RAM

The situation with RAM prices is so desperate that there are already those who build their own memory at home

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The crisis we are experiencing with RAM memories and its exorbitant price is shaking the technology industry in multiple ways, precisely because they are components that found in the vast majority of devices that we use in our daily lives. Faced with the crazy prices, there are users who have not given up and have resorted to extreme solutions: building their own RAM memories. Untenable. Memory prices have skyrocketed to unsustainable levels. DDR5 modules that previously cost between 100 and 150 euros now easily exceed 350 euros in many markets. You can blame the AI. And the demand for DRAM for artificial intelligence applications has absorbed a large part of global production. OpenAI alone has accounted for 40% of all productionleaving home users paying the consequences. The worst thing is that it doesn’t look like this is going to be solved soon. And it is that according to analysis firm IDC, the shortage could last until 2027. cheap adapters. In recent weeks we have seen how some users have chosen to build their own RAM memories to face the price crisis. One of the approaches is to use SODIMM to UDIMM adapters. In a video The Hardware Canucks YouTube channel shows how they have tested this solution on Ryzen 7000, 9000, Intel LGA 1700 and LGA 1851 systems without too many problems. The approach is simple: buy DDR5 SODIMM modules (the ones for laptops) that are still relatively cheap and connect them to the system using adapters that cost between 10 and 15 euros. It must be said that this method also has its limitations, and that is that the data transfer speed that these adapters achieve is quite a lottery. In the tests carried out by Hardware Canucks they say that some do not exceed 4,800 MT/s stably, while others reach 5,600 MT/s or even 5,800 MT/s, although it depends a lot on the adapter model and the platform. In terms of performance, the good thing is that the difference is practically imperceptible. According to the content creator’s tests, with an RTX 5090 and a Ryzen 9800X3D, the difference is between 5 and 7% in the worst case compared to conventional DDR5-6000 memory. A more radical solution. Another approach is the one that the Russian modder VIK-on has opted for. And just as they count From Videocardz, the enthusiast has built a functional 32GB stick by combining chips from two 16GB SODIMM modules from SK Hynix, a Chinese PCB, and a heatsink from AliExpress. The total cost: 17,015 rubles, about $218. As explained in the media, in Russia an equivalent module costs at least three times more. Images: VIK-on After physically assembling the parts, a process that requires BGA reballing stations and considerable soldering experience, the modder then integrated ADATA firmware to enable an XMP profile that allowed the memory to run at a speed of 6,400 MT/s. In this way, VIK-on has achieved a functional 32 GB stick that any motherboard could recognize and that according to the modder works stably in games. Between the lines. That making a RAM from home is economically viable says a lot about the state of the market. Furthermore, not everyone experiences the situation in the same way, since in some markets such as Russia prices are especially prohibitive. Of course, soldering memory chips is not trivial, as it requires specialized equipment, technical experience and taking risks of damaging expensive components. The adapter method is much more bearable, but it is most likely that these homemade solutions will continue to be a niche. Most users will prefer to pay the extra price rather than risk soldering components or dealing with third-party adapters. Although if the forecasts end up being true and the crisis extends for several years, the emergence of a secondary market for professionally refurbished modules taking advantage of surpluses is no small feat. It would probably be the last solution we would resort to, but in other markets there might be enough demand. Cover image | Andrey Matveev In Xataka | The computers of the future have found an unexpected ally to store information: fungi

In the midst of the RAM memory crisis, Samsung takes a leap with its HBM4 memory. It does not imply good news for the pocket

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We are in full RAM price crisis. The industry is a cake that three large producers share and the data centers and the artificial intelligence They want to eat the whole cake. Samsung is one of the companies that manufactures memory for consumption and data centersand will soon begin mass production of its latest broadband memory chips: the HBM4. Don’t throw the bells in the air too soon. HBM4. This technology represents a crucial advance in stacked memories. Its density allows double the bandwidth, key to transmitting more data per second, but they are also up to 40% more energy efficient than HBM3. In short: they consume less energy and have fewer bottlenecks, which translates into an improvement in data processing. Industry sources point out that Samsung will use the 10-nanometer D1c manufacturing process for the matrix of these HBM4 memorieswith an internal structure of 4 nm. It’s a more advanced process than the 12-nanometer D1b from its main rival, SK Hynix. In addition, it will achieve a data transfer speed of 11.7 Gbps compared to 9-10 Gbps of the current standard. Hello Nvidia. South Korean media they point that these new Samsung HBM4 modules they would have passed Nvidia certification testing and will be in february when the company starts mass manufacturing them. Where will they end up? Some to Nvidia’s new AI acceleration system, called Vera Rubinothers at the heart of Google’s seventh-generation TPUs. After these reports, the company’s shares they went up 5.3% in the Seoul market. The enemy at home. In statements To South Korean media, Samsung representatives have commented that they feel quite confident with a new product that will clear up doubts about the company’s ability to supply the demanding needs of data centers. The fifth-generation HBM3E memories were a bottleneck for the company, so major players in the AI ​​industry looked next door: SK Hynix. Also South Korean, she is the second leg of memory chip manufacturing. The third is the American Micron Technology, a considerable distance from the two South Koreans. A year ago we already told that SK Hynix had achieved enormous efficiency in the DRAM stacking process to create these HBM memories, which allowed it to be 8.8 times more efficient than Samsung or Micron and, therefore, produce more modules for an industry that never stops asking. Meanwhile, the two South Koreans were in a race for the development of the new generation HBM4, and Samsung seems to have struck the first blow. Of course, it is estimated that Hynix will also begin mass production of these new memories on the same dates. And the consumer… what? Well nothing. If you were expecting good news related to the price of RAM, it must be said that no improvements are expected. These HBM4 modules will go to Nvidia, but we recently commented that OpenAI had reached an agreement with Samsung and SK Hynix to supply with 900,000 wafers per month. It is the volume equivalent to 39% of the estimated global capacity… and only for one company. Translation? Bottleneck in the market, a manufacturing speed that may not meet that demand and more bad news for the user. We have seen that Micron has abandoned its Crucial brand for consumers in favor of RAM for data centers, and that Samsung and SK Hynix are focused on HBM4 memories en masse, although they are not used in consumer devices, implies that this is where they will focus on this lucrative AI market. In short: Samsung may be dominating the new generation of memories, but 2026 seems difficult for anyone who wants to build a PC, expand RAM of yours, buy a new mobile or even wait for good news from the Steam Machine. Image | TSMC, Google In Xataka | RAM has become so, so expensive that there are manufacturers selling computers in an unprecedented way: “pre-assembled”

The RAM memory market is broken and there are those who point to a new player: Asus

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The RAM memory market it’s gibberish. The voracity of the data centers has caused energy companies to rethink your renewable goals and? RAM memory increases meteorically in price. This short term is so attractive that Micron, one of the three RAM giants, recently announced that killed its branch of Crucial consumption. And, king dead, king in place: leaks suggest that Asus would be considering its arrival in the RAM market for 2016. It’s not going to be easy at all. In short. The middle Sakhtafzarmag is the one that has sprung the hare: Asus would enter the DRAM market over the next few months. The medium now filter previously information about new processors from AMD and Intel so, although we are talking about a rumor, it is not a medium that comes out of nowhere. At a time when reports point to a RAM shortage until the end of 2027it is not uncommon for other players in the PC market to become interested. It makes sense. And Asus is one of the greats. Your income surpass 18,000 million dollars annually and is present as one of the largest PC hardware manufacturers. Apart from its motherboards and GPU, Asus sells complete desktop and laptop computers (for gaming and office automation) and consoles (there’s the recent Asus ROG Xbox Ally). The RAM segment is one that I had not entered, but the way of doing it has other precedents: Corsair. As I say, Asus starting to sell RAM memory makes sense if we take into account that Crucial, one of the most powerful brands in the consumer segment, has ceased to exist. Crucial was a Micron brand focused on the user: if you wanted RAM, you could buy one from Crucial and mount it on your PC, but with this rise of AI, Micron has seen that the mine is in the data centers. Your explanation is that it is a movement to “improve supply to strategic customers.” The reality is that it is a chore for all PC users. Corsair style. If you have built a PC, it is easy that you have opted for Corsair RAM memories. This brand has monitors, boxes or power supplies, but also memories. However, it is not a memory manufacturer: is an assembler. What Corsair does is design its own PCB, stability systems and heatsinks, and then to that PCB solder the RAM modules from manufacturers such as Samsumg, SK Hynix or Micron. three paths. Entering a new segment is not easy, but Asus has three paths: Be a assembler. Buy memories from large manufacturers and integrate them into your own PCBs. This is what it does, for example, with its graphics cards (Nvidia chip, but its own PCB and dissipation system). ‘Pass’ from big manufacturers that are having difficulties supplying data centers and opting for other emerging ones. For example, the Chinese company CXMT, which has recently achieved validate DDR5 memory modules (and which is on the US blacklist). It would be a win-win for both: Asus validates this Chinese company in the international market and CXMT gets a high-profile international partner. The third is the most risky: Become a memory manufacturer. Asus has the financial resources, but not the experience to do it. It would be the best to create a more controlled product, but in the end it means facing a greater risk. wasp nest. As we said from the beginning, the arrival of Asus in the RAM memory segment is a rumor that arrives just when RAM supply chain is broken. It is something that affects us as consumers because we see exorbitant prices, but ‘Big Tech’ also has to pay more for RAM, there is a lot of speculation about the price of machines like Steam Machine that will be launched right in this price hurricane (some RAM modules are more expensive than any console) and even memory manufacturers they may face difficulties in their products, such as Samsung. The arrival of another assembler does not change the balance of power that the big three – Samsung, Hynix and Micron – have since Asus would buy from them, but if it associates with Chinese companies, things change, and a giant like Asus will be lat the gateway of a CXMT or Fujiuan Jinhua would add pressure to the current oligopolistic system. Decongestion? Difficult. Now, just because a new player enters this playing field does not mean that prices will drop immediately. Everything will depend on how they enter, but if they assemble memories from the three most established manufacturers, there will still be no decongestion in the market because they will be more likely to distribute the same finite product. If they enter through a Chinese manufacturer, the situation could be alleviated as long as the stock is not broken. In any case, if they are really going to make some move for 2026, it wouldn’t take long for us to have official news – and CES is just around the corner. We have contacted Asus, we will update when we hear back. Images | Hector Reyes In Xataka | AMD’s problem is not that it doesn’t make good GPUs for AI. It’s not even close to NVIDIA

RAM has become so expensive that it already distorts the market. “Pre-assembled” computers have just appeared on the scene

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There are times when a seemingly secondary component reveals that the market no longer works as it used to. RAM is starting to fill that role. Its price and availability his no longer an assumed detail to become a factor that alters basic business decisions, from how the final price of a PC is set to what is included, or not, in a standard configuration. When that happens, we are not just talking about rising prices, but about a silent change in the rules of the game. The clearest sign of this shift has come from Paradox Customs, an integrator founded in 2019 in Deer Park (New York) that has opted for something unusual: allowing the customer to configure a computer without RAM memory. The company explains it in its account in Xdue to continued shortages and escalating prices, offers the option to select “no RAM” in the purchasing process. It also presents it, for those who already have modules or can obtain them on their own, a direct way to overcome a market that no longer guarantees stable supply at predictable prices. Click to see the original message in X When RAM rules. The increased cost of memory not only adds to the budget, it also decompensates the internal logic of a configuration. A PC that was previously adjusted by changing the CPU or graphics card may now be out of range solely because of the RAM, forcing you to cut back on other components or rethink the whole thing. In this scenario, memory stops being a silent accompaniment and begins to dictate decisions that affect the overall performance, the usage profile and the perception of value of the final equipment. Strategies to survive. Faced with the same problem, the market is reacting in very different ways. CyberPowerPC, for example, notified of price changes as of December 7, 2025, attributing them to “market conditions.” Framework, however, He assured that the price of his memory has not changedbut it withdrew the sale of stand-alone modules from its store to stop resellers and reserve inventory for those who buy the memory along with their laptops. There is no single solution, only adjustments to buy time in an unstable scenario. The pressure of AI. Behind this tension there is not a single factor, but a profound change in demand. Data centers dedicated to artificial intelligence require large volumes of memory, and that is reordering priorities in the industry. Another pressure is being reported in the sector, part of the production capacity of manufacturers such as Samsung or SK Hynix would be directed towards HBM, a higher margin memory designed for accelerators and servers, which reduces the margin for conventional consumer RAM. The effect is not immediate, but it is cumulative, and ends up being noticeable in the domestic market. This context does not affect all actors equally. Specialized integrators, like Paradox, buy components on the open market, so any swings in pricing or availability are often quickly translated into their offering. Large manufacturers, such as Dell or HP, operate with scale, much higher volumes and supply chains designed to operate at a global level, which tends to better cushion these types of fluctuations. This difference helps to understand why some react with visible changes in the configurator and others do so in a more gradual and less explicit way. Visible changes. The scene left by this change is clear, the pre-assembled computer seems to be entering a different stage, except in these months. Memory has gone from being an invisible component to a factor that rewrites catalogs and business decisions. For now, the public signals that some manufacturers are leaving point to an unstable scenario, with defensive measures and warnings of price changes. Images | Paradox Customs In Xataka |The RAM memory crisis seemed to have its months numbered. Micron has a completely different perspective

The runaway price of RAM threatens more expensive phones than ever. And that’s not even the biggest problem

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Neither the car nor the house, the new indicator that someone is good pasta is the RAM memory that you have available. The RAM crisis is extremea price increase planned for 2026 that will hit the entire industry. Such is the seriousness of the matterthere are already those who predict that the manufacturers of telephones are considering returning to figures of the past: the 4 GB of unified RAM for smartphones of the next year. Samsung has doubled the price of DDR5 RAM after running out of stock, a movement that completely threatens the entire smartphone industry. And no, RAM is not just an element to ensure the fluidity of the mobile phone and efficient multitasking: RAM is a pillar on which the advancement of technology itself depends. How to know the components of your PC (RAM, Graphics, CPU…) and the state they are in The rise in prices. In just six months, RAM prices have skyrocketed between 100% and 400%. Giants like Samsung and SK Hynix are allocating around 40% of its resources to supply RAM to Stargatethe OpenAI infrastructure. Consequence: the RAM market has entered a valley of scarcity. The 4 GB of RAM. There are clear pillars for not recommending a phone even to my worst enemy: That it does not have good update support. That has a processor that can’t handle basic apps. That has less than 6 GB of RAM There are already those who predict that 4 GB of RAM will return in 2026a significant leap back even for entry-level devices, where 6GB of RAM was starting to become the standard. What they didn’t tell you about RAM. Advances in RAM go far beyond basic performance in multitasking and everyday apps. RAM memory is one of the vital organs of any smartphone, and the advances in it are what have allowed us, today, to have smartphones that are much more capable than those of years ago. Local AI processing– Without sufficient RAM, it is not possible to run local AI models. He iPhone 15 is the best example. Photographic quality: functions such as processing HDRcomputational zoom, and even the processing of the photograph itself (subsequently processed RAW data) depend largely on the mobile phone’s ability to move all that data in RAM. Exactly the same applies to video recording. Multi-window and multitasking: Multitasking is not just about not having a heavy game crash while you browse in Chrome. It’s that Google Maps can run in the background without slowing down your phone, that YouTube can run in mode PiP (window), that your keyboard is capable of managing translations and corrections in real time in any heavy app, etc. Gaming experience: We usually focus on CPU and GPU when thinking about a mobile phone capable of running a heavy game, but RAM is essential to avoid microcuts, speed up loading times despite having open apps, and ensure that the game will not close in the middle of a game. The consequences. We have been complaining for the last few years that there is hardly any real progress in smartphones and that, perhaps, we are close to their peak. But there are nuances in this interpretation. We have never had humble mobile phones with AI implementation, the ability to move triple A games on budget devicesand such a positive experience in practically any product range. The RAM crisis is a major brake on the advancement of upcoming proposals, and may make it more than likely that some 2026 phones will end up performing worse than their predecessors. There is no solution in sight. DDR5 RAM, although it has been on the market since SK Hynix released it in 2020is not common in entry-level proposals. DDR4 RAM is still the standard here and, unfortunately, so is its price. has been increasing by close to 200% in recent months. More expensive RAM, more expensive mobile phones or mobile phones with less RAM. Image | Xataka In Xataka | How to know how much RAM you have and what type it is, in Windows, macOS and GNU/Linux

The RAM memory crisis seemed to have its months numbered. Micron has a completely different perspective

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They say that there is never a bad time to do something you really want and that, many times, the only thing that stops us is finding the right excuse not to start. That idea can work in many areas, but today it doesn’t fit very well if what you have in mind is build your own PC. At least not without assuming that the current context clearly works against it. We are witnessing firsthand how the so-called “memory crisis” is pushing upand notably, the prices of NAND memories, key in SSD units, and of the DRAM used in computers and laptops. We have more and more reasons to be patient, because an actor as relevant as Micron already warns that the challenges for the sector will persist for quite some time. The memory crisis is still far from resolved The company has put a date on the table and it is not what many expected. In its communication of resultsSanjay Mehrotra, CEO of Micron, spoke of “tight conditions” in DRAM and NAND and said that they are expected to “persist through and beyond 2026“In other words, if today we are already seeing how memory is becoming more expensive, Micron is warning that it does not point to a clear return to normality in 2026. That nuance matters, because it changes the horizon of anyone who is thinking about building or upgrading a PC in the short term. There are numbers that help to understand why this phenomenon does not remain a simple market swing. The firm once again reported record revenues of $13.64 billion in the last quarter, compared to $8.71 billion in the same period of the previous year, driven by the push for AI. That does not mean that there is excess product in all segments, because capacity and industrial priorities do not adjust to the pace of demand. Micron says it expects to increase its DRAM and NAND shipments by 20% next year, but acknowledges that boost isn’t enough to catch up. To understand why the domestic market is more exposed, it is worth looking at the photo of the factory. Micron is pushing its business toward HBMa memory designed for high-performance systems in data centers, and that has an opportunity cost. It is a technology that uses three times more silicon wafers than conventional DRAM, which means that, with the same capacity base, fewer units can be produced for the rest of the segments. It is not that consumption memory disappears, it is that it has less priority. Micron is pushing its business toward HBM. The first consequence is already being noticed by those of us who look at prices to build or expand a PC. Memory is what is becoming more expensive and the effect is seen, for example, in DDR5 kits. From there, the tension begins to filter through the rest of the chain, not only due to price, but also due to availability. The decision with Crucial also fits into this shift in priorities. Micron will stop selling consumer products under that brandwhich means one less player in this market, and greater pressure for those who are still in the race in the domestic sector. If Micron makes one thing clear with its roadmap, it is that standardization is not around the corner. The company is accelerating investment and capacity, but with a calendar that moves in yearsnot in weeks, and that forces us to look at 2026 with another face. For those who are thinking about buying or building a PC, the prudent reading is simple: it is advisable to assume that memory will continue to be a sensitive component, both in terms of price and availability, for a good period of time. Images | Micron | Samsung In Xataka | RAM is so expensive that smartphone manufacturers already have a plan: return to phones with 4 GB of RAM

Astronomical RAM prices are bad news for everyone, but especially for Apple

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RAM memory prices have skyrocketed between 100% and 400% in just six months. 32 GB kits that cost $95 in the summer now cost $400. There are stores in the United States that They have removed the prices from the shelves and communicate them at the checkout, as if it were lobster on Christmas Eve. Why is it important. RAM prices have skyrocketed between 100% and 400% in just a few months. Samsung and SK Hynix have committed 40% of all global production to Stargate, OpenAI’s infrastructure. The three manufacturers that control 93% of the market prioritize servers over consumption. TrendForce has predicted that Entry-level smartphones will return to 4 GB of RAM in 2026. Budget laptops will stay stuck at 8 GB. For the first time in decades, specifications are not improving but going backwards. The paradox. The scarcity is caused by AI, but that same scarcity is going to undermine our ability to use local AI. Data centers take up all the memory to train huge models, but users won’t be able to run those models on their computers because much-needed RAM has exploded, so we’ll have the same, or less. Main loser. Apple has the most to lose in this scenario. Meta, Google and Microsoft can use the cloud for their models as they have been doing until now, but Apple has been betting heavily on local AI for two years as a great differentiator: models that run on your device, privacy by design and processing without depending on servers. The entire narrative of Apple Intelligence It is built on having enough RAM and local computing power. The iPhones They have been increasing their RAM precisely to run Apple Intelligence smoothly, closing the RAM gap between base and Pro models. Macs with Apple Silicon They have normalized 16 GB, after many years stuck at 8 GB, as the base in all models. The impossible dilemma. Apple has financial muscle and preferential contracts that allow it to get memory when others cannot. But that doesn’t solve your fundamental problem: you have two options and neither are good. You can maintain specifications and raise prices, but there is a limit to what the market will tolerate. Or you can start cutting RAM, but that means compromising just the competitive advantage you’ve been selling for two years. Between the lines. Other manufacturers can adapt by lowering specifications without breaking their value proposition too much. Samsung can put 6 GB in a mid-range Galaxy and still function the same: its AI depends on the Google cloud. But Apple has committed to an architecture that requires powerful devices in the user’s hands. And those devices are now much more expensive to manufacture. Private Cloud Computing It is a help, but it does not change the local narrative. The unexpected turn. Apple Intelligence may end up being much more expensive than Apple had planned. Not because the technology is expensive, but because the raw materials to execute it have become a scarce commodity. Apple is probably the company best positioned to weather this crisis due to its purchasing power (as we already saw with the semiconductor crisis due to the pandemic), but it is also the one that has the most to lose strategically. Apple chose a different path than its competitors precisely when that path was about to become prohibitively expensive. Cloud AI scales with servers you can rent or expand. Local AI scales only if each user has powerful hardware, and that hardware just got wildly expensive. In summary. For the first time in years, Apple does not control the key variables of its strategy. You can pay more than anyone else for memory, but you can’t change the fact that only three companies manufacture it or that those companies prefer to sell to OpenAI and company rather than to mobile and laptop manufacturers for the consumer market. The era of cheap memory is over, and among its many consequences is also the economic viability of Apple’s great differentiating bet. In Xataka | The RAM crisis is so extreme that it has achieved what seemed unthinkable: Apple’s memories are “cheap” Featured image | Georgiy Lyamin

return to 4 GB RAM mobiles

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That ASUS Zenfone 2 was presented at the CES 2015 with one fact that stood out above all the others: it had 4 GB of RAM. That seemed exaggerated. “Who needed 4 GB on a cell phone?” we asked ourselves. It didn’t take too long until we saw that this figure became the norm, and it didn’t take much longer until we moved to 8, 12 or 16GB RAM. It seemed like we could only go further, but no. Everything indicates that in 2026 we will again see mobile phones with 4 GB of RAM in certain ranges. like him Pixel 3a of the image, a mobile six years ago. There it is nothing. what has happened. The perfect storm with AI and data centers has caused DRAM and NAND memories become a luxury. Prices have skyrocketed and the manufacturers of these components are already warning that this situation could continue. And in that situation it appears a prediction from TrendForce analysts: that mobile manufacturers could resurrect hardware configurations that seemed extinct, such as smartphones with 4 GB of RAM as standard in the entry range by 2026. less for the same. The trigger for this return to the past is the aforementioned increase in memory prices projected for the first months of 2026. This will cause significant cost pressure on large manufacturers, who are seeing how memory occupies an increasing percentage in their list of materials. And if they don’t want to raise the prices of their devices, they will do something that we don’t like at all: reduce technical specifications. Android phones, the most affected. This scenario fully affects the entire Android ecosystem, especially in the medium and low ranges. In them, the amount of RAM had traditionally been a key factor for the marketing of these devices, but to prevent prices from skyrocketing, manufacturers will foreseeably be forced to cut specifications. The question is how not having 6 or 8 GB of RAM on the mobile will affect the fluidity of the Android experience. The paradox of AI on mobile. The most ironic thing is that this price increase is caused by the rise of AI and data centers, but if we have mobile phones with less RAM, we will not be able to take full advantage of AI. The local models that our phones use precisely benefit from having a lot of RAM, so cutting this specification precisely cuts the capacity of those local AI models. microSD slot back. Curiously, this crisis may also bring back an old ally of mobile users on tight budgets: the microSD slot. Taking into account that NAND memories have also increased in price, it is reasonable to think that we will not see mobile phones with large capacities at acceptable prices either. That opens the door to boost again the option to expand that storage using microSD cards. And 8 GB laptops. For many years we had to put up with manufacturers offering laptops with 8 GB of RAM as standard. In recent times we have seen how the figure of 16 GB of RAM finally seemed to have settled, but according to TrendForce, although these models will continue to be offered, the ones that will be distributed the most will be the 8 GB ones again in the mid-range. If we want more of that, we will probably notice it clearly in the price. This is bad news for all users, but perhaps especially for the world of gaming, which has always gone one step further in terms of hardware requirements. The era of cheap and abundant memory is over. If the forecasts are already bad for the first quarter of 2026, they are even worse for the second quarter of next year. According to TrendForce, this will be when “more significant price fluctuations” will occur in the PC and laptop market. The moment also coincides with the celebration in June of Computex, the most important fair for manufacturers of desktop and laptop computers. In Xataka | 8 GB of RAM is not enough. Not even with Apple Silicon In Xataka | There was only one way to lower the price of RAM: Samsung and SK Hynix have flatly refused

In 1995 a program came out that promised to double your PC’s RAM. In the best of cases what I did was not spend more

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The 90s were wonderful in the world of software and hardware. Epic trolling like that of the 299 dollars of the first PlayStationthe legendary key of Windows 95 or the PlayStation emulator presented by Steve Jobs himself. In the middle of the decade a program came out that promised the impossible: double the amount of RAM on your PC. Its name was SoftRAM 95 and, although it makes us raise an eyebrow today, in its day it sold hundreds of thousands of copies for $80 each. And spoiler: it was of absolutely no use. SoftRAM 95, the miracle solution for your PC’s RAM The launch of a program like this is a product of its time, one in which users they could have been less ‘smart’ Now for more than logical reasons and in an industry in which everything was learned and developed as we went. There were times when the smartest were the ones who got results, but a company called Suncronys Softcorp learned its lesson the hard way. The year was 1995 and Windows 95 was beginning to revolutionize homes. Although the Microsoft system made control a PC was more accessible than ever (unfortunately for Steve Jobs), the hardware still had a brutal barrier to entry: the price. They were still expensive devices, very expensive, so saving on components saved a few dollars. RAM It was one of those components for which you paid gold per KB, but… what if there was a program that, for a few dollars, doubled the amount of memory on our PC? What if he did all this without having to touch any piece of our equipment? That is where the Californian Syncronys Softcorp saw a vein and – now we can say that in bad faith – launched its program: SoftRAM 95. It went on sale in August 1995 and it is estimated that they sold a whopping 600,000 copies until December of that same year. In those days, it was truly outrageous. And the logical question is how he achieved what he promised. The long answer is that it compressed the memory, so when the operating system needed to save data from RAM to the hard drive, SoftRAM 95 compressed it before writing it, reducing the amount of space needed on the disk and allowing the RAM to have more space available. The concept, roughly speaking, is correct, and the program interface told us that yes, congratulations, you had double the amount of RAM. The long answer is that it didn’t do what it promised. Although technically they were on the right track, this process at the time was tremendously ambitious for one reason: the speed of both the RAM and the primitive hard drives It was so absurdly slow that, effectively, the objective could not be met. They knew this from the top of Syncronys, but they didn’t care: the money was pouring in because each license cost about 30 dollars. Under the magnifying glass of the press… and Microsoft However, things quickly went wrong. A magazine of the time called PC Magazine submitted the software to a analysis How these analyzes should be done: testing whether the program really did what it promised. Using blocks of data to evaluate whether compression was effective, they found that processing times were exactly the same with compressible data and with random data that could not be compressed. They came to the conclusion that the only thing SoftRAM did was show an animated screen which gave the user the perception that they were working when, in reality, they were doing absolutely nothing. But beyond the press, those who got their hands on the software were Bryce Cogswell and Mark Russinovich, two Microsoft engineers who dissected the program at the code level. Basically, confirmed the well-founded suspicion of PC Magazine and pointed out that the program never actually worked. That is, the paging controller device – that compression of the RAM to transfer it to the hard drive – it closed just when loadingso it never did anything at all other than display false numbers while the operating system worked exactly as it should, whether the program was installed or not. When I said before that the management of Syncronys knew it, it was not because we saw history with the eyes of the present. When everything was revealed, they reported that RAM compression was not being carried out and, in addition, it was learned that they sold the software even though its developers had warned that the product was not ready. And it wasn’t aI’ll launch it and I’ll fix itlike many current games”, because in 1995 Internet updates were not the norm. Just when the company thought it was over, the US Federal Trade Commission arrived. Following its investigation, Syncronys finally acknowledged that it had misrepresented the performance of its product and banned it from selling any more copies of both SoftRAM and Windows 3.1 as SoftRAM 95. In total, both versions placed 700,000 copies on the market and Syncronys declared bankruptcy in July 98, owing 4.5 million dollars. The idea did not die with SoftRAM In the end, what SoftRAM did The best case scenario was not to eat up your PC’s resources.and it was one of those attempts to sell whatever in a still somewhat naive market. For PC Worldnext to AOL and RealPlayerSoftRAM is the worst technology product of all time. But of course, with the eyes of 2025, you may be wondering… what happens with solutions like Windows Vista ReadyBoost and the mobile memory expansion? It’s a different matter and, although both promise to improve performance by using “extra memory”, it is something very different from what SoftRAM did. ReadyBoost, for example, allowed you to use the memory of a pen drive as a cache to speed up access to frequent data. It acted as an extension of the system’s virtual memory and the theory is correct, but again we ran into the speed limitation of USBs … Read more

The AI ​​raises a huge change in our mobiles. One that will have (at least) 32 GB of RAM

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A year ago our mobiles have AI functions. Google offers them with Gemini and Apple (more or less) with Apple Intelligencebut for now these functions are limited and are reduced to somewhat modest tasks. However, we are seeing how our PCs have access to more striking models. The recent comparison we made of Deepseek R1-14b with models as it calls 3.1-8b or phi 4-14b showed that these developments could really run well in a Mac Mini M4 with 16 GB of RAM. However, what happens for example in the Pixel is that Google offers its Gemini Nano modelwhich has two versions: one 1.8b and another 3.25b. They are decent models, but they are still clearly below the benefits of models such as Deepseek-R1-14B and others such as those mentioned. The problem is that these models, especially when we begin to raise the size and number of parameters (14b, for example), They need memory. And enough. A LLM of seven billion parameters (7b) usually need about 8 GB of memory, although here has some more margin of maneuver (for example, 12 GB) is recommended. The manufacturers know it, and in fact even Apple has made a small effort there. In the iPhone 16 The jump from 6 to 8 GB has been made largely because of this, and Google Pixel 9 They offer up to 16 GB of RAM precisely for the same reason: that gives maneuver margin so that the functions of the executed in local can function fluidly. But that jump may soon go more. It does not seem unreasonable to think that sooner rather than later let’s see mobiles with at least 32 GB of RAM precisely to be able to execute larger AI models and thus offer users more powerful options in this regard. Of course, not only does the amount of memory matter. Our mobile phones do not have a dedicated GPU that can accelerate these tasks, but much is being progressed in the development of NPUs increasingly powerful. The combination of both elements seems to make possible an important change in offering local models of increasingly versatile. These hardware improvements in our mobiles also join possible techniques of optimization and “compression” of AI models. The quantization, a kind of “rounding”, allows large language models (LLM) to see their size reduced, yes, from the loss of a certain level of precision. The quantization It is an already very popular process when being able to use large models in more modest machines, and in addition to reducing hardware requirements it also allows to gain efficiency. All this suggests a not too distant future in which we will have much more powerful models in our pocket. Models that we can run at home, which we can even use without internet connection and that will also maintain the entire conversation in private. There are many interesting advantages. Too many Not to think that we may soon see how mobile manufacturers presume 32 GB mobile. Or who knows if even more. In Xataka | The new Gemini demonstrates a Google ambition: that we talk without stopping with our mobile

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