The AI boom has a significant impact on the mainstream market, forcing vendors to cut down on the memory capacity for their devices.
The impact of RAMpocalypse can already be seen on the market once you check the prices for DDR5/DDR5 RAM, SSDs, GPUs, and mobile devices. While some vendors have started price adjustments for their products, there are others who have started to downgrade their products as the existing configurations have become almost unaffordable.
Last year, popular Chinese mini PC maker AOOSTAR launched its most powerful mini PC called NEX395. This is a 2 Kg mini PC that is powered by the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395, featuring 16 powerful Zen 5 cores and Radeon 8060S iGPU to carry out intensive computing tasks as well as AI workloads locally. The system was equipped with 128 GB LPDDR5X memory clocked at 8533 MT/s, making it one of the fastest machines on the planet for the mainstream market.
For storage, the system brought 2 TB of fast SSD storage, which was sufficient for the masses, but also gave users one more M.2 slot to expand the storage. It has now been reported that the company has downgraded this configuration to 64 GB RAM and 1 TB SSD storage. While the company didn't announce any reason for such a downgrade, it's likely related to the current DRAM and SSD shortages that haven't spared any device.
The NEX395 is the latest victim of such a downgrade; it was one of the fastest devices available with 128 GB of unified memory, making it an ideal workstation mini PC for enthusiasts. As per the report, the 64 GB + 1 TB configuration has been launched at 12,999 Yuan, which translates to around US$1926 . The original 128 GB + 2 TB configuration was launched at 19,999 Yuan, or US$2963 , but this was the price for last year.
With recent hikes in memory and storage prices, it wouldn't surprise us if the same configuration reached nearly $4,000. Now with half the memory and storage capacity, the price has also halved, but IT Home reports that the machine is mostly available at 13,599 Yuan (US$ 2,015) at major retailers in China.
News Source: IT Home
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