alessandro
PC GamingHell yeah
Just a matter of time before these guys are supplying ML card manufacturers with slower memory that works well enough for ML use cases at a fraction of the current prices.
Import and trade restrictions exist in some places but if the rest of the world buys the cheaper Chinese stuff that works about the same then the rug will come out from under the current guys and they will literally never recover.
Guessing the short term profits are all worth it to them, like the typical VC.
The tech overlords are desperately trying to buy up and restrict the supply of all the memory in the hope that judgment day comes and it works out in their favor or some other dumb drug induced scifi fever dream. China will offer slightly shittier chips for a 10th of the price and if we aren't allowed to buy them we will rent them (and they will of course take our data). These bubbles tend to last about 5 years and we are in year 2. So buckle up.
I have 64gb of DDR5 RAM. But given the situation I would buy more even if I do not need it. 128gb won't hurt.
And if they can make a clone of the Nvidia 5090 for half its cost I'd get that, too.
If you are willing to risk uncertainty, a modded 4090 might be better than a 5090 if you need VRAM. I think the Nvidia firmware signature was leaked for the 4090, so modders have been able to add twice the memory to individual cards and have it still work. 48 gigs apiece.
VRAM for VRAM, probably cheaper than a 5090 - if only because a 4090 is less powerful in all other respects.
Anyhow, if you decide to get more RAM, better do it soonish if you are American. Between the Canadian tariffs and the emergency oil stockpile running dry around half a year, prices are set to climb further. This whole situation sucks.
I thought 32GiB would be enough coming from 16, but nope, I found a new use case where it's too little.
Originally, I wanted to be able to run at least 2 VMs with 8GiB assigned at once.
But the new use case is a 4GiB RAM VM with 20GiB virtual disk stored in RAM (TMPFS). And that's not all that much.
I've also just been using it for random temporary things, as I am still paranoid about SSD wear. If I need to download an ISO just to burn it, there's no need to take, say, 3GiB from the SSD's lifespan, no matter how small that may seem.
But even if not used explicitly, it's still pretty useful for disk I/O cache. Especially with slow things like memory cards. At least for reading, for writing it's just annoying because I have no idea how much has already transferred, and neither can I safely stop it.
China coming to save the PC gaming market
i dunno. i just worked on one of their 'gaming' rigs. weird chinese-branded everything. 3 months old, won't stay running. crashes constantly. re-installs don't help. it's trash. the vendor has all but disappeared. still has their storefront but they don't answer, and amazon won't help either.
even though i swapped out the atrocious no-name motherboard so now it's at least usable, i expect to see it again with a failed psu, gpu, or ram.
they might make it on availability or price, but longevity or reliability they have a lot of work to do.
There are reliable and crap Chinese brands. This is not really relevant in this conversation. (plus manufacturing defects can go unnoticed with any brand) It's merely a data point of one.
So you're saying they just need to scoot back their planned obsolescence a bit to align with western stuff.
I'm running a 10 year old 'western stuff' PC and I don't run into any issues.
Planned obsolescence exists in single-manufacturer products (smartphones, white-goods), even moreso in vertically-integrated businesses (Apple, Samsung).
It doesn't work at all in the PC industry where component suppliers compete for market dominance, because if their company puts out a shitty product that fails more rapidly than a competitor, they lose sales and brand reputation in a crowded market.
Sounds pretty similar to my experience with Samsung and Gigabyte
If it means I might be able to upgrade in the future, so be it.
If you're in the US you won't. Guarantee that Trump will slap enough tariffs on them that they're more expensive than current prices.
I'll buy black market imports I really don't care
Vacation to Mexico and load up on memory lmao
More supply should still lower prices, even if Trump puts tariffs on Chinese dram/nand. While there might be some quality differences in the end dram/nand still is a commodity good that is for the most part interchangeable (assuming it meets some standards).
So China would just supply everyone else leaving more capacity from other manufacturers like micron for the US.
Oh well, price they pay for putting that orange diaper turd in power, twice.
More for the rest of us 😊
So we have to find someone who can buy them and mail them as personals.
Well the current ones we have sure aren't trying to keep it.
Well someone needs to tie an anchor to this market
Good
I'm gonna take a wild stab that the US will put tarrifs on them that nullify any savings or ban them outright due to "security concerns".
I'd like more competition on the RAM market as much as the next person, but surely a quick production turnaround means the quality is bad? I know Chinese products have had bad reputation on quality but I thought they are past that?
It depends. You get what you pay for. Chinese companies will happily sell you cheap trash, or quality durable products. But for that you should go through a seller that can assure that quality, usually through a warranty.
Pic not relevant
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAND_flash_memory
I see SSDs, what do you see?
