RAM prices

General Discussion
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I mostly used laptops so far and because of many issues with GPU passthrough on laptops I was thinking of getting a PC, but then I noticed the RAM prices. It’s crazy, some went up five times above the market price half year ago.
Anyone here maybe know the ins and outs of the real deal and can share above what media is trying to feed us?
And yeah, it is Qubes related of course :wink:

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We’ve talked a little, not a lot, about hardware pricing in the All around Qubes subforum, which is probably the better place for this thread, but it’s locked to new users until they’ve been posting for a little while.

My view of the situation is it’s mostly as presented in the reporting. (1) the AI/datacenter bubble has massively increased demand for RAM, therefore in the short/medium/possibly long term RAM prices rise; (2) in terms of pure market logic RAM manufacturers favor doing business with corporate customers vs small shops or individuals, so most RAM stock goes to them, further raising prices for consumers specifically; (3) RAM manufacturers are few enough they can come together (explicitly or tacitly) to form something like a cartel, as has happened before, and they leverage 1 and 2 as cover to raise prices even more.

It’s a bad situation, as it means even more of the global industry has committed itself to the AI bubble, which probably means a longer bubble and a worse pop.

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Sure, there are also other places reporting deeply on the issue. A stat point, maybe:
https://www.heise.de/en/news/RAM-Memory-prices-skyrocket-11066895.html

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Yeah, I’m aware of what media is feeding us. I like that there are smart people on this forum, I personally thought the same way regarding the 3rd point

It’s just I really don’t feel like paying so much for something I could get 3-5 times more just half year ago.

Thanks for sharing these, I didn’t even know there is a hidden sub forum in here :no_mouth:

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I died at those prices

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There is a very recent patch to allow safe use of ZRAM within qubes. It was merged 4 days ago but is not released to users yet (even r4.3 testing users).

The raise in global DRAM prices triggered work on that project (here).

Once it is released and you could get the update, you may install zram, zram-generator and zram-generator-defaults in desired templates (or standalones). It is essentially an in-memory compressed swap which is dynamically resized. At a minimal CPU time cost.

It could achieve 1:2 or even 1:3 RAM compression (according to Archlinux Wiki).

Vanilla Fedora has had ZRAM enabled for a long time (details here).

While global crisis with DRAM prices continues, I would recommend using ZRAM. I have been using it for few weeks and I am very happy with it. And for new hardware purchases, I would recommend paying your money to CPU vendors and buying CPUs with higher core count and faster cores rather than paying your money to the DRAM cartel. Even with slower CPUs, ZRAM is pretty fast.

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