Ironically, one consequence of the ongoing memory shortage is that HBM is becoming more economically attractive relative to conventional system memory. DRAM manufacturers have redirected significant production capacity toward higher-margin HBM for AI accelerators, reducing the supply of commodity DDR5 and LPDDR5 while demand for both remains elevated. As a result, the premium for HBM-backed computing has narrowed, not because HBM has become inexpensive, but because traditional system memory has become dramatically more expensive. Hyperscalers were going to buy the GPUs anyway, so maximizing their utilization to reduce DDR5 requirements suddenly becomes an attractive proposition.
That shift helps explain Lenovo's suggestion that GPU-accelerated computing may now make more financial sense for some workloads. If an application can keep much of its working set in GPU-attached HBM, it may require significantly less DDR5 installed in the host system. With system DRAM now representing a much larger share of overall server cost than it did just a year ago, reducing memory capacity requirements can materially lower the price of deploying large-scale infrastructure.
Obviously, we don't know whether Lenovo's long-term outlook will prove accurate, but memory pricing has historically been cyclical, with periods of oversupply often followed by sharp corrections. With hyperscalers continuing to pour billions into AI infrastructure and memory vendors increasingly prioritizing high-margin enterprise products, the company believes the unusually inexpensive DRAM and NAND prices of 2024 and early 2025 may prove to have been an anomaly.
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Zak is a freelance contributor to Tom's Hardware with decades of PC benchmarking experience who has also written for HotHardware and The Tech Report. A modern-day Renaissance man, he may not be an expert on anything, but he knows just a little about nearly everything. ","collapsible":{"enabled":true,"maxHeight":250,"readMoreText":"Read more","readLessText":"Read less"}}), "https://slice.vanilla.futurecdn.net/13-4-24/js/authorBio.js"); } else { console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); } Zak Killian Contributor Zak is a freelance contributor to Tom's Hardware with decades of PC benchmarking experience who has also written for HotHardware and The Tech Report. A modern-day Renaissance man, he may not be an expert on anything, but he knows just a little about nearly everything.
usertests Now I have to decide if Lenovo and concurring analysts are drunk on the Kool-Aid and The Popping is imminent, to determine if I should wait to buy 2×32 GB DDR4 SODIMM (about $200-250). Reply
dva852 usertests said: Now I have to decide if Lenovo and concurring analysts are drunk on the Kool-Aid and The Popping is imminent, to determine if I should wait to buy 2×32 GB DDR4 SODIMM (about $200-250). Or you can determine if you are drunk on the Kool-Aid being served in here about AI bubble popping. Sites like here have heavily biased reporting on AI, catering to the wants of their readers who generally are AI hostile, and relish any negative news about it. It's basically AI doomerism in action. It's good for entertainment–things you enjoy reading if only out of schadenfruede–but I wouldn't rely on it for any actual buying decision. Reply
usertests dva852 said: Or you can determine if you are drunk on the Kool-Aid being served in here about AI bubble popping. Sites like here have heavily biased reporting on AI, catering to the wants of their readers who generally are AI hostile, and relish any negative news about it. It's basically AI doomerism in action. It's good for entertainment–things you enjoy reading if only out of schadenfruede–but I wouldn't rely on it for any actual buying decision. I'll be on the lookout for your mea culpa if you turn out to be the drunkard. Reply
DougMcC dva852 said: Or you can determine if you are drunk on the Kool-Aid being served in here about AI bubble popping. Sites like here have heavily biased reporting on AI, catering to the wants of their readers who generally are AI hostile, and relish any negative news about it. It's basically AI doomerism in action. It's good for entertainment–things you enjoy reading if only out of schadenfruede–but I wouldn't rely on it for any actual buying decision. A different but similar perspective: The AI bubble might pop. There is some circular finance going on, and that is a real problem for certain companies at the center of the 'bubble'. And premium inference sellers (anthropic, openai) with their 'frontier' models might find that their economics get wildly undercut by open models, and go out of business. But the demand for inference is real. I personally can use about a trillion tokens profitably at current prices, about a quadrillion if the price drops 10x, and in the quintillion to sextillion range if they drop 100x. And that's just in my day job, so multiply that by 1000x and you'll get the rough demand from just one midsize company (<10k employees). That demand is why the race is on to build datacenters, and that is where most of the perceived 'bubble' is actually happening. Whether openai or anthropic will survive I can't tell you, but no one who is building a datacenter right now is going to be unable to sell that capacity. Reply
dva852 usertests said: I'll be on the lookout for your mea culpa if you turn out to be the drunkard. Instead of dwelling on who's right or wrong, if you want the true picture of the state of AI and its utility, go to places where people are actually using it, instead of complaining about it. You can't judge something that you know little about. I doubt most here have actually tried running a local AI model. There are plenty of reddit sites, r/localllama, r/ai_agents, r/PromptEngineering, etc. Plenty of enthusiast sites and industry reports. Best source is just to ask a chatbot. Chatbots are the modern day LMGTFY. DougMcC said: The AI bubble might pop…But the demand for inference is real. Yes, exactly. The dot-com bubble happened, but the Internet is still here. It's now ubiquitous enough that it's hard to imagine life without it. There'll be plenty of demand for data centers, regardless of who will go bust. SpaceX stock may be idling, but it is most certainly a company too big to fail. OpenAI may not get its trillion dollar payday, but there is zero chance it will disappear. It's a comforting delusion that "if only the AI bubble pops, then prices will automagically go back to normal." Consumers may or may not be the driver for AI use, but businesses and industries are all flocking to it. They have the big bucks. Reply
usertests dva852 said: Instead of dwelling on who's right or wrong, if you want the true picture of the state of AI and its utility, go to places where people are actually using it, instead of complaining about it. I barely made any complaint at all. I'm just wondering if Lenovo's assessment of the memory market is going to turn out to be accurate or not. Maybe Iran is just as important to the purchasing decision. The condescending posts are going to get you nowhere fast. Reply
dva852 usertests said: I barely made any complaint at all. I wasn't addressing you personally, but the forum in general. usertests said: The condescending posts are going to get you nowhere fast. That's your bruised ego talking, ascribing paternalism when there was none. Nothing about what I said is untrue. But yes, it's true enough that I'm speaking to the wall here. I recognize where I am. Reply
usertests dva852 said: I wasn't addressing you personally, but the forum in general. I fed your reply into a chatbot and it determined this to be "untrue". dva852 said: But yes, it's true enough that I'm speaking to the wall here. I recognize where I am. The walls are closing in. Reply
pclaughton I would've thought the same thing about working on-site vs remote after COVID, so forgive me if this seems a little reactionary. Reply
rrnworks Can someone post The 5 Step RAMaggeddon Survival Guide from Lenovo? Reply
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ram/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ram/lenovo-says-the-ramageddon-is-the-new-normal-outlines-survival-guide-at-isc-2026-an-exec-said-it-will-never-be-like-it-was-last-year#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com/subscription
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Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.