i’m seeing some estimates stating ram prices are going to jump 400% by the end of june 2026. major price increases are inbound.
here is some of the information i’m seeing:
- Memory shortage deepens, extending boom for Korean chipmakers
- Samsung expects memory shortage to worsen through 2027 and last until 2028
- SK Hynix CEO sees worst memory shortage in 2027, demand to outstrip supply beyond 2030
- SSD and memory price to remain high at least until 2029?
- Micron: Memory Crunch Outpaces 20% Supply Growth
- Price of SSDs in 2026: why it’s a panic (and when it will calm down)
- The Rising Cost of RAM & SSDs: What’s Happening, Why It’s Happening AGAIN and What Comes Next
- Riding the AI Supercycle: Navigating the 2026 Memory & Storage Market
- Electronic Pricing Pressures Will Last Beyond 2026
- Memory’s $200B Inflection
- Micron Is Up 900%. Here’s Why the AI Memory Trade May Still Have Room to Run
- Memory & HBM
- Prediction: Micron Could Be the Most Important AI Stock After Nvidia
- Memory Will Cost Cloud Giants More Than GPUs by 2027: NVIDIA Uses That to Justify 15% Server Hike
- Gartner Says Surging Memory Costs Will Reduce Global PC and Smartphone Shipments in 2026
prices may never come down again.
“post consumer computing”
No thanks, I’ll buy old stuff, until we are done with this bullshit.
If the new stuff gets more expensive, the old stuff will too
It already has. But…there are still things out there that the average punter considers e-waste or underpowered that are still rich seams to mine. Consider: when raspberry pi’s went insane, sensible folks pivoted to WYSE thin clients.
I mean…I love my Pi4 in its Argon 40 case…but if I had to buy again today…WYSE 5070 all the way.
I bet there’s still room for that sort of thing. Hell, I will revive an old Amiga or tinker with a new AllWinner or ESP32 before I pay the Nvidia tax. I’ll go low, I’ll go weird, I won’t pay Nvidia.
You and a lot of other people too. As people get priced out of new stuff, they too will start “mining those seams”.
Except that’s where the mining analogy breaks down. When we’re mining, we’re putting new resources into circulation, increasing supply, driving prices down. But when it comes to old hw, it’s already all in circulation, so as demand for it goes up, supply will go down, and prices will go up.
All hardware has already gotten more expensive, and the headline is that it will continue that trend. My point is that old hw won’t be an exception, it will also continue going up in price. So if you plan to grab old hw next year, you should probably just go ahead and get it now while it’s cheaper.
Vintage computers - Amigas, C64s, old Macs etc - yeah, that’s a fixed and shrinking pool. Supply only goes one direction.
But WYSE thin clients, last gen ThinkPads…these aren’t rare. They’re surplus.
Corporate refresh cycles are a constant feed. Every time a business upgrades 500 desktops, 500 units hit the second-hand market. It’s not mining a finite seam, it’s fishing a river that keeps getting stocked by people who want the new shiny thing.
The opportunity isn’t scarcity, it’s that most people won’t look there. That’s a different dynamic entirely imho.
Will it get more expensive if everyone starts buying it? Maybe. But most people *won’t * go out looking for enterprise surplus when they want a new computer - they’ll go to OfficeWorks (to use a local big box) or order from Amazon. That’s the whole point. The seam exists because the average punter isn’t digging there.
DDR3 ftw 💪 no shit, my newest piece of equipment in my homelab (besides the switch) is a ThinkPad T540p (i5 4200M)