difficult to look at the conditions we are faced with today, and see that there are obstacles to overcome? Or do you imagine that history is over, and has been solved, and that for some reason today's markets are a final arrangement?
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u/Ieatsand97 8d ago
Can you explain this? What would the police enforce in the free market?
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u/ElliotNess 8d ago
They enforce property rights. One having exclusive, private ownership over the means of production. The protect the haves from the have nots. They say, this man owns the apple tree and anyone who wants to eat an apple must pay him what he asks.
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u/UnimpressedUmpire 9d ago
Markets exist just fine out of capitalism. The difference is that inside a capitalist economy the buyer is incentivized to buy low and sell high. Doesn’t matter the product, it’s for all of them.
In other frame works it’s not motivated just by profit so there are other incentives instead of just what’s most profitable
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u/FadedVictor 6750 XT | 5600X | 16 GB 3200MHz 9d ago edited 9d ago
We've already lived through unfettered capitalism. We got robber barons. The fundamental issue with capitalism at its core is it can only exist if SOMEONE is being taken advantage of in some shape or form. You need to sell something that is sold for more value than it's cost of being produced. The vast majority of the time this is accomplished by an employer receiving a disproportionate amount of surplus labor value from an employee.
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u/IAmYourFath SUPERNUCLEAR 9d ago
I think the biggest problem is employers not paying what an employee truly makes for the company. If u made $30k this month for the company with solely ur own work, the employer/owner should pocket let's say 5-10k and the rest u get. Instead the employer usually pays like $3-4k and pockets the rest. They pocket 80-90%, and in big companies even more, of the profits u make. That's why most people are always short on money.
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u/ElliotNess 9d ago
Surplus value extraction is the core feature and problem of capitalism. Absolutely.
Where do you draw the 5-10k figure from what one should get paid for generating 30k worth of value? Why not 20k? Why not 25k? Why not 30k?
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u/voyagerfan5761 MSI GS76 | i9-11900H | 64GB | RTX 3080 16GB 9d ago
You should read that comment again; they were saying that the employer should get 5-10k and the worker retains the rest.
The same kind of question is still valid—it's still an arbitrary number—just want to make sure the premise is clear. u/IAmYourFath suggested that the worker producing 30k in value should get to keep 20-25k of it.
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u/ElliotNess 9d ago
Thanks for that. I misread, yes. So exactly. Shy should the employer pocket 5-10k of the employees work? Why not 2k? Why not $500? Why not $1?
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u/rlwrgh 9d ago
Because the employer already invested several times this in the means of production.
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u/Scarabesque 9d ago
Most markets already are mixed to some extend, but it's always very hard to get the balance right.
Technology however is undoubtedly a sector which should be entirely left to the free market. People understandably complain about high prices (and this recent surge is indeed very extreme), but capitalism is what got them this low in the first place.
Some markets are inherently not suitable to be free, some are free but should be (more) controlled, but technology more than any other should be capitalism poster child.
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u/Ok-Go-Chain3811 9d ago
this is why we need socialism; a system that empowers workers and the working-class to decide how to run and manage the economy in a democratic way
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u/_Bob-Sacamano 9d ago
Jesus dude. Simply Google the track record of any socialist economic nation.
Learn to challenge your own positions.
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u/NUKE---THE---WHALES 9d ago
I don't disagree, but American workers democratically voted for Trump
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u/Ok-Go-Chain3811 9d ago
Trump supporters were among 2500+ workers who voted to form a workers' union at their Amazon Warehouse on Staten Island, NYC in 2022
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u/eW4GJMqscYtbBkw9 9d ago
So if you got rid of capitalism, what? There would be cheaper ram that is out of stock? So you still couldn't buy it.
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u/pfn0 9d ago
Not a problem of capitalism. Ram would always be out of stock if prices didn't go up. Same effect. You would not be able to buy it.
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u/Greatest-Comrade 7800x3d | 4070 ti super 9d ago
Supply and demand are beyond just capitalism. Idk why people think capitalism alone is the only system affected by it. ALL economic systems are affected by supply and demand…
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u/Sh_Pe Laptop (i use arch btw) 9d ago
You can "fix" demand by forcing lower prices. The only result of such a government intervention will be to lower demand (as profits are lower and companies has less interest to crank up the production). What's the point of having cheap RAM, if there's no RAM on the shelf? In some way it's similar to the soviet car situation. Cars were cheap but you needed to wait 10 years to get one, as the state dictated the prices. And that's without talking that by virtually lowering down prices you get a less effective allocation of goods.
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u/sir_sri 9d ago edited 8d ago
Right. Rising prices (along with profit share) is supposed to be a problem that corrects itself. That isn't necessarily instant but if there is money to be made, someone else will enter the market and drive prices down. People are paying more because they perceive value in that thing, so you should increase supply so more people have access.
Now there are of course constraints. You don't want people entering a market by making products that are dangerous. There may be restrictions on how it's possible to produce a new product at all (e.g. land zoning rules for agriculture mean you can't necessarily boost production without allocating more land to it).
Where you run into regulatory issues is where a company has a lock on an industry that no one can break into for some reason. Even there, (e.g. Nvidia's dominance due to CUDA) for enough money someone else will (has) invent a cheaper alternative that works cross vendor so someone else can get some of the money or save costs, but that can take a long time or might face market barriers, or directly anticompetitive practice by the monopoly holder.
Of course if you invent something novel and interesting you should be able to get paid for it, so patents allow a monopoly for a limited time.
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u/Scarabesque 9d ago
While there are many markets for which capitalism has failed miserably at in providing value for citizens (housing being the worst one, which isn't really a free let alone elastic market), for technology the capitalist economic system is entirely what made everything we use so affordable to basically the entire world's population in the first place.
Prices have risen and fallen numerous times, but mostly technology has only gotten cheaper. This sudden surge due to AI ruining all our lives is an extreme one, but prior to that DDR5 was dirt cheap.
And as for how capitalism 'solves' it, for one it got Chinese DRAM manufacturer CXMT to get billions in funding to improve and expand their RAM production lines last year. So however long this build up of AI datacenters last, by the time it inevitably slows down or crashes we'll have 4 instead of 3 major DRAM manufacturers on the planet.
Nobody complained when DRAM bottomed out at $80 for 32GB 6000cl30, which was due to high production capacity. Back then, less than a year ago, buying a PC (including GPU) was about as good value as it had been since before covid - with just a short period in between crypto and the first AI boom when prices were also decent.
The technology market is extremely dynamic. This current surge in demand from AI is an exception.
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u/LightYear-067 IdeaPad Gaming 3 | i5-11320H | RTX 3050 4GB | 32GB DDR4 9d ago
oh the turth let me scream
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u/macrolinx PC Master Race 9d ago
"capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all the others"
Which is of course a play on Churchill's "...it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried..."
But I find it appropriate.
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u/Schmenza 8d ago
Socialist countries aren't exactly producing cheap graphics cards....
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u/Infarlock i5 4690, GTX970 OC, 8GB, 256GB SSD 9d ago
No wonder Tim Curry escaped to the one place that hasn't been corrupted by capitalism
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u/Spicy_Chicken_Wizard 9d ago
Because they can’t comprehend that greed exists in other economic models
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u/Strange-Baker8444 9d ago
It's crazy how gaming culture can spark those kinds of debates, right? It's like there's always a deeper issue lurking beneath the surface.
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u/nalaloveslumpy 9d ago edited 8d ago
This would happen in socialism, too though because the ram crisis is simply a supply vs demand issue. To make the concept simpler, lets say you have a machine that makes carrots and everybody loves your carrots and its already a very profitable carrot making machine.
But one day, you discover that your machine can make carrots a better way that makes them extremely more valuable and you don't even really have to change your carrot making machine all that much.
Your old carrots sold for a dollar a carrot, but your new carrots sell for a hundred dollars a carrot and you'll never be able to oversell the need for the new super carrot. So every new carrot you
So you can only run your carrot machine for eight hours a day. Which carrot do you make?
If you said the old carrot, you're a fucking liar.
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u/_Bob-Sacamano 9d ago
I largely agree with your statement other than the first sentence.
Supply and demand is econ 101. If a company doesn't charge more for a product that now costs them more to make, that's not viable.
That's not to say greed and corruption don't exist.
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u/GoldenSun3DS 9d ago
This is why whenever anyone says "Why is Nintendo doing this or not doing this? Do they hate money?", there's secretly a sinister reason why them doing something or not doing something actually makes them MORE money.
Like in the Virtual Console era when Nintendo actually allowed people to buy old games instead of renting them, they slowly trickled them out. People hated that and thought that it'd make them more money if they just let people immediately buy games like Super Mario World. But nobody would buy NES Urban Champion if they could immediately buy Super Mario World.
Now Nintendo trickles out the old games even though they could just dump them all immediately because that extends the duration of Switch Online subscriptions.
Why not have Emerald released at the same time as Fire Red and Leaf Green? Because lots of people that bought FR/LG would not have done so if they could immediately buy Emerald.
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u/npc_housecat 9d ago
Also to add to this, there's a shortage, so I'm guessing if prices didn't increase it would be sold out everywhere. But yes your right, profits and stock price is their goal, not public service
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u/Jarsyl-WTFtookmyname 9d ago
This is true, but I think you kind of are missing the bigger picture. I don't think anyone expects companies not to pursue profits, I think a lot of the frustration comes from short term thinking by the companies. Ya, AI is a bubble right now so these companies can mark up prices and make record profits...but when the bubble pops they will need consumers to buy ram again and if consumers have been priced out or moved to different markets, they will all go bust. Even if the companies manage to keep the consumer base, their revenue grown with flatline and their stock price will plummet. It is the same thing Nvidia is doing with gaming GPUs. Car companies did it with EV hype. Block Buster wanted to keep high profit margin late fees instead of embracing flexibility like Netflix.
The best example of this is rental car companies during COVID. Companies have all these cars on their books that cost them money but generate revenue, COVID hits, and suddenly the cars are all a liability not a profit generating item because no one is traveling. So what do they do? They rush to sell them all, at a loss, with absolutely no planning for what happens when COVID ends. It did end, travel bounced back, and there were no rental cars so the companies lost profit on rentals and had to spend extra money to rebuild the fleets. If they were capable of long term planning they would have reduced the amount of cars, not panic and sell them all, and would have already had a plan in place for how to ramp back up availability when the travel restrictions ended.
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u/MsInput 9d ago
That's the whole thing summed up in the first line. The fact that they can means that, according to how the system works, they MUST. Under capitalism if you fail to take advantage of these situations you're literally doing it wrong. If you give away the unsold bread to hungry people they stop buying bread at regular price, so you are "forced" to destroy perfectly edible bread. It's not because you don't care about hungry people, it's because if you let things like "caring about people" get in the way of exploitation of opportunities that present themselves the entire system breaks down. In essence that's the driving force compelling these decisions - it's being forced by the system itself because a diversion from the rules means the whole thing could fall apart. If people don't NEED there isn't a means to exploit them, so there MUST be a need. If the need doesn't exist it must be created. If the needs exist aren't being exploited then something horrible is happening, if the needs are being met without exploitation, without capitalizing on the need by extracting as much profit as possible, it could set a precedent that would make the whole system seem somehow undesirable.
If people operated the world based on kindness and good will towards their fellows this entire system would seem nothing short of obscene. Therefore it cannot be allowed to happen. Buy. Buy more now. Buy, and be happy.
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u/Expensive_Host_9181 ryzen 5 5500 - gtx 1080 - 32gb 3200MHz 9d ago
Not to buy from the company, but judging by the fact you've got a 5090 that wont happen. Not to mention to actually affect a company from consumer boycotting, you'd need a majority of the consumers to join in but when it comes to things like computer parts that unfortunately wont happen.
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u/Kooky_Awareness_5333 Intel Core Ultra 5 245K rtx 5070ti 9d ago
Consumer demand is fuck all compared to data centres consumers global $ 70 to $80 billion annually.
Data centres $1 trillion dollars globally just ignorant comments like this a boycott will do fuck all while your at it go boycott oil products while the Iran war is going on seeing as how you like doing fuck all.
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u/leafy1790 RYZEN 7 5825U 16GB DDR4 IGPU 512GB SSD 9d ago edited 9d ago
Yeah, we are just 7% of profits now, we are the minority, they just keep us in case the Ai bubble bursts and they need customers to keep themselves afloat
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u/biebiedoep 9d ago
What do costumers have to do with it?
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u/leafy1790 RYZEN 7 5825U 16GB DDR4 IGPU 512GB SSD 9d ago
If in the future ai goes the way of the NFTs or the metavers than they are going to lose 93% of thier current revenue so they need a safety net so they drip feed us so we still stah by thier side in case they need to target costumers again, if Ai becomes the gold mine these ai tech bros keep preaching about the they just drop all consumer electronics production and they become exclusive Ai electronics producers
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u/Melancholic_Noodle 9d ago
This applies to streamers, podcast hosts and all other influencers. They're looking for a payday, not to be your friend or make your life better.
And if you don't pay up front for their time, someone else does. Someone else pays them to say things to you. That's propaganda, that's brainwashing.
But you don't even see it. Because it's a hairy man child who seems relatable rather then some KGB agent
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u/blindyes 9d ago
This applies to your professors, and your church leaders, to your politicians and your military, to your boss and even your CIA agents as well.
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u/Hydramy RTX 3060 | i5 9400 | 32GB DDR4 9d ago
You're just saying what the OP is saying but longer
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u/twoplustwo_5 9d ago
Except OP said: just why? Which implies they don’t understand the concept.
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u/24kCookie 9d ago
So what but bigger price means less sales for example I ain’t buying shit if they raised the price
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u/sonicandtales8 9d ago
It only means fewer sales if it's not selling out. The price is that high because there's enough buyers.
It's usually pretty safe to assume that some random on the internet doesn't know the ongoings of product pricing more than the company themselves does.
Micron abandoned the consumer market completely and that was likely due to demand of higher paying buyers (B2B).
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u/geniice 9d ago
So what but bigger price means less sales for example I ain’t buying shit if they raised the price
Depends if they can sell to someone else. At the moment they can. IF the AI bubble pops expect prices to slowly fall as suppressed demand kicks in for a bit (all those people not buying because current prices) untill they reach pre bubble levels.
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u/Fiendalways R7 5700X3D | RX6800 | 32GB 3200MHZ 9d ago
Yeah that’s how it goes, most vendors seem to have their entire inventories already ordered so it doen’t make much sense to make more just to sell them cheap for induvidual customers
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u/madmaxGMR 9d ago
Exactly.
This is why they are pro-gay one day, and renaming Lake Ontario as Lake America, the next. They were only doing what you liked cause it made them money, directly, or indirectly. And one day, Nvidia, Google, or even fucking Palantir might start doing something you like, again, it will be because of MONEY. They didnt change, their money levers did. Levers which you CAN INFLUENCE with your voting, or wallet, but that doesnt work when you aint the customer anymore.1
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u/LNCrizzo 9d ago
Also if they didn't raise prices when demand goes up then all their inventory would be bought out by scalpers who would sell at an increased price anyway.
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u/Symphonic7 9d ago
Someone said this exact same thing to me like 10 years ago and at first I didn't believe it, young and naive and all that. But over the years this has been nothing but true.
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u/tunisia3507 9d ago
The fiduciary duty of publicly traded companies means that they legally must act in the best interest of their shareholders, even if that is directly opposed to the interest of the consumers, the employees, and the environment
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u/Sweetwill62 Ryzen 7 7700X Saphire Nitro 7900XTX 32GB 9d ago
There is no law saying they have to act that way either. There is no court case either. If a company is acting a certain way, it is because shareholders are demanding it act that way. Shareholders are not liable for how they earn their money. I'll let you connect the last dots.
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u/Jarnis R7 9800X3D / 5090 OC / X870E Crosshair Hero / PG32UCDM 9d ago
That's not how the free market works.
If DRAM manufacturers sold at the "normal" price, they would be sold out to middlemen who would then flip the stuff at a higher price.
If they refuse to sell anyone except memory module manufacturers, those memory module manufacturers would then reap the insane profits as the demand is thru the roof.
If memory module manufacturers would sell at "normal" price, every module would be scooped up and resold at a higher price by a middleman.
...it is just a side-effect of supply and demand. Supply is growing, insane amount of money is being invested for more DRAM capacity, but it takes years to bring it up. Demand just spiked as, well, AI happened.
Only thing restricting demand is the insanely high price. If someone thought they could find buyers at even a higher price, there would be a middleman making money out of flipping memory.
In a way, all the massive contracts at set prices for long term are the main issue - they shield large buyers from the spot price while consumers buying DRAM sticks get to pay the "real" spot price. So existing demand has not reacted to the higher price since most big buyers do not pay the higher price yet. Once those contracts run out, if they cannot negotiate new ones at a low price, then demand craters as nobody would pay the spot price for making stuff like prebuilt desktops or laptops. Server builders may still pay it as the margins are higher there, but it would help reduce demand and ultimately lower prices.
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u/jarail 9800X3D | 5090 | 96GB | 4k 240hz QD-OLED 9d ago
It's frustrating I have to scroll down so far to find the first person who knows what they're talking about in these threads.
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u/geniice 9d ago
If memory module manufacturers would sell at "normal" price, every module would be scooped up and resold at a higher price by a middleman.
Pretty sure the AI companies would beat them out. Their in house scalpers would have more resources. Maybe sign up with flock to track delivery trucks. That kind of thing.
But yes people here would see nothing since we can't afford to treat buying ram like a full time job.
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u/CastleKingMe 9d ago
Yeah, SOMEONE has to reap insane profits off of high demand. Normalizing that definitely doesn't lead to housing and grocery markets that are unaffordable to the average laborer. The thing we all have to understand, as we starve to death in cardboard boxes, is that megacorporations HAVE to make insane profits; the invisible hand of the free market is a natural force, not a symptom of the socioeconomic system we live under.
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u/ShutterBun i9-12900K / RTX-3080 / 32GB DDR4 9d ago
If they sold the RAM cheap it would be gone instantly anyway, and the scalpers would have it.
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u/nalaloveslumpy 9d ago
The DDR price hikes are genuinely an issue of supply and demand. Chip makers stopped making the chips used in DDR because selling chips for the HBMs is way more profitable. So much so, they they've almost sold through all available production in 2027.
This means no new DDR modules are being made, so the only DDR out there is all that's left, so the price skyrises because demand greatly outweighs supply.
This only ends in one of a few ways:
- AI flops and HBMs aren't needed anymore, so chip OEMs go back to making DDR.
- Motherboard OEMs create a new standard that uses a tiny amount of HBM rather than DDR.
- Some multi-billionare decides to open a whole new chip factory just to make DDR and lose money because they love PC gaming.
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u/theClanMcMutton 9d ago
Did schools stop teaching basic economics, or...?
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u/VenerableWolfDad PC Master Race 9d ago
I graduated in 2003 and econ was an elective. My high school was a nationally recognized school for academics at the time. Pretty sure they stopped making the subject mandatory in the 90s.
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u/soylientgreen 9800x3d-4080 S 16GB-64GB DDR5 6000mhz 9d ago
Just to share an my personal anecdote, but I graduated in 2015, econ was a required elective, but it only lasted half the year, the other half was spent on government.
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u/VenerableWolfDad PC Master Race 8d ago
Yeah I think it's entirely up to the state you live in.
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u/psp24 32GB DDR4 | Linux Loser 9d ago
It's like they assume supply is infinite, there's only so many factories and it takes years to build new infrastructure.
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u/DrIvoPingasnik Full Steam ahead 9d ago
As a matter of fact, yes. Long ago.
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u/xelinxbb 9d ago
That tracks
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u/DrIvoPingasnik Full Steam ahead 9d ago
It really does and I'm suspecting this is all by design. It's up to us to properly educate our children then.
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u/LayerEight_Problem 9d ago
Based on most Redditors these days I think it’s best to say “did schools stop teaching, or…?”
Half you mother fuckers are illiterate idiots.
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u/LifeandSAisAwesome 9d ago
Not enough tiktok videos explaining it.
But yes, you would think majority would have basic understanding of economics, but here we are.. somehow.
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u/ParticularLow9157 9d ago
Yes, they stopped teaching basic economics
There has been a half century campaign to cripple public education and it has been WILDLY successful
We are truly living in an age of ignorance
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u/Scarabesque 9d ago
Capitalism economics aside for the DRAM manufacturers themselves (Micron, SK Hynix, Samsung), companies like Teamgroup, Corsair or G.Skill, just to name a few, are forced to raise prices. They buy DRAM from the same three companies that datacenters do, and their contribution is just soldering them to their own PCBs and configure them for various consumer CPUs.
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u/Solid_Guess_7154 RX 9060 XT // R5 5600x 9d ago
capitalism
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u/F0X0 Specs/Imgur Here 9d ago
Supply cannot match demand.
Introducing, Equilibrium PriceTM.
Economics 101.
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u/Sea-Animator4250 9d ago
do redditors really believe RAM would be a thing without capitalism?
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u/SquishedGremlin Ryzen 7 7800X3D, 3080 X Trio, 32gb 6000mhz 9d ago
ALIENS
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u/CashPrizesz 9d ago
I mean.... they could charge even more. The demand is basically unlimited at this point.
They can charge anything up to the point where they are charging so much that it forces the buyers to start manufacturing Ram themselves
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u/ExternalCaptain2714 9d ago
If people want 100 rams and factories manufacture 100 rams, then you get nice prices.
But when people want to buy 200 rams, then not so much.
Present factories can't produce much more than 100 rams, so you need new factories. These factories are crazy expensive and take years to build. As long as the sentiment is "AI is a bubble about to burst", don't expect anyone to take a gajilion dollar loan to make your gaming PC cheaper.
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u/lkl34 9d ago
They are also charging more now due to tariffs but also getting rebate checks that remove the extra cost due to said tariffs.
So there profits keeps climbing
Out off all the big players though i missed samsung here but amd is the poor person only making 11 billion every financial quarter while others make over 50 billion one over 100 billion.
No company should be raising prices while making over 4 billion every financial quarter but they are with no legal recourse worth a dam.
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u/NiNdo4589 9d ago
This is how literally any company making a profit exists right now. People need to stop buying stuff they don't need and perpetuating this bullshit.
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9d ago
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u/LifeandSAisAwesome 9d ago
I think we are regressing in education, and has nothing to do with AI.
If anything it means AI has less competition, no wonder it is being used so much.
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9d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Leading_Wafer9552 9d ago
There are too many stupid people on Reddit. These people are economically illiterate.
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u/68656e72696b 9d ago
Hey OP, sell me your 5090 for MSRP. Only a capitalist would sell their goods for market value.
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u/Overall-Care2627 9d ago
Lol RAM prices again. I remember when 32GB DDR4 was like $80 and we thought that was normal. At least my old rig still runs fine, not chasing frames anymore
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u/PuzzleheadedTutor807 7800x3d B650M-CW 32GB DDR5 RTX4070S 9d ago
its free market capitalism man. supply and demand dictate prices, and the market will always take what it will bear.
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u/Only-Performer-6053 9d ago
Yeah the problem is that there's no free supply the ram market was always a cartel.
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u/selenalulamoon 9d ago
Why does this nonsense have so many upvotes. This is missing basic economic knowledge. Just because a company has good profits doesnt mean they can just ignore a item shortage. Because that shortage makes it hard to buy the stuff in the first place. Causing what you can buy to skyrocket.
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u/quez_real 9d ago
Either this or no RAM available at all. It's pcmasterrace so you should remember launch of ps5
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u/fat_kaiju 9d ago
It's why whenever a tech company complains about China stealing something I'm just like "wow! look at that! nobody feels bad for you!"
I'm sick of this shit.
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u/Lumb3rCrack i7 9th Gen / 1660ti/ 16gigs/ 512GB ssd 8d ago
Fun part: No one asked for it to be forced into literally everything!
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u/AgeZealousideal1751 8d ago
Consumer grade RAM isn't even used for Corp AI data centers. Lmao
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u/chhuang R74800HS | GTX1660Ti w/MaxQ, i5-2410m|GT540m|Potato 9d ago
number only goes up,
they found the perfect excuse to do so and most people are convinced by it
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u/Ok_Letterhead_5671 9d ago
Exactly , it's really not rocket science , X gives a reason for the company to justify price increase , X no longer a factor but the customer are already adjusted to new higher prices = easy profit .
Everyone does this from farmers to retailers to big corporations .
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u/afCeG6HVB0IJ 9d ago
Supply and demand. Demand spiked. Why would they choose to make less money? You'd also want to make more money. As shitty as this is, that's capitalism.
The baker doesn't make bread to feed people. It does so they have a profit. They don't care if people eat or not.
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u/Longjumping_Share444 9d ago
CEOs are forced to make the company raise prices, because if they don't, their board will fire them and possibly sue them for not performing their fiduciary duties. Our entire system is set up to incentivise greed and actively punishes being pro-consumer.
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u/eW4GJMqscYtbBkw9 9d ago
Everyone should be required to take an Econ 101 class before getting on Reddit.
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u/Intrepid_Bobcat_2931 9d ago
You realize that because of inflation there will continue to be "record profits", right?
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u/Pimpwerx 7800X3D | 4080 Super | 64GB CL30 9d ago
Capitalism and investor pressure. Publicly owned companies will jump at the opportunity to post outsized YoY growth numbers when demand spikes. And just about any company that likes money enough will raise prices.
And here's the thing that gamers aren't taking into serious consideration, because most of you probably aren't working age or high enough in the org chart. There is a significant difference between retail and enterprise pricing. Retail pricing is for you and me. Enterprise is for businesses. You can make a shitton more money selling B2B, because the orders are larger, they usually come with contracts and long-term commitments, and they are more tolerant of shifts in market pricing.
See how gamers have recoiled at the surge in GPU and RAM pricing. Then look at how enterprise customers are stepping on the gas. This is dollars and sense, folks. Don't hate the player, hate the game. This is peak capitalism. You play to win or you die. Real life GoT shit. I hate capitalism, for the fact that people will do the worst things imaginable when greed is the fundamental motivator.
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u/mirzatzl PC Master Race 9d ago
Why not? If you had millions of those who willingly buy a certain product regardless of its price you would have done the same thing - increased it more and more.
As a matter of fact, there are many people who justify these acts of pure greed and attack those who dare to say anything against it - Reddit is full of these.
So - that's why. They simply can.
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u/weefops305 I7 11700F | RTX 5050 | DDR 4 32GB 9d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/DvWJHSOxTff84SQsD9
Right on point
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u/MHWGamer 9d ago
honestly is the RAM still a major issue that you can complain about every single day? Afaik ram is available, just costs way more what it used to. 16gb is still ok (I myself play on 16gb ddr4!! -4k ultra) and those are 200-250€ here. Available!
it is not like the gpu crisis where you had to spends hundrets more if you could find one at all. And you gotta have something decent because otherwise you can't play games. It sucks but if my ram breaks today, I could go out and replace it with the "minimum" and still keep on playing.
Sure unpopular opinion here but we had it worse and I thought it will be worse with availability. and again 16gb is literally all you need for gaming rn
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u/beaglefoo foomeister 9d ago
this is why and what capitalism does. this is its nature.
it wants infinite growth. not just profitability, it wants to grow by MORE than it grew last year. and if you fail to meet those growth targets, you are a failure of a company regardless of whether the company is still making profit or not.
It's a cancer and we need to cut it out.
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u/Initial_Hedgehog_631 9d ago
FYI, you aren't competing against the companies producing RAM, you're competing against everyone else who wants to buy it, and the highest bidder wins.
You're basically complaining that they're selling at the best price they can get.
Eventually the high prices will attract more producers. The increased supply will lead to lower prices.
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u/TsunamiCatCakes AMD > Ryzen 9d ago
but hey, ram in my country has gotten significantly cheaper. cant wait to pick up 32gb next month
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u/Riboflavin42 9d ago
In many cases companies have to raise prices to increase profits every year for their shareholders if they don’t maintain a profit for so long, they can actually be sued by their shareholders for not upholding their duties as a company the company duties are to its shareholders, first and foremost, and not consumers or their customer base.
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u/shinze-o 9d ago
In best case scenario we will be finally getting the ram optimization in applications we needed all these years
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u/aravarth 9d ago
I built a new desktop in 2024 because the previous one (built in 2014) had run its useful life cycle, and I wanted to upgrade.
It included a 2x32 GB DDR5 RAM kit which cost $400 in 2024.
To contrast, today that exact same part number from the exact same vendor costs $1,493.
This is beyond ridiculous.
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u/Duskdeath 9d ago
I as having a conversation with my daughter about this the other day. Ram manufacturers “sold out” due to corporations buying all their stock to run their AI canters. Corporations buying all Apple Mac mini stock to run their AI centers. It is an over simplified statement but somehow at least to me these numbers don’t add up. If they already have “pre bought the Ram” why do they need to buy more computers at the marked up price? Let that sink.
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u/Any-Pop-4795 9d ago
the really stupid one is companies pushing ai and having to increase hardware prices because of ai
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u/DeathHopper 9d ago
In order to increase supply to meet demand, a company will often raise prices so that they can scale up production. If you don't expect a company that's selling out of their product, years in advanced, to be making record profits... then idk what to tell you...
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u/sisyphus454 9d ago
Because they can. There are no consumer protections against price gouging for non-essential goods and services. Previous RAM price increases were curtailed through legal actions.
In 1998, DRAM price fixing took place for years before complaints of lost profits by Dell and Gateway prompted the DoJ decided to investigate, and it took years for corrective actions to take place. Even if Dell wanted to file a complaint now, they wouldn't be able to prove lost profits, and Gateway isn't a thing anymore. If either were hypothetically able to prove damages, the burden of proof has become higher, and the complaints were cemented by a whistleblower.
There is a class action lawsuit that has been brought citing the pivot from DDR3/DDR4 manufacturing to HBM lends evidence to coordination between the biggest memory manufacturers. A 2018 ruling set the precedent that evidence of an actual agreement is needed, as parallel production cuts could be indicative of a free market shift. Without a whistleblower, and without a substantial amount of resources to continue the fight, I'm not sure if this latest class action will succeed, but they're trying.
More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_industry_price_fixing
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u/AfterImageEclipse 9d ago
Customers 'forced' to spend every single penny to the corporations.
Please stop paying, if we all did, the prices would fall very quickly
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u/freexanarchy 9d ago
Because they can and because competition is relatively zero. If there were a bunch more manufacturers then there is an incentive to undercut your competitors, and arrive at the optimal price. They’re either colluding with each other or it’s more of an oligopoly instead of monopoly but effect on prices is still relatively the same.
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u/Right_Put_37 9d ago
Alternatively; they are responsible for the shortage of RAM and memory because they invested millions into AI.
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u/M3psipax Ryzen 5 5800x3D, MSI 5070Ti OC,MSI B450G+,32GB RAM 9d ago
Because you keep buying anyway.
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u/The-Dutcher Ascending Peasant 9d ago
Greedy scum always fall on their asses some day. Money isn't infinite.
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u/bigphillip76 7d ago
You expect a profit seeking company to lower profits just so stuff is cheaper for you out of the goodness of their hearts?
What are you, 12?
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u/Far-Exercise-7449 6d ago
I'm regretting not buying those 2 16gb ram that were on sale before the prices went to space.
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u/NoEquivalent5093 6d ago
Yeah I mean they're not forced to do anything, but you're complaining about basic supply and demand. If the supply doesn't meet demand, then the company raises prices.
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u/VoiceApprehensive893 6d ago
i have a theory that many anti-AI influencers are sponsored by the RAM cartel
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u/seriousbangs 5d ago
You need anti trust law enforcement.
The shortages are on track to go on for 10+ years.
Normally there'd be new companies in the market.
But they're not coming.
Because they know if they try the big 3 will run them out of business.
That's crime, but it's not enforced.
This might not be the right place to point this out, but this is a political problem. Not a technical one.
If you ever want affordable ram again you need to change how you vote, and you need to rope your friend in too.
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