DDR3 Ram prices in 2021

[DanGreenberg]

Looking to buy a refurbished server from a few years ago. I look at the specs and it has 16GB ram which I would like to upgrade. Its uses DDR3 slots. I check online to see the price of a 64Gb DDR3 kit. £485 or 670USD. Insane. For an outdated ram spec. Anyone got any answers to why its so expensive?

 

Thank you in advance for this response.

[mariushm]

A refurbished server would probably be able to use ECC DDR3  or even Registered ECC DDR3 

Some servers may only be able to run with DDR3L  which runs at 1.35v

It may work with regular DDR3, but ECC DDR3 is better and often cheaper.

 

The prices are so high because you're probably looking at 4 x 16 GB kits or 2 x 32 GB sticks.

These were always expensive, as they require using a lot of chips on the memory sticks, and weren't produced in such big quantities in the first place 

Major manufacturers focus mostly on DDR4 (and variants) and GDDR5/GDDR6 so new high capacity ddr3 chips aren't produced in big quantities and they're not cheap.

A lot of old factories that did DDR3 at higher manufacturing nodes (like 20nm ) were repurposed to make Flash memory chips used in SSDs 

 

Figure out how many memory slots the server has. It may be possible to use 8 x 8 GB sticks to get to your desired capacity.

Figure out if it accepts ECC DDR3 or Registered DDR3 and check eBay for 8 GB or 16 GB sticks of that type, you can find them quite cheap, especially the Registered sticks (because they can't be used in desktop computers - ECC DDR3 sticks are accepted by some motherboards, mostly AMD, they just ignore the ECC bit)

 

[XnonXte]

Maybe try to find some on the used market, They're actually have been come pretty cheap, Probably the reason why the Ram gotten expensive probably because it's new and from a pretty and reputable retailer or something, From what I know DDR3 has been gotten really cheap in used market, But not for the "New" Ram you find them online, Actually Most of them are not actually that fresh from the factory, DDR3 Demand are actually lower and lower of over these year because of the Popularity in DDR4 making it a bit aged, And soon the DDR4 will also be the Next DDR3 when DDR5 become a consumer thing.

[mr cheese]

I have an old second-hand Dell Precision T3600. I managed to get 32GB of 1333MHz DDR3 ECC RAM off of Craigslist for only $40, at $20 per 16GB stick, and I still regret not buying all 4 sticks. Don't buy used! Most servers are needing whole system upgrades and old DDR3 parts go for dirt cheap used.

[mariushm]

Also, check out webhosting forum websites for hardware sales. Sometimes you get very good deals. 

 

For example, here's a listing posted on the 2nd of this month : https://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1850925

The cheapest $320 servers on that list come with 4 x 480 GB Intel/Samsung SSDs and 96 GB DDR3 (12 x 8 GB DDR3) 

 

But, it's only US shipping (for $50) and assume you're in UK as you list prices in pounds. Still, may be worth contacting that person, even if you pay 100$ shipping it may still be worth it for the SSDs and the memory. 

 

 

[Kilrah]

-> Moved to CPUs, Motherboards, and Memory 

 

What CPU? How many slots?

 

Having 64GB of DDR3 would have been uncommon, in the consumer space the standard was 2 or 4GB sticks, 8 and 16 would have been rare hence the high price. 

 

But yes you need to check the actual type of RAM that is needed for your machine, used ECC DDR3 should be pretty cheap nowadays since there aren't really any uses for it.