On the future of hardware pricing

Comments

• ServerAstra Member, Patron Provider

  March 22

  @rpqu said:
  It's going to take time for people to get accustomed to and ordered one to self-host. Meanwhile, hyperscaler have very aggressive outlook which is impossible to achieve. They probably will idle large chunk of installed capacity .

  My main issue is that knowing hyperscalers - they will flood the market with cheap old hardware soon (because you can't use some HW for non-AI inference for example. training on DDR4? KmePLS) but the newer more efficient systems with AVX512 will still be locked for a decade or two. And AVX512 is a huge boon not just for AI related tasks.

  Thanked by 3oloke rpqu tux
• dedipromo Member

  March 22

  This is easily the best thread I've read in LET this year. Everyone in the industry should read, instead of daydreaming about hardware price going down or going up the next month.

  Thanked by 2host_c tux
• rpqu Member

  March 23 edited March 23

  @host_c said:

  @jbiloh said: On the ram front every week I am seeing higher prices for ddr4. It is absolutely brutal.

  HA HA HA

  So, long story short, we gave away some servers for free to some customers that are in a bad spot today and they are non-profit organizations, consider it as a sponsorship,yet as backup servers they can live with 32 bg ddr4 all day long, so since we don't use modules of that small size, we need to get some, so we asked 3 of our suppliers for a quote on 2x 16 Gb DDR4 ECC Registered even if 2133 MHz, and we got back ±100 USD / 16 GB DDR4 module...... at that point I replayed to them, " at that price point, stick it up your ass ".

  Now, don't get me wrong, I am not a cheap-skin, yet, paying 100 USD on 16 GB DDR4 in 2026 - fuck no.

  So yes, welcome to 2026 reality. It is a fuqing mess.

  Yes, that's why I just took 16GB module from another machine to the one that need replacement. I always put too much resource on my machine, assuming it will last 20 years. But, I didn't expect I had to do this.

  @ServerAstra said:

  @rpqu said:
  It's going to take time for people to get accustomed to and ordered one to self-host. Meanwhile, hyperscaler have very aggressive outlook which is impossible to achieve. They probably will idle large chunk of installed capacity .

  My main issue is that knowing hyperscalers - they will flood the market with cheap old hardware soon (because you can't use some HW for non-AI inference for example. training on DDR4? KmePLS) but the newer more efficient systems with AVX512 will still be locked for a decade or two. And AVX512 is a huge boon not just for AI related tasks.

  Right. Though we don't know the timing and volume, they will sell DDR4 hardware as they're transitioning high frequency& premium lineup HW to DDR6.
  My take: don't buy at 2026 used market premium. The entire host industry should collectively boycott their used gears until they're forced to lower their price — No exception
  If not, you're just donating to their war chest, which will be used to wage war against you.

  @dedipromo said:
  This is easily the best thread I've read in LET this year. Everyone in the industry should read, instead of daydreaming about hardware price going down or going up the next month.

  Don't rest on your laurels — polished them by doing more tech, market research on future emerging demands, AI & related workload. Then, weave the insights into strategies