… However, according to a Morgan Stanley research report, the bill for a single VR200 NVL72 rack is estimated to add up to a cool $7,803,148, with $2,001,600 of those costs attributed to memory. That's a 435% increase in memory cost over the GB300, if these figures are correct. …
… "We’ve seen memory costs on DDR5 suppliers remain fairly stable over the last few months," Framework says in a regular blog post on the memory crisis . …
… While it's easy to see how this new 900-layer memory will increase memory capacity without expanding the physical dimensions of a NAND chip, the cost implications are less obvious. Taken at face value, two 450-layer chips are required, plus the time and cost to bond them together. …
… "Currently, AI-related demand is very high in the overall memory market, accounting for 40-50% of the total supply. We expect this demand to continue to increase, and the majority of memory produced between 2026 and 2027 already has its customers," he began. …
… These are manufactured by the same companies that produce High Bandwidth Memory HBM for AI data centers, and since the growth of those has exponentially increased in recent times, demand for memory chips, of any kind, is significantly outstripping the supply. …
… Even if this is all accurate, we still have a year or more to sit out before memory pricing begins to return to normal. So, there's a ways to go yet. But the prospect of vaguely sensible PC build costs being a thing again is still good news. …
… "We said it would be a bit more in the March quarter, and we did see higher memory costs... and they were partially offset by benefits from carry-in inventory that we had," he continued. "For the June quarter... we expect significantly higher memory costs. …
… But no longer, as the 1 TB version now costs $949, up from $649. "These new prices," Valve said, "reflect the current state of component costs and other global logistical challenges across the industry as a whole." Seems about right. …
… "I think we'll start to see by the end of next year and into 2028 that that ramp really starts to take hold, and then it's just a factor of the forces of supply and demand, and how that affects memory prices." "The demand side of this cycle of memory is quite unusual, right, with server refresh es … …
… That's my guess." Image 1 of 3 Which makes complete sense, though is all rather depressing in explaining why cheaper Panther Lake laptops with the B370 haven't arrived. It's all AI's fault and the fact it's hoovering up all the spare memory capacity and driving up prices across the board. …