RAM kits are now sold with one fake RAM stick alongside a real one

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ram/fake-ram-bundled-with-real-ram-to-create-a-performance-illusion-for-amd-users-1-1-value-pack-offers-desperate-psychological-relief-as-the-memory-shortage-worsens

by edward • 4 months ago

286 174 4 months ago

tomshardware.com

sidewndr46• 4 months ago

This article seems a bit dramatic in it's title? People have purchased "blank" RAM for years for the aesthetic of it. I do not personally see the point, but I also don't have motherboards with unpopulated RAM slots. If a company wants to sell a kit that is 50/50, I am not sure that is actually a problem.

scotty793• 4 months ago

First time hearing about this, it's pretty dramatic for me. I grew up in times when computers were off-white and we liked it.

halapro• 4 months ago

Modding has been a thing for 20+ years though, people spend money for aesthetic purposes only.

embedding-shape5• 4 months ago

I think that says more about you than the ecosystem at large, people been modding computers for decades at this point, hardly new that some people seem to care more about looks than actually features/functionality/specifications :)

Personally I'm with you (but black), my entire desktop is just one color, and if a component is available in RGB and non-RGB and the difference isn't too big, I pay extra for that non-RGB version (which doesn't make sense it's even the case, but here we are).

I guess you could argue that we're all obsessed with the looks, some that all RAM slots are occupied, some that RGB is everywhere, some that the PC case should be off-white and slowly morph into beige, others that everything should be minimally black.

bombcar• 4 months ago

I remember being annoyed that it was hard to get the CDROM burner to match the case if you weren’t standard beige, and when black/clear came out it looked so bad for awhile!

Fluorescence2• 4 months ago

I would love to have blanks for every unused socket/port to keep dust out.

I'm just too cheap to pay for them though...

no-name-here• 4 months ago

Yes these have been around since at least 2018 - here’s a 2018 link about Corsair’s version: https://overclock3d.net/news/memory/fake_dimms_corsair_launc...

drivingmenuts2• 4 months ago

This is the computer equivalent of "comfort nuts" for a neutered dog, which is really about the owner, not the dog.

myself248• 4 months ago

And pickup trucks, for some reason.

drivingmenuts2• 4 months ago

Slight difference - truck nuts are a crass joke. Comfort nuts are supposed to be a psychological crutch for a dog. The owners actually believe the dog has an issue in the same way that some circumcised humans do.

FpUser3• 4 months ago

First time in my life I hear about fake RAM

spacecadet3• 4 months ago

Many kit builders with flashy PCs are only running 32gb. If you look at datasets like Steams, most people are still on 16 and 32. Hell 4% are still on 8!

embedding-shape5• 4 months ago

Meanwhile I moved platform from AM4 at exactly the wrong moment, and downgraded RAM (temporarily, I hope) from 192GB to 96GB and feel like I'm missing half my workspace when I need it.

ZekeSulastin• 4 months ago

The separate light-only sticks are useful if you want the appearance of all four slots filled: having four RAM sticks usually forces a slower memory speed (as the target market typically overclocks their RAM*), so unless you actually need a lot of RAM and can’t get a 2x32 or 2x48 etc kit you’re better off with the fakes.

Edit: this is also why some “extreme overclocking”-type motherboards** only have two DIMM slots: having four actively opposes their purpose.

* And yes, loading an XMP/EXPO profile to get the advertised 3000CL60 or w/e counts!

** i.e. https://rog.asus.com/us/motherboards/rog-crosshair/rog-cross...

FpUser3• 4 months ago

All 4 of my PC's are 128GB (2 sticks each, no filler) and my home server is 512GB

throwaway94275• 4 months ago

Rambus RAM (RDRAM) required unused slots to be populated with Continuity something something Memory Modules (CRIMMs). Basically just a blank DIMM.

BoredPositron• 4 months ago

It's an RGB kit you could get Corsair dummies for like 10 years now for look maxing your build.

wolvoleo2• 4 months ago

At least they are upfront about it.

I don't see the point though even for a gaming setup, as the fake modules will still reduce airflow.

Also, gaming boards usually have 4 slots (in 2 banks). I would fill at least 2, so I'd rather have a matched kit of 2 modules, and 2 separate fillers, if I did use them.

It is quite common to leave 2 memory slots empty (of RAM) because many boards can't drive the memory at top speed if you use all 4 slots.

daneel_w• 4 months ago

And stuffing your PC case with various disco lights doesn't affect its performance either. But an evidently large portion of gamers are, well, special people.

tekla• 4 months ago

It does, however, open up your computer to fun security bugs that were totally unnecessary, but you know, you gotta make your computer look like modern art.

https://www.pcgamesn.com/asus-gigabyte-security-flaws-secure...

PunchyHamster2• 4 months ago

Lmao, I got RGB coz it was the cheaper one

wolvoleo2• 4 months ago

I like it. I don't actually do it myself, the only lights in my case are the ones on my 4090 FE (just white ones, the FE are very understated designs). But I don't really mind it either. I like cyberpunk aesthetics.

I do often dress myself up with RGB lights however :)

RobotToaster• 4 months ago

I don't get it.

Isn't 2x8gb faster than 1x16gb since it will run in dual channel?

And shouldn't smaller capacity sticks be cheaper since they can use lower density chips?

officialchicken• 4 months ago

Think of it as RGB lighting in DIMM format and it makes a lot more nonsense.

barishnamazov• 4 months ago

Nobody really buys 8gb sticks anymore, so selling 2x8gb isn't economically great. Also, there are more factors than just density in RAM pricing, but it really depends on the vendor and chip layout design.

vmg12• 4 months ago

People don't want to buy 2x8gb because there are limited slots on a motherboard and they want to upgrade when they need the extra ram.

exabrial2• 4 months ago

Up to a certain point and It’s actually very dependent on the CPU.

Take Epyc processors. On certain ones, after certain RAM amount, populating all the slots causes the cpu to kick the RAM speed to a lower tier.

You’re then limited to capacities of two sticks.

Weird, but it has to do with power requirements. Abutting above the threshold had to be buffered, which increases latency.

p_ing• 4 months ago

It's the signal integrity and applies to desktop class boards, as well. A fully populated four DIMM Intel or AMD board will need to run at a slower mega transfer rate than a two DIMM board (or a four DIMM board with only two DIMMs populated)

elnerd• 4 months ago

I have a fully populated server with 2x7K62 and 16x64GB (3200 mhz) for my home lab. Do you know how to check if I am affected by this?

colechristensen3• 4 months ago

And shouldn't smaller capacity sticks be cheaper since they can use lower density chips?

In 2026 the bottleneck is wafer size as fabs are booked out making things for AI.

fulafel2• 4 months ago

Lower density chips are cheaper, because they can be made in previous generation fabs churning out previous generation wafers with previous generation equipment. So there isn't a choice between making a high or low density wafer from the same fab line.

some_random• 4 months ago

Yes but if you want to upgrade later buying another 1x16gb is cheaper than buying 2x16gb and throwing out your 2x8gb (although it's a bit contrived since most motherboards have 4 slots).

Fluorescence2• 4 months ago

For the same spec it's likely to be a different chip count rather than density. In theory two sticks could have higher bom... not that consumers would see such savings given the price segmentation where the appetite for higher capacities has deeper pockets.

Have recent boards/cpus fixed the instability problems people had with 4 sticks of DDR5 yet?

I was shocked when I saw folk saying you can't use 4 slots. It would mean that a one stick build would have an upgrade path but if you started with 2, you'd have to replace them.

debo_• 4 months ago

We should call the fake stick "NAM" for "no access memory." Then you can tell your kids that they couldn't possibly understand, man, because they weren't _there_.

gzread• 4 months ago

They couldn't possibly understand NAM, man

irdc• 4 months ago

Signetics was first with their 25120 Fully Encoded, 9046xN, Random Access Write-Only-Memory[0].

0. https://web.archive.org/web/20120316141638/http://www.nation...

jrockway• 4 months ago

I'd call it write-only memory.

phendrenad2• 4 months ago

Or DMZBR, for "dedicated mass zero buffer ram". 4, 8, or 16 gigabyte sticks of the finest zeroes on Earth! Now you don't have to reuse the same zeroes over and over! Reduces wear and tear on your zeroes!

Nifty3929• 4 months ago

Is that like the Write Once Read Never (WORN) drive?

resters• 4 months ago

This is the "Trumpification" of gaming PCs, thanks in part to the trade war.

Dwedit2• 4 months ago

This time, it has more to do with diminished supply combined with heavy demand rather than a trade war.

Simulacra• 4 months ago

I'm confused, could someone help me clarify: is this just one stick of RAM, and one stick of absolutely nothing, purely for aesthetics? I can't even see inside my CPU, why would I care if there's an empty slot? Why would I pay for a piece of plastic to fill that slot that doesn't do anything?

From the read, it seems like… A scam?

philjohn• 4 months ago

Meanwhile lots of people in the PC building community have cases with glass panels on the side, and go to a lot of effort to make the inside look a certain way. This includes things like custom sleeved cables, perfect cable management, RGB on various things.

I also have a glass panneled side to my computer, but the only RGB on it is on the graphics card waterblock, everything else is just jet black (fans, ZMT water cooling tubing, radiators etc. etc.)

Sharlin2• 4 months ago

I'm not in the market for LED bling (though I guess I might've been back when I was 15), but the neat cable management of today's cases definitely appeals to my sense of aesthetics, compared to the terrible mess of the yesteryear.

ryandrake• 4 months ago

Isn't the primary purpose of having an all-metal computer case that it acts as shielding to keep RF interference and noise generated by noisy PC components from leaking out? I never understood having a giant tempered glass panel on the side, totally defeating the purpose of the case.

Someone• 4 months ago

I can't even see inside my CPU, why would I care if there's an empty slot?

Then, you’re not the target audience.

Why would I pay for a piece of plastic to fill that slot that doesn't do anything?

It doesn’t do nothing. FTA: “Their sole purpose is cosmetic, though. While they light up and synchronize with your existing RGB ecosystem, they don't contribute to your computer’s memory capacity or performance.”

This is for people with transparent PC cases and memory sticks with RGB LED lighting. For example, see https://v-color.net/collections/prism-pro-rgb-memory-voclor/...:

“RGB SOFTWARE SYNCHRONIZATION SUPPORT

Dynamic RGB lighting control synchronized across main leading M/B such as RGB FUSION, MSI Mystic Light Sync, AURA Sync, POLYCHROME Sync etc. Customize lighting profiles or assign colors to each LEDs to create your own spectacular look.“

Sharlin2• 4 months ago

I'd estimate that most consumer PC cases sold these days have a glass side panel, and have had for a while.

senectus1• 4 months ago

wow... the enshittification of everything is getting faster every day.

JonChesterfield• 4 months ago

Bad idea. I would be very angry to discover I've bought this. Customer support are going to get shouted at and products returned.

duskdozer• 4 months ago

Lots of two-packs followed by one-returns.

colechristensen3• 4 months ago

If you read the article it shows the packaging and is incredibly obvious that one of them is RAM and the other one is filler.

Performance RAM + RGB Filler Kit
Complete RGB Look Instantly

cwillu3• 4 months ago

You've clearly never worked in retail.

Cloudef• 4 months ago

Why haven't prebuilt PC market been doing this to hide the fact they are using a single RAM stick?

onionisafruit• 4 months ago

A fake still costs more than nothing, and they are famous for saving pennies any place they can.

sysguest• 4 months ago

fking can't understand this one...

I mean, it's much cheaper to buy 2x8gb than 1x16gb or even 1x32gb (and 2x8gb is faster than 1x16gb..)

are these people idiots??? ram-slots are computer real-estates

ajnin2• 4 months ago

"I'd like 32G but I can't afford 2x16G right now so I'll buy a single stick and keep a slot open for later when prices are better or I get more available money". Seems pretty easy to understand.

daft_pink• 4 months ago

This is the reason people hate marketers.

russdill• 4 months ago

This is a product that some people want and it's marketed for exactly what it is.

themafia2• 4 months ago

This is the reason I hate lobbyists.

There is no sensible reason for the RAM market to be priced the way it is. It's obviously unchecked corruption. There's clearly more value in allowing that corruption than exposing and punishing it.

uyjulian• 4 months ago

Reminds me of Rambus / RDRAM terminator RAM sticks.

zzzeek• 4 months ago

While they light up and synchronize with your existing RGB ecosystem,

RAM has lights ?

wow I've been living in a cave

Dwedit2• 4 months ago

Are we back to the days of RDRAM when having a blank memory module was actually required?

skibz• 4 months ago

I miss the days when most people had a vanilla looking computer. You wouldn't have felt out of place at the LAN party lugging in your dad's old Packard Bell tower that you used for your gaming rig.

We still appreciated visually stunning PCs. Not just for the works of art that they were, but also for the DIY skill and ethic you were actually required to demonstrate to build and mod them.

Nowadays, it's all just "RGB by default". By my angry old man standards, it looks gauche. Then again, I suppose it's the new vanilla?

fwipsy• 4 months ago

Any popular aesthetic will be commoditized eventually. The new frontier is SFF PCs! -Rockin a ~5L SKTC A07 with r5-5600, rtx 4060, and zero RGB.

badlucklottery• 4 months ago

I've been a watercooling "enthusiast" for about 20 years now and, while the DIY-ness of the old school builds was a lot of fun for young me, I'm also glad I can just buy some off-the-shelf (or at worst "small batch") components that let me get really effective and near silent performance by just slamming some stuff together.

No more scouring junk yards for a particular heater core from wrecked cars or modding aquarium pumps.

That being said, I also never really understood the "add colorful lights to your PC" aspect of some builds.

PaulDavisThe1st• 4 months ago

I always thought of the lit cases as an instance of "I could put a cool LED light in this space, but I also need the space for my computer ... oh, hey, I could do both".

I have never used a lit case.

merelysounds• 4 months ago

In other news, there are new cases in beige being produced, some with turbo buttons and mock 5.25 inch floppy drives.

https://www.silverstonetek.com/en/product/info/computer-chas...

Aardwolf• 4 months ago

Yep, there were people hand-building wooden PC cases, building a fish tank into their case, painting fancy colors and patterns on it, ... And there were colored LEDs too, but they didn't come with bloatware OS-dependent software, because they didn't need software

rglover• 4 months ago

Built my first PC (for basement LAN parties) using the old family Packard Bell case. Cut my thumb on the poorly machined aluminum inside...I'll cherish that scar forever.

Ah, the good ol' days.

alexjplant• 4 months ago

My first two gaming PCs in high school had a side window and blue cold cathode light. My next build in my early 20s I decided that even this was too garish and went to a simple brushed black case. I understand that cheap tri-color LEDs mean fewer SKUs and infinite custom colors but in practice many people never turn off the "demo mode" color cycling and it just looks ridiculous.

Then again I'm typing this from a Thinkpad - maybe that says something about my aesthetic preferences for computers.

saltcured• 4 months ago

Will there be another retro phase, with the vanguard using beige cases that scream, "this color expects to capture a nicotine patina"?

wincy2• 4 months ago

There’s the Silverstone FLP02 [0], for a mere $250 you can get a case that looks like it was built in 1996, complete with a turbo button that spins all your fans to max.

[0] https://www.silverstonetek.com/en/product/info/computer-chas...

rjh293• 4 months ago

Yes, RGB is so common now that it's not popular, and retro stuff is coming back in. I think I saw even some landscape PC cases (laid flat) with fake HDD drive slots and a turbo button.

hakfoo• 4 months ago

You can still get a handful of non-RGB cases. They're usually sold as the "Silent" version (i. e. Fractal Pop series, Gamemax Titan Silent series) since the non-glass side panels often have sound-deadening material glued in.

15 bucks of rattlecans will make any case beige. :)

I'm sort of waiting for a motherboard manufacturer to weigh in though. Even the "pro" ranges tend to be black PCBs with a lot of complex silkscreening. The boards that don't have any of that tend to be OEM-tier boards with skimpy features. Surely someone can make an X870E-VINTAGE board with a green or yellow-brown substrate, no nonsense silkscreening, and finned brass heatsinkage that looks like the sort of thing you saw permanently glued to your 486DX2/66 CPU?

I want the aesthetic, but that can still be implemented in the context of no-compromises modern hardware.

jonathanlydall2• 4 months ago

I’m also “old” (44) and feel that rainbow LEDs are gaudy.

Seems these days that they’re not optional for most things remotely gaming related (e.g. motherboards, graphics cards) , but fortunately can generally be disabled or if illumination is useful (e.g for a keyboard), they can be configured to be white only, which was useful for the Steel Series keyboard I purchased. (I wouldn’t recommend Steel Series keyboards though, has stupid design choices and reliability issues.)

Also did LAN gaming back in the day. Computers were so much more work to lug around when you had a CRT and HDDs. These days desktop computers are far easier to transport.

water-data-dude• 4 months ago

I wanted to go RGB free when I built my desktop, but ran into the exact issue you describe. I kinda just shrugged and accepted it, but maybe I should have looked more deeply into their configurability. Off or all white would be a much better look IMO

burnt-resistor2• 4 months ago

The only reasons I bought a case with a tempered glass side panel were its overall rating and it was extremely cheap. A similar situation happened for the Core V71 case I used for a Supermicro H11DSi dual EPYC virtual server and NAS for my home lab. It's one of a few features I don't care about but are difficult to avoid without incurring limitations like additional cost.

Back in my day™, I remember full super tower cases made from steel when they had 8-10 5.25" HH front bays. They were boat anchors and they were generally terrible at managing heat and airflow.

wincy2• 4 months ago

I run with no RGB in my computer case, I got a very nice $250 case used for $40 with a broken tempered glass panel that looked like it had been dropped out of a second story apartment, but a $20 replacement panel and a little bit of hammering got it looking good as new.

On the other hand, I’m building my daughter a gaming PC for her birthday, and she loves the RGB, I set everything to a pastel blue that matches her Cinnamoroll Razer mouse, keyboard, mousepad, [0] with a Cinnamoroll desk mat I got shipped from China. She only knows about half of that (hard to hide an entire PC while I’m working on debloating windows), and is super excited.

I’ll admit I’m pushing 40 and bought a red mouse to go with my red backlit keyboard, but mostly because I like the aesthetic and to get the lowest latency from click and keypress to output on the display you’ll want 8K polling rate inputs and 240hz+ monitors. I was somewhat radicalized by reading this blog [1] on Hacker News years ago, and gaming peripherals are largely the way of achieving an extremely smooth desktop experience.

[0] https://www.razer.com/collabs/cinnamoroll?srsltid=AfmBOooMjB... [1] https://danluu.com/input-lag/

WalterBright• 4 months ago

a little bit of hammering got it looking good as new

A hammer and an oxy-acetylene torch is all that a good mechanic needs.

somat• 4 months ago

I still enjoy building my pc's, But I put them in 4u server chassis. they are built better and have sane airflow. I have not been 13 for a long time and it is tricky to find non rgb parts anymore. No windows on my case but it still looks like someone is holding a rave through the gaps. sigh.

For free. My main rant about desktop vs server grade motherboards. For a desktop system you really want a desktop grade motherboard. server grade is expensive, takes forever to post, the compute tends toward slow and wide vs desktop's fast and tall, and the parts(ram, cpu) compatability tends to be much more picky. My grip is why is the desktop mb airflow so bad. In a server board everything is aligned front to back. pcie, ram, cpu cooler are all aligned the same way. in a desktop board the pcie goes front to back, the ram goes top to bottom. and toss a coin for which way a cpu cooler will fit.

arcfour• 4 months ago

I was putting together a new PC in 2024 after not having built one for ~7 years, and browsing for motherboards, I kept saying "just give me an ugly green one, damn it!"

pan69• 4 months ago

I did the same in 2023. I got the Asus Q470:

https://www.asus.com/motherboards-components/motherboards/cs...

I added a Intel Core i7 10700K (with a nice low-profile Noctua cooler/fan) with 32GB of memory and a 512GB SSD and I'm using onboard graphics which is just fine for a daily driver "office" type machine running Linux. Very happy with it.

rasz• 4 months ago

Manufacturers have no incentive to offer barebone products anymore, BOM price difference is negligible. Its $0.5 of leds and "fancy" solder mask colors become free at scale.

delduca• 4 months ago

I imported my motherboard from US because all we have here have rgb

mort96• 4 months ago

I have absolutely no interest in RGB anything in my computer. Yet I've occasionally ended up with all these RGB parts -- RGB LED on my mouse, RGB RAM sticks, RGB GPU -- just because it's the best alternative right then and there, it's wild. It's at the point where you sometimes have to go with a worse price/performance option or otherwise suboptimal choice just to avoid the stupid useless little RGB LEDs.

jkestner• 4 months ago

Yeah, if people were still doing LAN parties, I’d want to bring the equivalent of a sleeper car. Maybe empty out that beige AT case with the turbo button on it.

pseudohadamard• 4 months ago

That's when black PVC tape is your friend. Just used that earlier today because some cretin decided that putting a 10,000lm blue LED strip on a bedside phone charger is a good idea.

(It's actually a very nice charger, except for that --ing LED strip).

lazylizard• 4 months ago

backlit keyboards are an ok idea..

hackerfoo• 4 months ago

You people are just old and cranky. I’ve loved LEDs ever since I first saw a red one light up in the 80s (we didn’t have blue ones then.)

rjh293• 4 months ago

I love them too and I'm happy they come built-in by default (plus the fantastic OpenRGB project to sync them all) instead of having to make them myself... I remember when I was paying £100+ for a membrane keyboard because it was one of the first to have RGB. Now they all do.

keyringlight• 4 months ago

Two things that strike me.

One is the "when everyone is special, no one is special" factor, but I think that's tempered a bit by PCs becoming a status item (alongside the rise of streaming that shows the streamer and their environment) so it's important the PC is conspicuous. Also for those that have invested significant time/money it has become a point of pride for them that they want to display, and get into flamewars on the internet to defend their team. The manufacturers probably don't mind that it lets them display their brand in lights too and not be hidden away as a sticker or PCB marking.

Also that there seems to be space in the market for 'PC as a pretty lightbox', RGB systems are sophisticated now alongside LCD systems getting attached to various components. The PC becomes a decoration as opposed to a tool that fades into the background like a lot of other devices which are pure display or have enthusiasts salivating about thinner bezels. The thing I find curious is that the lightbox is constrained in the form of a PC (even if they sometimes try hard to hide the machinery of it such as wires or putting components on PCBs hidden behind panels), there's not a lot of consumer products where you could assemble elaborate colored lighting displays.

tim-projects• 4 months ago

The last time I built a PC was almost 25 years ago. The gaming card seemed expensive at the time at $250.

I don't understand what's happened to PC building since. It's like it's a sport now or something. What's with the RGB crap? I remember wanting my PC to be quiet and out of sight. The screen and speakers were what mattered.

Now everyone's wearing crappy headphones. Everything is about how it looks. :/

technofiend• 4 months ago

I view it like the automotive world - lots of people like to buy a car and trick it out in some way. Same with PCs. Just think of it like that.

jug• 4 months ago

It's a gamer subculture, I think originally from showing off your build? The irony is that people in the Western culture are generally lonelier than ever, and definitely going to fewer LAN parties than in the past. And this showcase thing established itself mostly _after_ Internet making us physically lonelier.

asyx• 4 months ago

I think my computer is pretty. I have the black with brown wood panel case that is super popular and then all black components except for the RGB LED gpu manufacturer logo on the GPU. Looks pretty nice and sleek.

But I also had to look past the RGB nonsense. The GPU was basically an accident.

burnt-resistor2• 4 months ago

Beige was the only color case available until around 1992. And, sometimes, the floppy drive/s or HDDs didn't match the case at all. Off white cases were one of the first "innovations" before black, gray, and multi color cases arrived in the late 90's where I was. Then tempered glass and ARGB came in like an involuntary disco, a Ford Fiesta with ground effects, or a Trump apartment. All I wished was that Noctua and similar fan mfgrs offered standard monochrome black or white fans rather than brown turds or RGB fluorescent orange.

Shorel• 4 months ago

I have RGB keyboard, video card, and speakers.

Not by choice, they just came that way and it is unimportant enough that I don't see it as something positive or negative.

I set up everything to a single flat orange-amber hue. I plan to switch everything to a green hue during summer.

It certainly helps to set certain mood.

alpaca128• 4 months ago

Can't wait for people to buy two of these sets, take the real RAM sticks and refund the two fake ones in one package. There's no way the seller is going to manually check every returned stick.

LastMuel• 4 months ago

Quickest way for this idea to die a horrible death.

bonoboTP• 4 months ago

Why won't they check? It says it on the stick with text. It doesn't look identical.

ryukoposting• 4 months ago

Does it say it on both sides? Just flip it over.

PunchyHamster2• 4 months ago

Swap the radiators around

kbolino• 4 months ago

The edge connectors also look quite off, like two-thirds of the traces are missing, but that does take a discerning eye to notice.

inaros• 4 months ago

Now that you leaked the beans...

dathinab• 4 months ago

people already have been doing that with fake "rgb only" RAM sticks

SoftTalker• 4 months ago

... and then the next person who buys RAM on Amazon gets the returned package with the two fake sticks.

dsign• 4 months ago

Slight tangent, I found this chart for the prices of RAM:

https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/

It's not looking good, I don't think supply is catching with demand yet.

Though the other day I learned there are many technologies for "RAM", and most of them are garbage for LLMs but still useful for other things, like microcontrollers. So I'm thinking my next "build" is going to be a guitar.

dom96• 4 months ago

Super interesting charts there. What's really interesting to me is that the GPU prices (which also includes RAM) didn't see such a massive increase in price as the RAM itself. Anyone know why that is?

MengerSponge2• 4 months ago

RAM is just part of the GPU bill of materials?

It might also be that NVIDIA is a natural monopoly, while memory manufacturers are a cartel...

SloopJon• 4 months ago

I held my nose and bought an RTX 5070 Ti for $100 over MSRP in January. The very next week the same model was up $200. It turns out that NVIDIA had been subsidizing retail graphics cards with its Open Pricing Program. Not the whole story, but it may help explain the relative flatness of the graph until the end of January.

The other part of it is that the MSRP already baked in a substantial increase from the previous generation. While RAM was near rock-bottom pricing when this hit, current-gen GPUs definitely were not.

recursivecaveat• 4 months ago

A $1500 5800 only has 16GB which would be $250 if you compare it against the DDR6 graph on that page. Given that there's only 2 top tier GPU manufacturers at most, they were probably already not very BOM cost sensitive.

MengerSponge2• 4 months ago

It's not looking good, I don't think supply is catching with demand yet.

Surely this will be helped by a helium supply shock.

undersuit2• 4 months ago

Though the other day I learned there are many technologies for "RAM"

I'm an advocate of sticking a $5 16Gb Optane stick from eBay on a $10 M.2 to PCIe 1x adapter from eBay. Set it up as swap in Windows or Linux. Or pay $200 for a 16GB stick of DDR5.

nerdsniper• 4 months ago

I don't think supply is catching with demand yet.

It will take a couple years. Either AI has to have a big crash or YMTC has to grow their production 3-8x before prices come back down to levels from 12 months ago.

cwillu3• 4 months ago

There is no reason for this to exist except to trick people.

throwaheyy• 4 months ago

Build PC with 16gb now, upgrade to 32gb in the future, not be stuck with surplus 2x8gb afterwards.

cwillu3• 4 months ago

You don't need a placeholder stick to do that.

mihaaly• 4 months ago

The word fits here is pretend.

mcfedr• 4 months ago

AI sucks doesn't it

amelius2• 4 months ago

Yes, even more than COVID. At least during that period I could buy PC parts without problems.

Looking forward to the next AI winter.

echelon2• 4 months ago

I'm getting so much more done with AI, it's wild.

The AI boom has only just begun. This is literally the next industrial revolution. And it's only now starting to take off.

erikerikson• 4 months ago

Oops, someone hit publish 18 days early.

[edit: 19, article published yesterday]

youknownothing• 4 months ago

so this is like men who use silicone implants resembling muscles to appear strong, even though they're weak AF xD

https://www.bestbodyimplants.com/gallery_implants/male-impla...

codethief2• 4 months ago

Jeez, that whole website…

tombert• 4 months ago

Every time I see those I just think of Anchor Arms from SpongeBob. https://youtu.be/aDKkyM34e_k?feature=shared

aitchnyu• 4 months ago

Arent we supposed to have matching RAM sticks for dual channel performance in modern computers?

codethief2• 4 months ago

Supposed to… maybe. But can you?

Even if your budget only allows you to purchase a single real memory module, you can still achieve the look of a dual-module setup in your build.
For users aiming for peak performance, a dual-channel memory configuration remains the gold standard. However, with memory prices currently inflated, it’s easy to see the appeal of cost-effective options like V-Color’s 1+1 memory kits.

:-)

tzs• 4 months ago

Could these actually be functionally useful or are they purely aesthetic?

For example, dust can short out electrical connections. Can enough dust get into an open RAM slot to cause problems?

butz• 4 months ago

How about we use all that AI and start doing some serious optimizations to existing software? Reduce memory requirements by half, or even more.

cyanydeez• 4 months ago

LLMs are intrinsically deaigned for token production, which is typically inversely related to optimization and efficoency.

TeMPOraL2• 4 months ago

Plenty of people do.

AI is one of the few major general technological breakthroughs, comparable to the Internet and electricity. It's potentially applicable to everything, which is why right now everyone is trying to apply it to everything. Including developing new optimization algorithms, optimizing optimizing compilers, optimizing applications, optimizing systems, optimizing hardware, ...

Big AI vendors are at the forefront of it, because they're the ones who actually pay for the AI revolution, so any efficiency improvement saves them money.

themafia2• 4 months ago

comparable to the Internet and electricity.

It will be when it actually exists.

which is why right now everyone is trying to apply it to everything

And are any of them actually succeeding? Where are the new AI businesses? Where's the new wealth and money? Where's the one guy AI pioneer doing what used to take 100s?

because they're the ones who actually pay for the AI revolution

Their customers do. The customers are getting ripped off. They want the AI revolution, what they got was a crappy search engine, and copyright whitewashing service instead.

echelon2• 4 months ago

We are.

I'm writing a metric ton of Rust code with Claude Code.

undersuit2• 4 months ago

Improving LLM memory contention will allow LLMs to use more memory.

agreezy• 4 months ago

It's sloppy developers. People used to be able to make software to run on limited ram natively. Now everything is wrapped in something.

amelius2• 4 months ago

I already put "Use as little RAM as possible." in my custom prompt.

wildpeaks• 4 months ago

It's not a new thing, it's a common way to fill empty slots for aesthetic purposes, especially with RGB builds in aquarium cases.

SilentM68• 4 months ago

Had a similar experience at AliExpress (US site). Purchased M.2 drive but what I got was stick of chewing gum (not literally but you get the idea). Never bought anything from them again.

voganmother42• 4 months ago

The fabled write only memory

speakbits• 4 months ago

Wow... never really realized people actually used these things and didn't just chuck them after opening their RAM>

bdcravens• 4 months ago

A few months ago I upgraded a Windows laptop I use in my 3d printer studio from 32gb to 64gb. I let the memory I pulled out sit on the desk, and just got around to selling it last week. I sold it on eBay for twice what the 64gb kit cost new. In almost 30 years of upgrading all sorts of machines, I can't remember if I've ever performed an upgrade and turned a profit out of it.

ajnin2• 4 months ago

This article is using "fake" for click-bait purposes, implying some kind of scam, in fact it's just a filler RGB stick to make pretty lights inside your case, nothing nefarious about it and it's clear when you buy, but probably wouldn't be featured on HN without it.

nubinetwork• 4 months ago

Dummy sticks have existed since rambus as well.

throwaway85825• 4 months ago

Fake RAM sticks have existed since RAM became RGBified.

ProllyInfamous• 4 months ago

This seems to happen sometimes with Big Box tools, brand new out of the box: the two battery toolset will have cells from different lots (presumably:) one known to work, the other questionable... you did still get two batteries for those tools, but it sure does seem like the same one is always charging.

I've had this happen both from Amazon and HD/L.

namuol• 4 months ago

Apropos to nothing, PC Builder Simulator on Steam costs $19.99 USD and it requires a Windows machine with just 4GB RAM and a GPU with 2GB.

M95D• 4 months ago

Reminds me of "fake parity" SIMM sticks.

RAM kits are now sold with one fake RAM stick alongside a real one

Related Stories