According to Duann, PC makers have to buy from SSD module makers because NAND vendors reduced allocation to the client/consumer PC market and redirected most NAND supply to data center products.
As a result, PC OEMs like Acer, Asus, Dell, and HP cannot get enough NAND or SSD supply directly from NAND manufacturers and have to turn to module makers for solid-state drives. The latter traditionally served end-users and had plenty of aftermarket products with enhanced performance and cooling, but now they increasingly serve PC makers instead.
From where? Data center equipment isn’t really suitable for the home. A used SXM module on an adapter might give you reasonably affordable compute but is completely useless for graphics. Data center memory is often HBM, which you can’t just transplant into your home PC. Getting an EDSFF SSD into your PC might work with an adapter but it’s also going to take up a lot of space.
Plus, there have been cases in the past of companies buying up and destroying the inventory of closing data centers specifically so it doesn’t end up on the market to compete with current products. That might very well repeat.
When the bubble bursts I expect to see a semi-decent supply of high-end hardware for specific use cases. If you have a space for a rack with noisy fans and a 3000 W power draw you’ll be able to build a kick-ass AI inference rig for like 2000 bucks. Or a really fast file server. But I don’t think there’s going to be much in it for people who just want 60 FPS in current games and an SSD those games fit onto. That’ll take another couple years.
I think it’ll be 2030 at the earliest until we see actually interesting consumer hardware from the usual companies. Maybe China will swoop in and deliver something worthwhile in the meantime but I’m not holding my breath.
Alibaba. You can potentially buy DDR5 RDIMM at a couple hundred bucks a stick. You typically have to buy them with a minimum order of 10 pieces, and many of the sellers seem shady. I recommend going with a seller that has been around for at least a couple years, a return guarantee, and comparing the screenshot of a listing against the specs. If the RAM depicted isn’t a dupe of another seller, not blurred, and has the right things on it, then it is probably a legit source.
Also, watch out for shipping fees, and some sellers might cancel orders if they don’t reel in a big enough order to justify their bottom line.
Ebay is also an option, with similar caveats.
Here is a POTENTIAL source for RDIMMs, with a minimum order of 5 pieces for $141, +$20 shipping. The pics match up with the listing, though no unique photography is in use. If my Ebay order fails, I might give this a shot.
64GB DDR5-5600 PC5-5600B ECC Registered RDIMM 2Rx4 Smart Memory Module for ProLiant Servers
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I bought 32gb of DDR5 RDIMM for about $600 from Ebay. Mind, it hasn’t shipped, so we will see in a week whether the seller is good. Also bought a used Threadripper Pro 7000 for $1500. Again, whether it is valid is a question that will be answered within a month for me.
Assuming things go smoothly for me, my goal for the next year or so is to build up a warchest for the AI bubble popping. My TRX50 AI TOP can accept up to 8 RAM sticks, provided it has a Threadripper Pro. With any luck, I would be able to fill it out for $2,000 or thereabouts when the pop happens.
I don’t think those sellers are going to have much lower prices when the bubble pops. DDR RAM prices are high because not much of it is being produced. What is being produced is HBM, which isn’t compatible with DDR and doesn’t even come on DIMMs. Even if DDR production picks up quickly after the bubble pops, it’s still going to take a while until consumer products appear again.
I could certainly see a use for HBM in consumer products again (my GPU has 8 GB HBM).
It would be nice but someone would have to rip them out of existing products and put them into new ones. Theoretically possible as a (probably fairly janky) one-off product but unlikely. Still, similar products have been made.
It’s too bad we likely won’t see used DC numeric accelerators on the market even after the AI bubble pops (cracks are showing already). Some of them are not just for small integers, so useful for scientific accelerators.
Interesting thing about FP8 https://www.hpcwire.com/2026/06/15/hpc-precision-wars-satoshi-matsuoka-plants-the-ozaki-flag/