Sky Rocketing Computer Hardware Prices, Thanks AI

[myrdale]

A couple years ago, crypto miners managed to put a strain on the GPU market. Over the last year's I've been hearing about RAM shortages. Only this past week did I realize the hard drive market had exploded thanks to AI data centers.

In 2024 I paid $169 each for (4) Seagate IronWolf 8TB drives. That same drive is now listed at $370.

It's my understanding that as soon as a data center is installed, it is basically obsolete. While I love my videos of cats morphing into Jesus Christ singing Dixieland Delight with the voice of Betty White in a Cuban accent, I question the long term viability of AI in general. There must be a market for it, or people wouldn't invest, but I just don't understand it.

[bjl584]

A couple years ago, crypto miners managed to put a strain on the GPU market. Over the last year's I've been hearing about RAM shortages. Only this past week did I realize the hard drive market had exploded thanks to AI data centers.

In 2024 I paid $169 each for (4) Seagate IronWolf 8TB drives. That same drive is now listed at $370.

It's my understanding that as soon as a data center is installed, it is basically obsolete. While I love my videos of cats morphing into Jesus Christ singing Dixieland Delight with the voice of Betty White in a Cuban accent, I question the long term viability of AI in general. There must be a market for it, or people wouldn't invest, but I just don't understand it.

I heard an analyst this morning talking about demand for AI and data centers.
He basically said that companies are making a huge gamble right now and are building under a "if you build it, they will come" philosophy.

[ua_guy]

There are some legitimately great uses of AI, but the current landscape is like a gold rush. Business leadership is in FOMO/fear of missing out -mode and companies are going to great expense to implement AI and get value, but those big value wins are rare like gold. AI isn't replacing human labor at the rate anticipated partly because AI still needs so much supervision AND it's just not possible to replace physical labor with digital labor in so many cases.

Storage production is already sold for 2026 and beyond. Not that one can't find a hard disk, just be prepared to pay a premium when you do, as outlined in the OP's situation. It's been this way for a while, same with RAM and GPU's.

One of the more unfortunate downstream effects is an increase in energy prices. Power demand for these AI data centers is causing massive spend in the electrical generation space to bolster infrastructure and the costs are distributed to all subscribers... notice your home electric bill going up by 30% despite flat usage? That's what happened here, there's all kinds of write-ups about it and the power company basically has said the same.