The fact that consumer-level DDR4 is getting more expensive makes absolutely no market sense to me.

wayne-werwolf 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I am guessing there is some fluidity between these markets. If consumers get priced out of the DDR5 market, the consumer DDR4 price increases as well. It is the same with cars, if the price goes up for new cars, it usually increases for used car market as well. Same with energy, price goes up for oil, all things beeing equal, other energy carries will increase to some degree.

Not sure if that's what you've meant...

	▲	gaigalas 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That's it. Which is insane. We used to buy used DDR4 from obsolete servers in buckets before it was going to become e-waste. Now even that one is expensive.

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AdamN 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The lines that would have made consumer-level stuff are being reduced in favor of the higher profit margin/demand products. That means more supply of those other products (but still not enough) and lower supply of the consumer-level stuff (driving up prices).

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gaigalas 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Isn't DDR4 like, old and obsolete? From my knowledge, you can't just take a fab that produces DDR4 and make it produce DDR5 or higher. It's kind of a leap that requires replacing a lot of stuff.

I would expect that old DDR4 machinery to end up somewhere else, still chugging along. Maybe someone buys the old production and keeps chugging low quality DDR4 or something.

To me, it sounds like that didn't happened. Fabs that were producing legacy DDR4 are still producing it, just selling it higher and surfing on the consumer price increase of DDR5. As DDR5 became more expensive, people looked to build old AM4 PCs with the older memory, and the market just raised the price so that option would also cost more. IMHO DDR4 price increase has nothing to do with production.

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phire 7 hours ago | parent [-]

There is some overlap. The last DDR4 fabs were typically on a 16nm process, the first DDR5 fabs were also on a 16nm process.

There shouldn't be much issue converting those 16nm DDR4 fabs to DDR5, it's really just an issue of swapping out the masks. That's assuming they haven't all already been converted years ago.

Even when there isn't an overlap, moving to the next process node usually isn't so much about replacing machines, but adding more machines. To oversimplify, you might not be able to convert one older DDR4 fab to DDR5, but sometimes you might be able to convert two older DDR4 fabs to one DDR5 fab.

Such conversions might not be the most cost-effective option in the long run (that unmodified fab could have kept selling DDR4 for years), but conversions might be significantly faster than building new fabs.

	▲	AdamN 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		[not an expert so I could be totally wrong] I was also just talking about the physical space. Even if the machines on the entire line have to be replaced it still probably makes sense for a company to transition in situ - displacing the old line. There's the lease for the land and building, people's commutes are structured around a certain physical location, air conditioning and electricity are already there, etc... It's not just the big expensive machines that make up the fabrication - it's also the entire structure that makes that production happen.

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amelius 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If memory makers can fill their order books with only a single type of memory (whatever that is), then that would be preferable to them, I suppose.

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sophrosyne42 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Because the prices of ddr5 are causing people to use substitutes