Technology@lemmy.worldbymecen@lemmy.ca
12 hours

'The retail SSD market has almost disappeared,' says Silicon Motion exec — PC OEMs are buying third-party drives as direct NAND supply dries up

www.tomshardware.com English

According to Duann, PC makers have to buy from SSD module makers because NAND vendors reduced allocation to the client/consumer PC market and redirected most NAND supply to data center products.

As a result, PC OEMs like Acer, Asus, Dell, and HP cannot get enough NAND or SSD supply directly from NAND manufacturers and have to turn to module makers for solid-state drives. The latter traditionally served end-users and had plenty of aftermarket products with enhanced performance and cooling, but now they increasingly serve PC makers instead.

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    But developers of SSD controllers still benefit from the situation.
    • mesa@piefed.socialEnglish
      4 hours

      I dont agree with all the points but Collapse OS has a fascinating read: https://collapseos.org/civ.html

      In this case its driven by greed…but if you cant get a hold of chips because of ANY factor, its going to look more and more like collapse os is more right than wrong.

    • zod000@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      5 hours

      I built my new PC in December 2024 because I knew Trump would fuck things up with tariffs, grifting, and general shitbaggery. So while all that did happen, I didn’t anticipate the AI hype being an even bigger issue. If anything, I just wish I had bought more ram. I had planned on getting more later.

      I priced out my build last week for “fun” to see how much it would be now. I paid $1,200 or so, now it would be around $2,150. I would have just not bothered at that price.

    • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
      7 hours

      Yeah, that’s what happens when you triple the price of everything.

      2TB drives were about £100 a few years ago and now they’re close to £400. That’s a fuckin’ no from me dog.

      • mrunicornman@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2 hours

        I’ve had good luck in the used market on ebay. Got a 2TB laptop HDD (WD Blue) for $40 and it’s working just fine for media storage.

      • anon_8675309@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7 hours

        Yep. I bought a 2TB for my laptop right before prices started rising.

        Hoping everything I have lasts for a few years now.

    • BananaTrifleViolin@piefed.worldEnglish
      8 hours

      It’s a gold rush which will have consequences a few years down the line. The data centre market will get saturated, and with a probable collapse in the AI market thats driving this (particularly given the “winner takes all” approach all the players are following) and associated massive duplication of data centres running different AI models for different companies, it’s likely to be a collapse, not a soft landing.

      Hardware companies investing in expanding their output to service the data centres demand will be over producing once the market swings the other way. Expect prices to collapse and some of these memory producing companies to go bankrupt. This is another classic sign of a bubble: everyone thinks this will keep going and going, so they invest hard in having a chunk of it. But it will inevitably hit a wall - some AI companies will fail and their data centres become redundant, and the market overall will eventually swing away from endless expansion to consolidation. And thats best case scenario; more likely it a catastrophic collapse in which case the market is getting flooded with unneeded 2nd had product from data centres sold off during bankruptcy proceedings.

      It’s not a question of if the party will end, it’s just a question of when. Even if people don’t think the AI market will pop, the economics of building more and more data centres by unprofitable competitors in this market is unsustainable and has to end at some point. And the evidence is we’re already well beyond the point of diminishing returns with current AI models in terms of scaling up.

      So while times are hard right now for home PC users, I’d expect there to be period in the near future of oversupply and cheap components. This year? Next year? Hard to say exactly when but the writing is on the wall for the AI bubble imo.

      • Jesus_666@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6 hours

        So while times are hard right now for home PC users, I’d expect there to be period in the near future of oversupply and cheap components.

        From where? Data center equipment isn’t really suitable for the home. A used SXM module on an adapter might give you reasonably affordable compute but is completely useless for graphics. Data center memory is often HBM, which you can’t just transplant into your home PC. Getting an EDSFF SSD into your PC might work with an adapter but it’s also going to take up a lot of space.

        Plus, there have been cases in the past of companies buying up and destroying the inventory of closing data centers specifically so it doesn’t end up on the market to compete with current products. That might very well repeat.

        When the bubble bursts I expect to see a semi-decent supply of high-end hardware for specific use cases. If you have a space for a rack with noisy fans and a 3000 W power draw you’ll be able to build a kick-ass AI inference rig for like 2000 bucks. Or a really fast file server. But I don’t think there’s going to be much in it for people who just want 60 FPS in current games and an SSD those games fit onto. That’ll take another couple years.

        I think it’ll be 2030 at the earliest until we see actually interesting consumer hardware from the usual companies. Maybe China will swoop in and deliver something worthwhile in the meantime but I’m not holding my breath.

        • SabinStargem@lemmy.todayEnglish
          5 hours

          Alibaba. You can potentially buy DDR5 RDIMM at a couple hundred bucks a stick. You typically have to buy them with a minimum order of 10 pieces, and many of the sellers seem shady. I recommend going with a seller that has been around for at least a couple years, a return guarantee, and comparing the screenshot of a listing against the specs. If the RAM depicted isn’t a dupe of another seller, not blurred, and has the right things on it, then it is probably a legit source.

          Also, watch out for shipping fees, and some sellers might cancel orders if they don’t reel in a big enough order to justify their bottom line.

          Ebay is also an option, with similar caveats.

          Here is a POTENTIAL source for RDIMMs, with a minimum order of 5 pieces for $141, +$20 shipping. The pics match up with the listing, though no unique photography is in use. If my Ebay order fails, I might give this a shot.

          64GB DDR5-5600 PC5-5600B ECC Registered RDIMM 2Rx4 Smart Memory Module for ProLiant Servers

          0000000

          I bought 32gb of DDR5 RDIMM for about $600 from Ebay. Mind, it hasn’t shipped, so we will see in a week whether the seller is good. Also bought a used Threadripper Pro 7000 for $1500. Again, whether it is valid is a question that will be answered within a month for me.

          Assuming things go smoothly for me, my goal for the next year or so is to build up a warchest for the AI bubble popping. My TRX50 AI TOP can accept up to 8 RAM sticks, provided it has a Threadripper Pro. With any luck, I would be able to fill it out for $2,000 or thereabouts when the pop happens.

          • Jesus_666@lemmy.worldEnglish
            5 hours

            I don’t think those sellers are going to have much lower prices when the bubble pops. DDR RAM prices are high because not much of it is being produced. What is being produced is HBM, which isn’t compatible with DDR and doesn’t even come on DIMMs. Even if DDR production picks up quickly after the bubble pops, it’s still going to take a while until consumer products appear again.

            • eleitl@lemmy.zipEnglish
              4 hours

              I could certainly see a use for HBM in consumer products again (my GPU has 8 GB HBM).

              • Jesus_666@lemmy.worldEnglish
                3 hours

                It would be nice but someone would have to rip them out of existing products and put them into new ones. Theoretically possible as a (probably fairly janky) one-off product but unlikely. Still, similar products have been made.

      • anon_8675309@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7 hours

        I think a lot of people know it will end. But they also think, “I’m gonna get mine while I can, fuck everything else”

      • ranzispa@mander.xyzEnglish
        8 hours

        Look on the bright side: plenty of cheap compute and hardware will be available to research centers at that point.

    • daggermoon@piefed.worldEnglish
      10 hours

      Can’t buy an HDD, Can’t buy an SSD, can’t buy a Blu-ray drive, can’t get head. Can’t have shit.

    • jobbies@lemmy.zipEnglish
      11 hours

      It hasn’t ‘dissapeared’, the demand is still there but we’ve been priced out.

      One good thing about it is we’re more inclined to recycle and buy secondhand. Or just make-do if its not essential.

      • brsrklf@jlai.luEnglish
        10 hours

        Not even a good thing globally because we’re not replacing production by recycling and secondhand buying. Production is going stronger and more wasteful than ever, it’s just all absorbed in the AI war.

      • djdarren@piefed.socialEnglish
        10 hours

        I’ve replaced a decent sized SSD with gigabit internet. Don’t need to store a bunch of huge games locally if it only takes 10 minutes to download them.

    • Ostfriesentee@feddit.orgEnglish
      10 hours

      Can’t wait for the LLM bubble to pop and have RAM and SSDs become dirt cheap for at least a short time. I believe that other AI-related applications (machine learning, visual recognition, OCR etc. for robots/drones) are more practical and have good use cases but LLM companies themselves are certainly overvalued.

      • cynar@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6 hours

        The worst thing is, the format needed for data centres isn’t compatible with home use. A lot of the ram and SSDs will just be scrapped.

        • nforminvasion@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5 hours

          Yeah also when has capitalism ever allowed the poors to benefit from the failures of the rich? Companies have been destroying inventory and throwing out food, in such abundance it makes me sick, for decades. Of course this isn’t a blanket statement, after the dot com pop you could buy multi thousand dollar office chairs for a few hundred, as well as good desks.

          But overall, corporations love destroying shit instead of letting the commoners get even a little morsel of it.

          • cynar@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1 hour

            The problem is they end up built into specialised boards with ridiculous requirements, but no good for most tasks.

            A few people might get one working, but I can’t afford the power bill to keep one running full tilt 24/7

            Think about it like trying to use mining vehicles as a car.

    • mecen@lemmy.caEnglish
      10 hours

      Future seems to be probably similar to concept as chromeos

      You get 32gb internal storage and rest is cloud storage.

    • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      10 hours

      AI is going to kill the enthusiast PC hardware community even more than it was before. Great. Love it. Super fantastic. 😑

    • Mac@mander.xyzEnglish
      8 hours

      You sure about that, bud? Because I’d hazard a guess that it’s almost exactly the same as before, were there options. In fact, I’m moving components around and would love to do a spend on some memory. I need low-profile sticks but if necessary I’ll just de-shield my current RAM. What a shame.

    • Jake Farm@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      10 hours

      And now that data centers are financially collapsing left and right I’m sure they will be regretting thay decision.