New blog post: "The RAM Nightmare: How I Lost My Sanity (and Almost My Deadline)": https://www.davidrevoy.com/article1117/the-ram-nightmare-how-i-lost-my-sanity-and-almost-my-deadline
Discussion
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@davidrevoy It seems to me that operating systems could and should detect bad memory, but sadly a lot of software is built without fully taking into account the fact that hardware fails.
Relevant fact: Linus Torvalds is an advocate of error-correcting memory (https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/01/linus-torvalds-blames-intel-for-lack-of-ecc-ram-in-consumer-pcs/) and uses it on his own machine (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfv0V1SxbNA).
@davidrevoy It occurs to me that if you bought your RAM in 2020 it's unlikely to be affected by demand for AI kit spiking the price of DDR5—it'll be an older type of module. So should still be available second-hand for not too much more money.
@cstross @davidrevoy It's DDR4, where the prices have also gone up unfortunately.
I saw a DDR4 kit I bought for $60 spike to $250. Not sure if it was increased demand because DDR5 got harder to find or some seller trying to take advantage of the confusion though
As far as I know, DDR4 RAM has also spiked as people try to upgrade older motherboards rather than buy new ones. People have been buying up old hardware, stripping the RAM out of it, putting it together into a smaller number of mobos and selling those in the used market, leaving a lot of older DDR4 mobos as waste.
I don't have a link right now, but have read a bit about these things via mastodon links in the last few weeks.
@cstross 🤩 Oh nice! I'll check it. I still haven't done a single web search on the topic, convinced it would be too expensive anyway for a quick replacement 'on the fly'.