Syntech CEO says South Africa has a small window to prepare for rapid, sudden hardware price increases

mylesillidge

mylesillidge

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Calm before the storm in South Africa

Syntech CEO Craig Nowitz said that South Africa has a small window to prepare for a new wave of computer hardware supply shocks, which will lead to rapid, sudden price increases.

Nowitz recently returned from visits to factories in China and trade shows in Hong Kong, where he said he saw the impact of memory and SSD shortages firsthand.
 
Hmm Hong Kong and China.

Ironic that most of the world's ram comes mainly from 3 places.

South Korea (Samsung and Hynix)
Taiwan (Micron)
USA (Micron Value)

China manufactures only about 5%.

Crucial that pulled out controlled only under 1% of the market share. That was the sector that stopped manufacturing, although micron still supplies to other providers ie Kingston, ADATA, Corsair, Patriot.


Now looking at what will be hit hardest?
1. Cooling (yes an efficient AI system generates....a lot of heat, and when I mean heat, well imagine having to install aircon for a room with an active ai machine because without the aircon the room runs at 40c (yes the room temperature). But it works great in winter as a heater though.
2. CPUs, yes they are busy buying them pretty quickly
3. NVME/SSD (these are currently affected)
4. Whatever ram is still around. Some data centres buy whatever is on the market, be it 2nd hand too.

I don't see major price increases for pc cases, power supplies, and the accessories side, unless there is serious price gouging, and that almost always happens.

The Chinese are scaling up rapidly however and this may actually soften the market, much to the loss of the Taiwanese eventually.
 
apnrhx.jpg
 
Hope this crash real hard, just like the dot com crash. The subscription prices for AI models is also stupid expensive. Claude is a rip-off. AI is profitable now, but it is not sustainable.
 
mylesillidge said:
Calm before the storm in South Africa

Syntech CEO Craig Nowitz said that South Africa has a small window to prepare for a new wave of computer hardware supply shocks, which will lead to rapid, sudden price increases.

Nowitz recently returned from visits to factories in China and trade shows in Hong Kong, where he said he saw the impact of memory and SSD shortages firsthand.
Click to expand...

Please confirm if its "Sentech" or "Syntech" ?
 
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This is like 6 months late, no ?. No mention of the 20% +- drop in ram pricing, due to AI. No mention of open AI dropping their orders.

This article references stuff that already happened, months ago, doesn't take into account recent developments and news.

yeah more prices increases short supply, ect, ect like it didn't already happen

What pointless and outdated news is this ????????
 
They just want you to believe like covid. AI is just to blame.
 
RedViking said:
Hope this crash real hard, just like the dot com crash. The subscription prices for AI models is also stupid expensive. Claude is a rip-off. AI is profitable now, but it is not sustainable.
Click to expand...
Sucking in investor money to stay afloat is not profit. It a Ponzi scheme.

The list of AI services that operate at a gross profit even, is quite small.
 
Too late -- We ordered some servers in October last year (Another provider, not Syntech), was given a quotation, we supplied a PO, all was good. Last week, we received an email saying they have finally come out of production. (Yes, over 6 months later, that's the delay for most server hardware at the moment)
We have now been told that the price has gone up by ~16% on the October quotation and in the same breath, please agree to the increased price now and pay the difference, or these servers will be given to another purchaser who wants this spec.

But to make matters worse, we ordered other servers in the last month, and the price has shot up by over 300%. (In my opinion, this feels like price gauging and blackmail rolled into one)
That type of increase cannot be absorbed, and in the end, pricing will have to go up.

The bottom line is that there have been huge hardware increases, plus all the normal DC cost increases, electricity increases, software licensing increases and other opex increases. The sad part is that there is a perception out there that it's the internet, and IT costs should get cheaper. (they dont). Last year, we had customers complaining to us when we had an average of an 8% increase, not sure what's going to happen this year.
 
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