The "Evolving RAM Market"

Memory is a very necessary component in anything computerized (which these days is basically anything). Your computers need it, your game consoles need it, and your phones need it. Hell even new cars need it these days. It's not the flashiest piece of tech out there but its a critical component for anything that computes. But memory prices are increasing drastically at a rate never before seen in the industry... What in the world could be causing it?

OpenAI's Bid for DRAM

A bid to feed the voracious AI machine...

It's no secret AI is memory hungry. Any AI machine worth a damn needs a lot of memory. DRAM, VRAM, you name it. A good CPU and GPU matters too, but memory is key in AI, and OpenAI closed a deal sometime in October with Samsung and SK Hynix to consume 40% of Global DRAM output. It's a big deal as there are only three companies in the world who produce memory modules, and OpenAI just dealt with two of them. While Micron, the last member of the big three memory oligopoly, didn't strike a deal with OpenAI themselves, they still benefit greatly from this as memory modules as a whole become more expensive and supplies from Samsung and SK Hynix dry up.

The PC Market

Priced out of existence

Big corporate AI plays also have an adverse affect on the consumer market too, y'know. Let's take a look at some memory pricing. Do note that as of the writing of this article, this data was taken the week before Black Friday.

This Crucial Pro 32GB kit started life at $174.99 and now it's nearly doubled in price, going up to $300.99 for one kit. It's already bad enough but it can be worse.

At even higher capacities, this value proposition just gets worse and worse. This 64GB kit from Crucial was already sort of expensive at launch, and if you were REALLY lucky in July, you could've picked this up for a $145.99. An excellent deal personally, but if you try to buy this same kit TODAY it costs $582.99. That's more than the price of a base PlayStation 5 when not on sale. And the story gets worse the higher you go, with one kit costing over $1000+ potentially.

On top of all of this though, your graphics cards come with their own bank of special VRAM for their use. Many bemoan the fact that Nvidia seemingly artificially limits the amount of VRAM that ships with their gaming focused cards, and things are only going to get worse. Rumor has it, Nvidia & AMD want to kill off low to mid range graphics cards. The big question is what Nvidia & AMD define as "mid range" because it could drastically affect what cards are available to you. Some of the most commonly used GPUs as per Steam's Hardware Surveys are the RTX 3060, 4060, and 5060. These cards could be seen as a "mid range" card, and in fact some see the 3070/4070/5070 and their Ti counterparts as "mid range" too.

I find it crazy that Nvidia would entertain killing off their most common GPU range. And on the AMD side, their highest end new GPU, the 9070XT could also be classified as a mid range card depending on who you ask.

And just because low end cards cease to exist does NOT mean prices will go down. It just means the barrier to entry for PC gaming is just that much higher. Memory pricing is a disaster and there's never been a worse time to build a new PC from scratch. But the DIY PC space is not the only space affected.

The Console Market

Yes, consoles use RAM, too. How many times must we go over this?!

These prices are going to affect the console market too. Maybe not now because all of the inventory is still there, but it's bound to happen should the AI bubble continue to grow. There are no substantiated claims but many news articles are being written about yet another Xbox price hike.

According to Moore's Law is Dead, Microsoft may be forced to hike prices up YET again thanks to this memory crisis. The Xbox Series X currently is $648.00 on Amazon with no Black Friday deal in sight currently.

In that same MLID video however they comment on how Sony had the foresight to buy as much GDDR6 memory as they could while prices were low, temporarily shielding Sony and their various PlayStation 5 models from the market. How long their supply will last, no one knows. There's no information about the Switch 2 just yet but I think we'll see something after the Holiday period.

All of this news naturally affects the price of existing hardware... but there's one highly anticipated piece of hardware that's giving people some pause due to a number of factors INCLUDING price.

The Steam Machine

Soon to be engulfed by the DRAM storm?

The Steam Machine is Valve's highly anticipated consolized PC. It's definitely made to be used in the living room much like you would a PS5, but you can also use it as a PC too. But alas, like most PCs or Consoles, the Steam Machine uses memory. There were some concerns about its 8GB of dedicated VRAM being somewhat anemic, but those concerns are nothing compared to the pricing concerns. As it turns out, price is the most important spec of a spec sheet, and Valve didn't announce a price for any of its hardware.

I don't see the new Steam Controller being that expensive, and I can see the Steam Frame being somewhat expensive due to its niche nature of VR, but the Steam Machine is still one big question mark waiting to be explored.

It's been confirmed by MANY sources who have spoken to Valve directly that the Steam Machine will be priced closer to a PC with nearly equivalent specs, and many of those estimates as per PCPartPicker put an equivalent system closer to $800 taking into account current memory prices. I could see there being a slight discount since Valve would be buying components in bulk, but I think even with bulk discounts we'd be looking at maybe a $700 Steam Machine?

And many are NOT thrilled about the prospect of a Steam Machine that costs more than your average console. Many arguments questioning the value proposition of a Steam Machine when you could pick up a potentially more powerful PC for just a bit more money, or a PS5 Pro for the same or even less price.

But naturally this all depends on the evolving memory market. There's no telling if the Steam Machine will be MORE expensive than even we anticipate today, or if consoles won't drastically be more expensive that the Machine in the near future. And as for Next-Gen consoles, you can be certain they'll be affected by the evolving memory market.

The AI Bubble

Will it burst? Or is it a perpetual money machine?

The prices of all parts are going up now because the market has to, right? So surely prices will go back down should the AI Bubble pop anytime soon, right? Sadly there's never been any guarantee of this, and we've seen companies such as Nvidia KEEP the high prices even after a bubble pops. The crypto bubble popped and Nvidia still maintained high GPU prices even before the AI bubble. They call it Greedflation, and it's the one thing keeping PC parts from going down in price.

How long can this AI bubble inflate? People say it's bound to pop anytime now, but I want to propose a scarier future. What if it doesn't pop and what if the prices never see normalcy? I only mentioned some of the industries that will be affected. Make no mistake, even though it's mostly computer hardware, everything is computerized; from the hardware we use to the processes industries use to move. There are documented cases of AI and evidence to suggest that these massive AI datacenters are responsible for your power bill increasing. And in some cases, fast food companies that realistically should have no business being in the tech sector are increasingly investing in AI, raising the price of menu items and killing the value proposition. AI will affect your wallet regardless of how technologically savvy or disconnected you are.

About The Author:

Hi-Tech Lo-Life

Hi-Tech Lo-Life reviews the hottest tech and pop culture media! That includes anything from video games to anime to tech products, movies, you name it! He also does a lot of Steam Deck content!