After Nearly 30 Years, Crucial Will Stop Selling RAM To Consumers
- Reference: 0180277521
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/12/03/2118251/after-nearly-30-years-crucial-will-stop-selling-ram-to-consumers
- Source link:
> Micron said it will continue shipping Crucial consumer products through the end of its fiscal second quarter in February 2026 and will honor warranties on existing products. The company will continue selling Micron-branded enterprise products to commercial customers and plans to redeploy affected employees to other positions within the company.
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> Crucial launched in 1996 during the Pentium era as Micron's consumer brand for RAM and storage upgrades. Over the years, the brand expanded to encompass other memory-related products such as SSDs, flash memory cards, and portable storage drives. Micron Technology has been manufacturing RAM since 1981.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/after-nearly-30-years-crucial-will-stop-selling-ram-to-consumers/
[2] https://investors.micron.com/news-releases/news-release-details/micron-announces-exit-crucial-consumer-business
Paperclips (Score:2)
I know the paperclip apocolypse was only a thought excercise, but with this loss of consumer RAM, and the shortage of other components like video chips, the growth in power and water consumption (and the associated emissions), and the way the tech is being force-rammed into everything, one does start to wonder if Nick Bostrom was actually a little too prophetic.
Re: Paperclips (Score:2)
Until the AI bubble bursts.
It's a Bold Strategy (Score:3)
So they're abandoning their long-term customer base to support a new (and likely transient) player in the market. "It's a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see it if pays off for 'em".
Re: (Score:3)
What choice do they realistically have? Say no to the windfall of cash?
TSMC goes through similar struggles when the likes of Apple or NVidia call up and buy 100% capacity of a node for the next 2 years.
TSMC doesn't say no. Everyone else can get fucked (i.e., pick a larger node than they would have liked)
I don't disagree with you at all that they don't want to lose that consumer business... I just don't see how they have a realistic choice.
All they can do is switch back to producing consumer parts once
Re: (Score:2)
You Can Just Say No.
The only people who believe they have no choice are the ones who chase money at any cost. This is why such people should never be in positions of power.
I'm just glad we upgraded all our PCs over the last few years before the "AI" scam wrecked the computer business.
Re: (Score:2)
This is why such people should never be in positions of power.
What you're trying to do here is deal with the world the way you think it should be, not the way it actually is. So saying, "You can just do this" if the world was the way you think is should isn't a particularly well supported assertion.
Re: (Score:2)
This is bizarre, not to mention terribly Boomerish.
They could say no. No-one is stopping them.
They won't because they care more about money than their long-term customers.
This is why such people shouldn't be in positions of power. And won't be in the society that arises from the collapse of this one because we'll be damn sure to drum into the survivors that the merchant caste can never, ever be put in control again.
Re: (Score:2)
Isn't this one of those stupid situations where the shareholders could sue if the company leadership did the 'less optimal' strategy of retaining low volume consumer customers?
Re: (Score:2)
Yes. And some of those shareholders are typically quite fucking large equity firms.
It's more than "we're suing because we think this is a horrific choice for the company".
The real impetus is going to be, "we're suing because our stock lost 25% of its value when the market found out how many dollars we gave to our competitors."
Re: (Score:3)
Public corporations have a fiduciary duty to do what provides the best shareholder value. They can't 'just say no' because they legally have to try and do whatever makes the most profit for the business. There would need to be some very strong figures suggesting that the potential long term consumer sales would outperform the immediate data center demand. I'm sure the accountants have already done the over/under on that.
Re: (Score:2)
Say no, and get sued by your shareholders?
Sounds like a dumb choice.
Re: (Score:2)
> You Can Just Say No.
Their question was "What choice do they realistically have?" The key word is realistically. Yes, there is a choice. There just isn't a viable reason to say no.
Re: (Score:2)
You have a surprisingly low UID for obviously having no investments.
The shareholder revolt would be un-fucking-imaginable.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Headline this time next year - "After Nearly 1 Year, Crucial Will Again Sell RAM To Consumers"
Pity (Score:2)
Their Ballistix line was the best value gaming RAM in the DDR4 era. My older rig had 4x8GB DDR4-3600 CL16 and never missed a beat in 6 years.
Our Paradise, Lost. (Score:1)
Remember the days when you could have a gaming rig with a killer Intel CPU, the best Crucial RAM on the market, a great Canopus GPU, Windows 2000 was stable and secure, and you still had money for pizza and beer? Now Intel sucks, Crucial won't sell to gamers, a great GPU is week's wages, and Windows 11 is almost as bad as Windows 95. We have lost so much!
On the up side, nobody is commenting about the Penis Bird anymore.
Re: (Score:1)
I would argue Windows 11 is worse than windows 95. Windows 95 was at least trying to be the best it could be. Windows 11 is a tool for Microsoft to get data about you and sell stuff to you.
"Micron has made the difficult decision" (Score:2)
Translation: "We are chasing the highest revenue markets today to goose our next few quarterly numbers in order to maximize the C-level bonuses".
be patient (Score:3)
Our current AI storm will pass at some point, and at that point you'll be able to buy datacenters full of RAM and GPUs on the cheap.
Wow. (Score:2)
I went and compared prices for some RAM I bought 1 year ago. Prices are up 3-4X!
Re: (Score:2)
One of my ram sticks went bad in my computer after running for 7 years. Because of the way I bought them (1 kit of 4x8MB DDR4) I had to send all four back and decided to drive to Micro Center to upgrade to 4x16 DDR4 Sticks in the interim and use the RMA'd sticks for another build.
On November 10, that cost me $299.
A year ago I could have upgraded using the same sticks for $149.
On Black Friday, I went to the same Micro Center to see what deals they had and decided to check on the RAM prices since they were in
A troubling trend. (Score:5, Insightful)
I've bought Crucial upgrades for the last few laptops I've owned, both RAM and SSDs.
I used to joke around about how the AI companies wouldn't be satisfied until all resources on the planet were directly routed to them and everything else was eroding because of it. Now? Now, it's not seeming so much like a joke.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree. This is such a change.
Re: (Score:3)
Ya, but once everything is available as cloud-only services, how much RAM and storage will us consumers really need? /s
Re: (Score:3)
> Ya, but once everything is available as cloud-only services, how much RAM and storage will us consumers really need? /s
640K, of course.
Re: (Score:2)
> Ya, but once everything is available as cloud-only services, how much RAM and storage will us consumers really need? /s
They can pry my DAW system from my cold, dead hands, if they dare.
Re: (Score:3)
> I've bought Crucial upgrades for the last few laptops I've owned, both RAM and SSDs.
> I used to joke around about how the AI companies wouldn't be satisfied until all resources on the planet were directly routed to them and everything else was eroding because of it. Now? Now, it's not seeming so much like a joke.
Crucial was always my go-to for RAM upgrades. I'm getting my son some upgrades for Christmas, and when I saw desktop memory prices, I was stunned. It's the same thing everywhere. " AI vendors are grabbing all the RAM they can get their hands on, dramatically driving up the price ".
They'll be back (Score:2)
Eventually the AI bubble will burst and suddenly they will find themselves with a lot of DIMMs and a lack of customers to buy them. The same was true of GPUs in the wake of mining booms that went bust. Hopefully those will come down in price as well because the AI boom took off just as the last mining boom was winding down and the prices are still stupidly high compared to historical prices. At least APUs are getting good enough where they're a viable substitute for people who were fine buying lowend cards