This is not a drill – CXMT is not selling their memory products cheaper to “pop the AI bubble”.
A recent post by X user ‘harukaze5719’ revealed a Samsung / SK Hynix-powered 64GB DDR5-5600 RDIMM goes for 18,595 CNY (~US$2,745) on e-commerce platform JingDong, while the CXMT variant goes for 18,999 CNY (~US$2,805). Even if that’s “only” a 60-dollar gap, when you’re filling up hundreds and thousands of servers, this can easily escalate into a five- to six-figure premium.
This also destroyed the expectations of Chinese alternatives being the “decently reliable but definitely budget” option due to the extreme imbalance between supply and demand, where the former is just so constrained that CXMT essentially has the final say, and if they can consistently produce X number of sticks, and people will pay a hefty sum for them, then why undersell yourself?
But then, there are other factors to consider. You have loads of parties coming in to share the big cake – Module vendors, distributors, and retailers to start – and you have validation costs too, because all major brands need extensive testing and qualification to make sure they are up to standards for all their offerings.
Despite consumer-tier motherboards supporting RAM sticks using CXMT modules, one’s budget for a brand new PC will not come down any time soon, and emphasizing on the “soon”, it could be as long as a few years until 2028 to 2030.
