# What going on with ram prices?



## michdb (May 25, 2018)

2 years ago I make my first custom Hackintosh and I bought 16 gm of ram to later expand i paid around 60 $ for 2 x 8gb drr4 crucial,
now i wanna upgrade to 32 or 40 gb but the prices go crazy this last two years i didnt know they raised so much , any one know if is better to wait to drop the prices or is gonna get even higher?


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## gregh (May 25, 2018)

driven by demand from cryptocurrency miners. The sooner that ridiculous bubble bursts the better, who knows when that will happen though


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## Manaberry (May 26, 2018)

Looking forward to see how crypto miners will resell all their stuff once this crazy thing is done.

So many GPUs..


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## markleake (May 26, 2018)

And, it seems, collusion amoungst the RAM manufacturers also.


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## Jeremy Gillam (May 26, 2018)

My friend's teenage brother had a crypto mine going in his parents' attic for a while but from what I hear recently sold all his gear and has moved on to aftermarket modifications for his car to try to get it to accelerate faster. Not sure if this is an isolated case or speaks to a general trend though.


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## fretti (May 26, 2018)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/...ble-to-afford-a-great-gaming-pc/#711308a82468

Gaming PCs as an example (as more can relate probably) but it's a problem for all people who need/want great hardware for demanding tasks


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## chimuelo (May 26, 2018)

You either need RAM right now or you don’t.
If it’s too expensive sacrifice something else cause it’s not going down.

Read Digitimes if you want to be prepared for issues dealing with supply/ demand.
In 2016 everyone was warned about RAM going up from plants retooling for SSD demand.

Go buy some SSDs because when RAM starts coming down everyone will be upset that SSDs are too damn high.
Intel prices are low now because of AMD.

Lots of changes in release dates, available products, etc.
Great times to prepare for new builds.

Set up a a secret RAM fund.
The ones with blinking lights make great gifts.


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## gsilbers (May 26, 2018)

Lol bitcoin. I bought amd stock just because I thought it used to be a good company back when it was more head to head w intel. So I thought it would do a turnaround. 

TTurns out that crypto miners go crazy w and cards... or it’s a specific card that they need for specific currency... or something... dunno but I do know I suddenly made like 300% return. 

I’m guessing w ram is similar. Some specific ram is needed or preferred and that drives prices way up.


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## aaronventure (May 26, 2018)

RAM isn't that much affected by crypto mining. You can't even mine bitcoin with GPUs (you can, but you're really just wasting power and losing money). GPUs are used to mine Ether (and other cryptocurrencies) but as the complexity is increasing, the return is decreasing and soon they will be selling the mining rigs (if you'll be in the market for a GPU, you can safely snag one of these, as they were working night-and-day at 70-80 C which is much, much better than constant cooling and heating that happens in normal use.

Cryptocurrencies are mined by using your processing power to handle transactions on the network, thus powering the network, and in return you get "paid". RAM doesn't really have processing power, and 8GB is enough to handle the initialization of GPU mining to create a slightly bigger file.

RAM prices are driven up mainly by the fact that *smartphones switched to DDR4* and there was a big increase in smartphone production.


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## chimuelo (May 31, 2018)

I was hoping after Computex I could stock up on DDR 16GB 2166/2400 Modules due to Optane DIMMs and newer C246 Chips hitting the scene. No luck.
Delayed until 2019. Not seeing anything under 256GB as a package.
Damn, what about 32GB DIMMs, I’m not launching rockets or anything...


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## MarcusD (Jun 1, 2018)

RAM prices are so crazy right now, I got a 32GB set for £244 about 6 months ago. Same RAM is now going for £364!


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## galactic orange (Jun 4, 2018)

I was looking at getting a 2013 Mac Pro 6-core and looked at what 64GB RAM (32GBx2) would cost. Immediately started looking at iMacs instead. But the prices aren't much better there.


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## tmhuud (Jun 4, 2018)

Just do upgrades thru OWC. Save yourself some cash.


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## Morning Coffee (Jun 4, 2018)

Supply and demand.

I presume the prices for older versions of Ram have increased because they are no longer produced (or in limited quantities) and instead of upgrading computers, people might be hanging on to them for a few years longer by upgrading parts of their computer (like Ram) rather than buying a newer computer. When I upgraded my ram for my 2008 Mac Pro a few years ago, it was more expensive to buy ram for it than for newer versions of ram. That's on top of the already premium prices you pay for Apple products.


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## Mike Fox (Jun 4, 2018)

Morning Coffee said:


> Supply and demand.
> 
> I presume the prices for older versions of Ram have increased because they are no longer produced (or in limited quantities) and instead of upgrading computers, people might be hanging on to them for a few years longer by upgrading parts of their computer (like Ram) rather than buying a newer computer. When I upgraded my ram for my 2008 Mac Pro a few years ago, it was more expensive to buy ram for it than for newer versions of ram. That's on top of the already premium prices you pay for Apple products.


I also use a 2008 Mac Pro. The original ram is insanely expensive, but these machines can use server ram, which is dirt cheap on ebay. I spent less than $100 and got 64 gigs. It's now maxed out with ram and runs like a champ.


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## Piano Pete (Jun 4, 2018)

In addition to everything else mentioned here, there was a flash memory storage shortage that started a few years ago, 2016-ish. This has put a large strain on many of the manufacturers of RAM and many other chip/board developers.

If my memory is serving me correctly, part of it began due to a manufacturing problem. I cannot remember if a plant shutdown or something, but after the issue was partially rectified, demand completely exceeded production capabilities before they could get back on their feet, and there are not many signs of it slowing down.

In my experience, DDR4 has been hit the hardest. Because of this, my past few builds have all been DDR3 based systems. This architecture is old enough to get some nice discounts on new gear, and you can find a lot of fantastic deals when searching for used parts. For what we do with music, there are plenty of cpu's from the past few generations that can still fulfill our needs perfectly fine.

For our GPU needs, we should be happy that GPU mining is going out the window as many currencies are changing how they reward miners, thus cutting into miner's RIO for the power they use to run a GPU oriented operation. That with the addition of specific mining addon cards, hopefully we'll be able to purchase GPU's again! Some people have resorted to trying to mine using hard drives and a bunch of other crazy configurations, but luckily they are not the most efficient options! Mining has really shifted towards more of an institutional game as well.
*
HANDS OFF MY WD BLACK DRIVES!*

Another point on GPUs: I remember some friends talking about doing GPU acceleration for their AI development, and Nvidia did make a press release about shifting their focus towards this. Regardless, I do not think the AI individuals will be buying pallets of cards from NewEgg or Amazon...hopefully.

---

Regarding Aaronventure's comment about snagging used mining GPU's, be careful what you grab. Depending on the model and how they were used (their over-clocks, added voltage, average temps, and time active) you can get nipped in the butt with a dud; however, the idea here is that the card(s) should be cheap enough to make up for this, so even if you go through several EOL cards, it would be cheaper than buying a new one. Luckily, even if a reseller does not take returns, Ebay more often than not will always side with the buyer.

Some cards have been put through hell for an extended, even short, period of time, and you are often better off passing them by. There are some really nice analytics posted around the web about which ex-mining cards are best to purchase used. Should any choose to go this route, I would advise doing some homework and recognize the risks involved.


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## Morning Coffee (Jun 4, 2018)

Mike Fox said:


> I also use a 2008 Mac Pro. The original ram is insanely expensive, but these machines can use server ram, which is dirt cheap on ebay. I spent less than $100 and got 64 gigs. It's now maxed out with ram and runs like a champ.



Cool! I didn't know that, I'll check that out. I have 28GB so far without issue. I bought the genuine Apple specified 800Hz ram because I didn't want any issues, but mainly because of the big black heat-sinks. From what I've read, the Mac Pro 3.1 produces a lot of heat under load, so I wanted to stick with the engineered specifications as much as possible.


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## Mike Fox (Jun 5, 2018)

Morning Coffee said:


> Cool! I didn't know that, I'll check that out. I have 28GB so far without issue. I bought the genuine Apple specified 800Hz ram because I didn't want any issues, but mainly because of the big black heat-sinks. From what I've read, the Mac Pro 3.1 produces a lot of heat under load, so I wanted to stick with the engineered specifications as much as possible.


Can never go wrong with the genuine stuff.


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## chimuelo (Jun 9, 2018)

Been researching how DDR4 2666 ECC RDIMMs using Xeon W processors actually are much faster than DDR4 @ 3600 because of error correction logic.
Not sure if this applies to audio buffers but we do know Quad channel RAM is better than dual channel. So it’s possible.
Then I noticed how cheap DDR4 2666 ECC RDIMM 16GB Modules were.
Researched further to see Xeon W Quad Core CPU @ 4GHz using 4 x 16GB DIMMs is pretty bad ass with the Intel C422 Chipset.
Saw the new ASRock Rack and Supermicro C422 boards at Computex 2018.

For guys wanting a reasonably priced 128GB DAW this is much cheaper than I thought.
Plus a 1U is possible using a Dynatron Server 1U Liquid Cooler keeps the 140 watt CPU Cool.

These ECC RDIMMs are higher quality than the super fast gaming DDR we usually see, and half the price.
Maybe look into a server quality RAM packed DAW using the Xeon W.
There’s Quad Cores all the way up to 16 Core CPUs.
The Quad is 425.

But the RAM is cheap.
137 USD for 16GB DIMMs.


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## EvilDragon (Jun 9, 2018)

Actually ECC RAM vs regular RAM (at same speeds) is slightly slower due to extra error checks and corrections. This is pure math. Additional steps to do additional things = slower performance at any given speed of the process. It just cannot be faster than regular RAM which doesn't check for errors. That's defying logic.


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## chimuelo (Jun 9, 2018)

So it would seem.
But errors cause processes to be slower in the same way errors in cache cause processes to repeat themselves. The faster performance of a process depends on if said processes are repeated, which do not occur entirely in RAM.

Our apps do not have diagnostics to check this, but I know from experience that sometimes dynamics are interrupted that remind me of a Round Robin when no such option is available in that instrument. 
Our apps are not coded as well as Data Centers and Finance based apps. We rely on brute force. Prone to errors, which we may or may not perceive.
I see this on my DSP and FPGA based modules.

These chips run at a fraction of speed our DAWs and VSTi’s hardware does, 400/600MHz vrs. 4/4.4GHz. My Organ Module (FPGA) has higher fidelity, my DSP Soundcards Mixers are noticeably better at mixing than I can get in Native, these Chips run at 400MHz.

Maybe ECC Single bit error correction might help.
Guess we’ll see as I plan on doing my Winter build using RDIMMs and Xeon W.
If not, I bet Ill have operational 64/128GB DAW for a cheaper price than the X99/X299 builds.


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## EvilDragon (Jun 9, 2018)

ECC single bit correction IS what's making the ECC RAM slower than regular non-ECC RAM (and then further, registered ECC RAM is even slower than non-registered ECC RAM)... Ofc, it depends on the application and how the memory is used, but in most cases the difference is that ECC RAM is 1-5% slower. Benchmarks do exist, I'm not talking out of my ass


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## Symfoniq (Jun 9, 2018)

EvilDragon is right. ECC is (slightly) slower due to the error correction overhead. I say this as someone who owns and maintains systems with ECC RAM.


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## chimuelo (Jun 9, 2018)

I’m reading discussions from guys doing IT for high frequency trading.
They also are gaming GuRus from HWBOT.
No advantages for ECC in gaming as those apps are iGPU dependent.
But CPU Cache misses result in data being returned to the CPU.
Same goes for OS duties residing in RAM. Mistakes being corrected in RAM are faster than data returning from the pipeline. Fascinating discussion actually.
These are well coded apps though. Our apps are not highly coded yet.

I’m not saying anyone is talking out of their ass, just listening to guys using dedicated integrated systems not concerned with brute force computing.
I’m going to try using the right OS, motherboard, CPU, Chipset and RAM.
If there’s no noticeable difference it won’t be wasted, the build will still get used.

There’s got to be an explanation of why our apps don’t scale up with Speed.
I’m thinking these NVMe devices and super fast CPUs throw data around so fast it’s causing misses.
I’ve noticed very little increases in performance since SSDs rescued us.
Sure overclock the CPU to 5GHz, jam that data quicker.
I’d like to see scaling and efficiency like my slow FPGA and DSP Chips get.

Any ways, RDIMMs are cheap, and that’s motivation too.


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## EvilDragon (Jun 9, 2018)

CPU cache misses are not caused by RAM being ECC or non-ECC, tho - that is completely unrelated. They are caused by the stuff from RAM not being in the cache on time/when needed by CPU. However, blaming cache misses (and cache misses only) for speed not scaling in audio apps is quite weird. I'm pretty convinced that not only is that not the case at all, it's also quite likely absolutely irrelevant. CPUs have been cache missing ever since they had caches! This just means - the data that CPU is looking for is first being looked in the cache, since it's the fastest memory available to the CPU (albeit a very small chunk), if it's not found, then CPU needs to go to RAM for it, and that takes a bit more time (but hardly anything we can feel during our DAW performance - it's all happening behind the scenes).

Also, mistakes being corrected in RAM is a completely different thing than a cache miss really.



chimuelo said:


> Our apps are not highly coded yet.



Reaper is. 



chimuelo said:


> I’m thinking these NVMe devices and super fast CPUs throw data around so fast it’s causing misses.



Nope, you're well off base there. Cache misses have nothing to do with NVMe. It's all about getting the instructions to the CPU, or reading the data from cache, or writing the data out, and it's all between CPU and RAM, NVMe doesn't even get to play this game.



chimuelo said:


> I’ve noticed very little increases in performance since SSDs rescued us.



That's because the main game now is power efficiency rather than increasing IPC by a lot on each new generation.



chimuelo said:


> I’d like to see scaling and efficiency like my slow FPGA and DSP Chips get.



You won't see that, because audio processing relies on ONE main thread that stuffs the audio buffers and sends them to the audio interface (the main, realtime audio thread). Once that thread gets overloaded, no matter how fast your CPU is, you will get glitches.


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## Piano Pete (Jun 9, 2018)

Typically ECC is slower due to the benefits of its memory checks. You trade off speed for stability.

I asked this question regarding ecc for audio a year or so ago, I think you even replied to it. Since then, in all of my builds and tests, I have yet to see any real benefit or trade-off to ecc aside from the cost. I especially have not noticed any affect on the performance of my xeons while using either ECC or non-ECC ram for any purpose.

Now, I am not a super computer wiz-kid, but I typically do not think of ECC for speed alone--although there are plenty of speedy ECC dimms available now. Maybe a full-time DAW builder would be willing to chime in with their experiences?

For the Algotraders, they are not using ECC for speed. They are more concerned about the data that their bots are trading with is the data that they feed them. If something gets messed up and causes a missfire or skews the datasets, that is the difference of them going bankrupt or not. Most of my friends are concerned with scrubbing the data from the exchanges--before it even hits the bots--more than they are about how it is once it is in RAM.

From my understanding of institutional HFT, the CPU speeds and network speeds are king, not RAM (although they use a crap-ton). That is why a lot of the major farms are located where they are, and that is also why a lot of them communicate with the exchanges via microwave dishes and not cables. If it gets cloudy or rains, thus forcing the farms to switch back to physical cable connections, they lose out on the expensive speed benefits they paid for. The software is lean, mean, and efficient c++, but I also know of several algos that are coded in python and just call c++ elements. To my knowledge, the efficiency of that coding is more important than the RAM.

Edit---

There are some really good deals on old server ecc ram, if you are lucky to snag them and it happens to be the correct architecture for your gear.


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## Symfoniq (Jun 9, 2018)

In a nutshell, ECC RAM is best used when the consequences of an undetected bit flip involve the loss of lives, dollars, or both. Nobody uses ECC RAM for a performance gain. On the contrary, they use it despite a small loss in performance.

ECC error detection and CPU cache misses have nothing in common. Missing the CPU cache isn't an error. It simply means the operation didn't win the performance optimization lottery, and the CPU will look higher up the cache/memory hierarchy.

On the other hand, ECC memory detects seemingly random bit flips (sometimes caused by solar particles) _that might otherwise go unnoticed_...at least until that bit flip resulted in a crash, an incorrect calculation, or corrupted data. At which point you'd know that something had gone wrong, but not what, and not when.


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## chimuelo (Jun 9, 2018)

I’m hoping to apply larger data sets into larger cache and improve performance by avoiding instruction overflow/misses, as clearly something keeps us from seeing scaling in polyphony.
I was sold on the ECC idea too as I could use DDR4 4400 and it wouldn’t matter.
Although friends using AMD claim faster RAM is noticeable.

I know brute force for soft synths works.
I’ve tried the very fastest CPUs, DDR3/4, SSDs and NVMe M.2s.
I’m either going to find we can’t take advantage of the bandwitch from mediocre Coding, or ASIO has peaked.
Or maybe these GuRus are right, even if it’s a minimal amount of help.
They offered assistance so I’m going to take their advice.
Server OS, Chipset, CPU, ECC RAM.

I’ve nothing to lose.
I’ve tried overclocking, RAID, Dual CPU Quad RAM, NVMe...
Polyphony is not scaling, not even improving.
If no improvements VEPro and Slaves.
I’ve got a wall full of PCs I can use.

Enjoyed our discussions.


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## EvilDragon (Jun 10, 2018)

chimuelo said:


> as clearly something keeps us from seeing scaling in polyphony.



It's not the cache. It's the raw CPU muscle that needs to be there to give you more voices. SSDs can supply easily over 1000 stereo voices (probably even 2-3000), but the CPU has to have the muscle to calculate them all. Now, Kontakt is using all the cores you have (optionally), however I dunno if it's using stuff like AVX (I think it doesn't), so that might be a clue.


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## chimuelo (Jun 10, 2018)

I already get 1200 Stereo 24bit voices.
I need more and I haven’t seen any increase in polyphony from i7-3770k through i7-7700k.
Perhaps 6 Cores will help.

Last time I saw polyphony increase by hundreds of voices was when I installed all SSDs.
Obviously faster storage won’t be of further assistance.

Thanks ED


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## EvilDragon (Jun 10, 2018)

6 cores should definitely help some (something like i7-8700k). In fact, the more cores there are for Kontakt to use (and the faster they are, like 4+ GHz), the better. Sometimes also spreading things across multiple instances is also beneficial.

Also, at which buffer sizes is this? I assume something really low like 64 samples. At those latencies I don't realistically expect huge increases in polyphony, the CPU needs to be really tight to shell out those buffers in time with that setting.


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## Piano Pete (Jun 10, 2018)

Didnt Intel just show off their new 28core 5ghz performance CPU at CES? I dont think it is coming out this year, but maybe that is of interest to you?


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## EvilDragon (Jun 10, 2018)

You mean the one they overclocked with an industrial cooler then forgot to tell the people that they did that? 

https://www.tomshardware.co.uk/intel-28-core-5ghz-cpu,news-58611.html

Sure. It'll be great once it doesn't need a 1kW+ cooler and $10000.


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## Piano Pete (Jun 10, 2018)

It's so overt, it's covert :D

The setup looked so sketchy haha.


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## DAW PLUS (Jun 12, 2018)

Piano Pete said:


> Typically ECC is slower due to the benefits of its memory checks. You trade off speed for stability.
> 
> I asked this question regarding ecc for audio a year or so ago, I think you even replied to it. Since then, in all of my builds and tests, I have yet to see any real benefit or trade-off to ecc aside from the cost. I especially have not noticed any affect on the performance of my xeons while using either ECC or non-ECC ram for any purpose.
> 
> Now, I am not a super computer wiz-kid, but I typically do not think of ECC for speed alone--although there are plenty of speedy ECC dimms available now. Maybe a full-time DAW builder would be willing to chime in with their experiences?


Sure. ECC indeed is slightly slower, but as EvilDragon correctly mentioned, you will not notice this in our audio world as RAM is not a bottleneck.
It does not matter whether you use 1333MHz single channel or 2666 quad channel, you will not notice any difference with RAM loading of samples, nor streaming nor mixing. The only thing I have not checked is if a massive amount of impulse response plugs are used, like the Acustica stuff. But I think you need a lot of them automated to get a difference, if they allow that without common zipper noise anyway.


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## chimuelo (Jun 12, 2018)

EvilDragon said:


> 6 cores should definitely help some (something like i7-8700k). In fact, the more cores there are for Kontakt to use (and the faster they are, like 4+ GHz), the better. Sometimes also spreading things across multiple instances is also beneficial.
> 
> Also, at which buffer sizes is this? I assume something really low like 64 samples. At those latencies I don't realistically expect huge increases in polyphony, the CPU needs to be really tight to shell out those buffers in time with that setting.



I’ll be checking that out because this DAW won’t be for live work, and won’t even be 48k or 96k.
It’s going to be 44.1k most likely 256 samples.
8 Core CPU.
At least 64GBs.

Cheers


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