I can get an entire, new, motherboard for the cost of 8GB of DDR3. The motherboard is sold in far fewer numbers, has much greater complexity, and is populated with many costly components.
Why the hell is it that RAM, which is so incredibly simple when compared to a mobo, costs so much?
There are excuses about factory fires, supply and demand, recouping developments costs etc., but none of it makes sense when costs are compared to other computer components.
Yeah! Screw those factory workers over in a country I don't know its name of, the amount of hours they work and the amount of pay they get. Or the lack of safety regulations and social benefits. These companies should just press down on them even more while maintaining their overhead. Fuck 'em, I want my cheap RAM!
On the bright side, for the price of said RAM, you can buy it from someone like G.Skill and get a lifetime warranty with it.
But to put it into perspective for you how important RAM is, and why the price is so high ... Nearly every pin on the CPU, is a direct connection to the RAM modules. It fuels everything you do involving the movement of data during PC operation.
Properly optimized, a PC would have a CPU frequency, and RAM speed that were as close to the HT/Rated FSB speed and each other as possible. The reason for this is that your components need to run at the same speed to communicate together, and the limit of that speed is based on Rated FSB.
In example, 2.4ghz CPU + 2.4 ghz RAM + 2.4ghz HT would not need to throttle any components in order to transfer data. If CPU were to exceed the speed of RAM, the CPU would have to slow down to communicate with it. Also if either the CPU or RAM were to exceed the speed of the HT/Rated FSB, you would be limited to the FSB speeds during communication, followed by the speed of the RAM or CPU.
Well if you look at the transfer rates of DDR3 which goes as follows: DDR3 data transfer rate: DDR3 1066：8.5 GB/s DDR3 1333：10.6 GB/s DDR3 1600：12.8 G MB/s DDR3 1866：14.9 G MB/s
Those are provided by transcends. Now imagine if you had an SSD that was able to transfer data at 15GBps. Imagine the cost of that. Look up the Intel 750 PCI-E SSD. For $400 you get 400 GB of non-volitle memory at speeds of 2.5GBps read and 1.2GBps write. The main difference is that RAM is volitile memory so once power is cut, the data no longer exists.
True.. The speeds are astounding by any measure, but the complexity doesn't justify the price. I can see why non-volatile memory is so expensive at the moment, but RAM is so much simpler, even if it is faster. A relatively small amount of RAM can cost more than an Intel CPU.
Manufacturing high capacity DRAM is hard - leading to many DRAM chips not passing QA with the price being passed onto the consumer. Speculation: furthermore, due to the insane cost of fabrication it is not particularly enticing to investors, which is why you primarily see device manufacturers developing/pushing the DRAM market, such as Samsung. IIRC DRAM of lower quality is sold as flash, with assumably some kind of further manufacturing going on there, which is why flash drives are so cheap in comparison. There is a great article on the scarcity of DRAM which claims there is only ~40 high capacity DRAM fabs in the world. http://semi.org/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.semi.org%2Fnode%2F54256&utm_referrer=#2790 To add to it all, apparently during in 2012 natural disasters effected many of these few high capacity DRAM manufacturers which has led to scarcity.
TLDR; cost of supply is high, leading to higher cost of demand.
Thanks for the great explanation. I'd definitely never argue how truly amazing this technology is, and I don't take any part of it for granted. I suppose my bother comes from historical trends. There was a time when RAM prices kept going down and down per MB, even as new technology continuously rolled out, then things levelled off, but I suppose the same could be said for mechanical HDDs over recent years. I bought a 3TB drive 3 years ago, and today's version is just as expensive, but that's a whole other line of inquiry. My basic question stems from the premise that RAM is simplistic, has low physical volume, high production volume, and no additional componentry needed on the small board (like HDMI for example). If DDR3, for example, is still being manufactured and can suddenly take a price plunge, and the manufacturers are not charities, then it meant there was room to drop prices before, but perhaps no incentive. Another simple answer might be that people just don't mind paying the high prices, and think there's a reason it's that way.
Well there's also the fact that ddr3 up until recently was still at the top of the food chain, things don't tend to get much cheaper until something better replaces it.
big thing is that the 2012 natural disaster affected the HDD capacity and not so much with the memory market. Also the capacity might have been lower but the volume increased.
Also cheapest prices were in 2013 when you could buy 8 GB of DDR3 memory for 30 bucks. That's about 2/3 of the current price.
Not to mention the fact that the same wafer produces roughly 3x as more chips than in 2010 in newer factories. The new factories produce at 14nm and 10nm are being constructed 5 years ago that was 32nm maybe 28nm. Also some factories are going from 300mm to 400mm wafers. So yeah in a way the OP has a valid point and between end of 2013 and end 2014 prices have been artificially lifted. It's only been this year that prices have begun to drop again.
Thank you for the fixing up my point about the 2012 natural disaster. It is important to note thought that an increase in demand and a reduction in capacity is exactly what raises prices. Naturally the manufacturing process increases in efficiency and yeild over time, but we also have to measure this against the market's expectations of what qualifies as high densiry DRAM.
Samsung holds 41.7% of the DRAM sales per year (2014) and as of yet only has 2 fabs which can produce 300mm which they have a compedative advantage on seeing as they are one of, if not the only, large-scale producer of 300mm DRAM. Anandtech had a good discussion about this a month or two ago on their podcast, although it tended towards nand flash, if anyone is interested. Source for numbers - http://www.kitguru.net/components/memory/anton-shilov/samsung-to-use-worlds-largest-15-billion-fab-to-produce-dram-report/
As for the potentially artificially high prices of ddr3, one can only speculate. These statements are about the overall market prices of high density DRAM, which would include some RAM sticks such as high capacity DDR3L soddim
RAM might seem simple but the production is very complex. It is also manufactured using different processes than the stuff on the motherboard. Just because it is sold a lot and is small, doesn't mean it has to be simple. I also believe the claims of Hakker are false - I don't think there is any 14nm DRAM process in production at the moment - the sizes of intel's cpu processes are not the same as those in DRAM. (samsung is building the first 20nm dram fab atm if I'm not mistaken).
Hakker: I don't know where you ever found 30 dollar 8gb DDR3, but I don't revcal prices ever being so low.
Dont know what the crying is about but ddr3 has droped a lot http://pcpartpicker.com/p/7KNhqs Memory: Patriot Signature 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1333 Memory ($36.11 @ Amazon) Total: $36.11
RAM chips for PC's is also an ever smaller part of the total DRAM manufacturing. Today they have it easier making profit from memory made for smartphones and similar devices, which although using largely the same technology aren't the same type of chips. In a shrinking market you have to charge more per item to keep profits up. Don't expect Samsung to start a new all out price war on PC DRAM specifically, ever again.