Gadgetory

if you have either built a new PC or bought one in the last few years then you may be aware of ddr4 Ram prices being quite literally all over the place we're at the start of 2017 we started to see price increases that reached a peak in January 2018 to that of the likes of ridiculously overpriced and since then that we have seen prices come down to that of historical lows where last week I've made a video letting you guys know that if you wanted to get on Zen - and you're going to buy a new CPU a motherboard that I thought it was the best time to get your RAM SSD and power supplies because after that launch demand would have increased for a whole new system build and with that you'd probably see price increases but since then something else has happened in something even worse and that is there's an event between Japan and South Korea that could see the material cost for South Korea Ram manufacturers increase and that in turn would mean that the end consumer will unfortunately be paying more for ddr4 memory but let's take a look in today's video at what exactly is going on and more importantly what you can do about this situation if you're looking to build a new PC or you need to buy ddr4 memory welcome back to tech yes City this is brian coming to you guys today with unfortunately one of those videos that isn't going to be that positive in its outlook and the thing is with ddr4 and then even ddr3 RAM pricing and even back in the day ddr2 RAM pricing these companies that manufacture this stuff have been found guilty of colluding to artificially increase prices and in 2005 Samsung and SK Hynix were fined massive sums of money because they were found guilty of doing just that and fast forward to 2018 the Chinese government has stated that they have massive amounts of evidence to support the claim that this happened again in recent times especially the 2017 to the start of 2018 era though one unfolded in the last week is a little bit different to these previous two events and also notified of this because I have a supplier who told me that my ddr3 ram prices that I bought off them were really good and that I was lucky and I got this message a couple of days ago out of the blue and I was scratching my head because I said to him okay what's going on they said Ram prices have increased massively and there's an article on WCC F Tech where they stated that a 16 gigabyte stick of ddr4 memory in South Korea has gone from $55 to $85 marking a 55% increase that is already feeling the effects to the ink and shuma but what exactly happened here was that the both upper and lower courts in South Korea ruled in favor for compensation for wartime victims of Japan back in the past and so this means that they were seeking compensation from Japanese companies and Japan responded by saying in 1965 they already settled all these previous debts by making a deal where they gave South Korea 300 million dollars in grants and also 200 million dollars in loans over a preceding 10-year period so in their eyes they've already settled all the debts and they don't wish to hear anything else about this but South Korea has it that they feel that their victims should be further compensated so just like a typical disagreement that gets heated up Japan has decided to enforce actions on South Korea where they're essentially taking them off the whitelist for their exports and that is some of these components that they export to South Korea are used in the manufacturing of ddr4 memory most notably fluoride polymide and also hydrogen fluoride which count for Japan making roughly 90 and 70% of the global distribution of exports for these materials and now they are used in the manufacturing of ddr3 and ddr4 memory and so when these prices increased due to tariffs being implemented from Japan to South Korea that means that South Korea will then pass on those cost increases to guys like me and Australia people in the US and the UK who want to buy some ddr3 or ddr4 memory though some may think that Japan is overreacting to South Korea's decision but when I spoke to some of my local friends in Japan the news outlets are reporting that it's not only this disagreement apparently of recent times South Korea has had some anti sentiment towards Japan and it seems like Japan has had enough of it and they're going to respond in the form of economic penalties though citing the article from WCC F Tech they state that some of these ram manufacturers in south korea should still have stock on hand for one to two months of production and so price increases shouldn't flow through immediately but my thinking is this is kind of similar to gas prices or interest rate petrol prices where if you guys have seen the price of oil hike suddenly at the bowser will end up paying the same increase in the percentage that the oil prices increased even though that gasoline in that stand is not the gasoline that was bought on the free market at those higher prices and it seems to be the other way around in favor of the gasoline companies - when the prices of oil goes down they don't flow through immediately to the bowser so in other words companies like the ram manufacturers and also the petrol companies like to make money when they can and they use these things as an opportunity to get a little bit more profit in the back pocket and to make things worse in this regard currently South Korea account for over 70 percent of the global distribution of DRAM chips and so what this means is that yes if this indeed increases the prices of the manufacturing process in South Korea then that will be passed on to all us folks in the world though what can you do about it if you want to build a new system all you need to upgrade more memory in your system whether it be from 16 gigabytes to 32 gigabytes or you want to build that new rig with 16 gigabytes of dual channel memory well my advice to you guys would be to simply go out and try and find a deal locally on some ddr3 or ddr4 memory if you can because most likely people who are selling locally especially if they're used modules won't be aware of this news just yet furthermore you can check out Amazon sellers or whether you're locally buying off eBay or whatever marketplace you usually buy off you can check the prices there quickly and if they haven't adjusted yet then I would recommend buying some of this RAM up right now before the retailers and the people are aware of these price increases and then they will adjust accordingly again speaking of that gasoline effect but also when it comes to getting deals a lot of you guys ask me how I always constantly get good prices on my stuff that's because I'm always buying up in bulk stuff that is cheap at that current time for instance if power supplies are really cheap at a given time I'll buy more than I need because I've know in the future that I will need more than one power supply same goes for ddr3 memory ddr4 memory SSDs hard drives and even cases if you know something is a good price then and there then definitely stock up at least if you're going to be building a new system in the near future and so the easy way to check if a price is good is just check its historical pricing and if you can see like the ddr4 Ram prices at least as of a week ago they were pretty much historical lows hence why I made that Zen Tube video for you guys encouraging you to go out and get your gear then and there except the CPU and motherboard because I knew there'd be price increases from demand but what I didn't know is that there would be price increases coming from a dispute between Japan and South Korea anyway guys with that aside I hope you enjoyed today's video if you did then be sure to hit that like button for us also let us know in the comments section below what you think of this whole situation do you think these DRAM price increases are going to stay in effect for a while do you think they're going to be solved quickly love reading your thoughts and opinions as always me personally I don't know I'm not a fortune tella but i think due to the way this is it's a country versus a country these things take a long time to solve so unfortunately we could see some price increases that are prolonged in the D Ram market but without a side if you guys are enjoying the content enough and you want to see at the moment of drops sub button ring the bell it's down there and I'll catch you in another tech video very soon peace out for now bye