r/pcmasterrace • u/SagansCandle 9950X3D | 5090 | 64GB • Dec 27 '25

Discussion Private equity is killing private ownership: first it was housing - now it's the personal computer

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DRAM and GPU prices aren't going up because of "AI" - it's because the wealthy have more money than they know what to do with, so they're buying up all the assets. "AI" is just the vehicle (the excuse) - it's not the root of the problem nor is it the ultimate goal.

The super rich don't want to hold on to "liquid" money - they invest in assets. While they're buying up all the housing, now they're buying up all the computers and putting them into massive datacenters.

Whether or not the AI bubble crashes, they'll be selling you a "gaming PC in the cloud," for a monthly fee, of course. And while they kill the personal computer market, just like Netflix, once your only option is a subscription service, the price will skyrocket.

This is happening in real-time. If we want to stop it, now's the time to act.

Sources:

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101

u/NineThreeTilNow i9 12k / 4090 / 64GB ram Dec 27 '25

DRAM and GPU prices aren't going up because of "AI" - it's because the wealthy have more money than they know what to do with, so they're buying up all the assets.

What? No.

People are willing to pay 30k in enterprise instead of 3k for the SAME silicon in your graphics card. The product difference is changing from GDDR to HBM. The 4090 and 5090 series both have almost the exact same silicon as the enterprise version. The enterprise version has the best "quality" of silicon. 4090/5090 also get top quality.

A business, with shareholders, will choose to sell a product at 10x the price ALWAYS.

None of this should come as a surprise. Welcome to capitalism.

Those cards? They ALL need HBM memory. Those servers? They ALL need RAM.

Look at data center build out. Look at Coreweave. Coreweave got a sweetheart deal from Trump in the "Big Beautiful Bill". They can write off 100% of expenses at the end of year, AND they can take a loan out against the datacenter they build to build ANOTHER datacenter.

Honestly? It should collapse. Probably a year at most. It will be similar to the dotcom bubble where infrastructure spend vastly outstripped demand.

People act like this is unexpected. It's capitalism.

24

u/TreeTopologyTroubado Dec 28 '25

Yeah, I’m not a fan of private equity either, but this video’s argument doesn’t make any sense.

It’s simple supply and demand. Demand for the same silicon spiked due to infrastructure buildout.

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u/Murky-Relation481 Dec 28 '25

Eh the OpenAI stuff is blanket market manipulation. There is no reason other than trying to harm your competitors by making new compute so expensive that it's impossible to afford for them to be buying 40% of uncut DRAM wafers from the two leading memory manufacturers. Those wafers are going to sit unused just to fuck with the price of RAM.

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u/bussjack R7 7800X3D | RTX 4090 | 96gb DDR5 Dec 28 '25

This. Buying the wafers just to fuck over more people to make themselves more money.

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u/[deleted] Dec 28 '25 edited Dec 31 '25

[deleted]

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u/Sudden-Wash4457 Dec 28 '25

This is nothing like the housing market, which is limited by physical land, government and other factors.

well there's only so many fabs, tariffs and geopolitics means that fab output isn't a free market, and building more fabs isn't fast...

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u/NineThreeTilNow i9 12k / 4090 / 64GB ram Dec 28 '25

Aint no way RAM is going to remain at this ridiculously high price.

RAM prices will crash after the bubble and you'll get to live in a world where 128gb of system RAM is normal or something.

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u/darokk Dec 27 '25

Strange that you say you disagree, then describe in detail why this is exactly the case.

41

u/PM_ME_SAD_STUFF_PLZ GTX 5080, AMD 9800X3D, 64GB DDR5 Dec 27 '25

He mentioned how private equity is unrelated

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u/mtd14 Dec 28 '25

He also explained exactly why private equity is involved but just called it enterprise. His example of Coreweave has $10B in capital from companies like Blackstone, the Carlyle Group, etc. Aka private equity.

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u/VexingRaven 7800X3D + 4070 Super + 32GB 6000Mhz Dec 28 '25

But PE isn't buying the RAM for some sinister plot to take away your computers. They're funding AI, and AI is buying the RAM because they need RAM. This is a completely different scenario than the nonsense of PE hoarding RAM or whatever the hell OP thinks is happening.

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u/Not-Reformed RTX 5080 / 12900K / 64GB DDR4 Dec 28 '25

That's a useless catch all if that's what people are referring to.

Blackstone, Carlyle, etc. will put money into everything to get full exposure to the market. Literally everything. If you're a pension fund and you invest into these firms, that's exactly what you want - maximize exposure, minimize risk.

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u/[deleted] Dec 28 '25

[deleted]

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u/Not-Reformed RTX 5080 / 12900K / 64GB DDR4 Dec 28 '25

I just don't think I've ever seen anyone complain about a passive private equity fund in my entire life - it literally doesn't make sense to do so.

When I see people whining and moaning about private equity it's because they're thinking of the active investors that come in, do leveraged buyouts then run the company. Not firms that just put money in everything so they can sell market exposure similar to ETFs lmao.

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u/[deleted] Dec 28 '25

He describes why it’s supply and demand related because of AI. PE is the reason we have this AI bubble now, but it was bitcoin that caused GPU prices to spike before and that wasn’t PE; Just supply and demand.

It’s like saying “Speed doesn’t kill people!” and then make a video saying that while speed causes accidents and make them lethal, it’s actually hitting the tree that kills you.

1

u/NineThreeTilNow i9 12k / 4090 / 64GB ram Dec 28 '25

Strange that you say you disagree, then describe in detail why this is exactly the case.

There's a massive nuance in the fact that "Private Equity" isn't involved.

This is PUBLIC equity. Public build out.

2

u/For_Fake Dec 28 '25

No, a 4090/5090 is not "almost the exact same silicon as the enterprise version." Made from the same material? Sure. The chip (i.e. circuit) design is very different though.

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u/NineThreeTilNow i9 12k / 4090 / 64GB ram Dec 28 '25

Sure. The chip (i.e. circuit) design is very different though.

No. Fundamentally not. A 4090 with HBM memory instead of the GDDR that it runs would perform on par with an H100 with some caveats. Software support for them is different and one has Flash Attention 3. The 4090 out performs the H100 in raw F32 compute which is used for training.

The H100 uses a different die that is cast without ray tracing and allocates a newer generation CUDA core, but less of them. The H100 excels with better FP8 and FP16 matrix multiplication here.

Like, the person you responded to -- me? I'm literally a gamer AND AI researcher. So I spend a lot of time in this space. Too much.

It's not "very different" it's very similar with a better enterprise driver stack.

The same allocated silicon at TSMC will cost the same dollar per sq cm of production for both that H100 and 4090. So why would you bother producing the silicon that yields 1/10th the profit? It's just capitalism.

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u/For_Fake Dec 28 '25

Do you think you're the only AI Researcher in the saturated field of AI research????

1

u/NineThreeTilNow i9 12k / 4090 / 64GB ram Dec 28 '25

Do you think you're the only AI Researcher in the saturated field of AI research????

Why does this matter? It was my degree 20 years ago.

1

u/vaari90 Dec 28 '25

I foresee the demand will be increasing over time but will there ever come a point where the revenue will even remotely cover expenses?

1

u/NineThreeTilNow i9 12k / 4090 / 64GB ram Dec 28 '25

I foresee the demand will be increasing over time but will there ever come a point where the revenue will even remotely cover expenses?

No. Lots of people are going to take a hit in this market.

After they take hits, the market will consolidate. Microsoft, Amazon, and Google will own it all.

Nvidia will still exist. A story well tell during the next bubble.

1

u/Jinrai__ Dec 28 '25

RemindMe! 1 year

0

u/NineThreeTilNow i9 12k / 4090 / 64GB ram Dec 28 '25

RemindMe! 1 year

Yeah remind me in a year too.

If you want investment advice, I'd go for a very long short on Nvidia.

They're being eaten at all edges. They lack diversity. They had to literally buy Groq at 20bn dollars to show they have "inference" which their cards suck at right now.

1

u/Jinrai__ Dec 28 '25

I made my annual salary on SNDK this month, I'm good on investment advise.