China economic regulator looking at memory chip price fixing

[HEXUS]

Memory chip price rises over last 18 months spurred by collusion thinks the NDRC.

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[GinoLatino]

About time... and let's hope that this brings some nice results.

[rebrandeon]

what about EU commision and others institutions?

[Corky34]

Can't wait until 2024 when i maybe able to claim a $10 or so payout.

[zsde]

Those fines are change to what have become monopolies controlled by the same shareholders. The enrichment of a few by the masses. They pay the fine, and where does that money go? Do the consumers get a refund? NEVER. That money goes straight back to the shareholders that control the majority of industry,

[The Hand]

I was thinking along these lines a while back when watching 16GB of DDR4-2666mhz in April go from £134..to £186 now (scan prices). Should of grabbed some back then plus a Rx580 8Gb before that went up too.

It'll be interesting to see if the prices start to fall again with this news from the NDRC now sinking in..

[Fury559]

Just vote with the wallet and not buy DDR4, stick with the DDR3 platforms.

[LordRetroGamer]

For increasing memory prices, higher wafer supplier prices are to blame also. Quite unfortunate.

[Fury559]

I was thinking along these lines a while back when watching 16GB of DDR4-2666mhz in April go from £134..to £186 now (scan prices). Should of grabbed some back then plus a Rx580 8Gb before that went up too.

It'll be interesting to see if the prices start to fall again with this news from the NDRC now sinking in..

Prices have got to go down sooner or later, all they are doing is stopping many from either upgrading or getting into the desktop market.

[spacein_vader]

Prices have got to go down sooner or later, all they are doing is stopping many from either upgrading or getting into the desktop market.

I imagine someone said similar about oil prices in the 70s.

[watercooled]

At least it's something - the memory suppliers seem to be abusing their position and colluding to limit supply, pushing prices to ridiculous levels. I don't remember the last time where you'd pay about as much for a reasonable amount of RAM as you would the CPU! I understand they have a need to make a profit and have been recovering from excess supply a while ago, but it's silly now.

[Corky34]

Do any of the memory supplies supply enough detail in their financial reports to isolate profits earned from DRAM?

[watercooled]

I recall reading a few articles about record profits from memory business, this sort of thing: https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-sk...-idUKKBN1CU3CR

http://www.pcgamer.com/dram-prices-c...the-last-year/

[Corky34]

Profits like that are going to make it difficult for them to argue that they're not benefiting from higher prices.

[watercooled]

I'm just glad I managed to get two lots of 2x8GB DDR4 before all of this nonsense - 16GB should hopefully be plenty for a PC for a while yet. Prices are currently about 3x what I paid!