Remember the early days of the COVID pandemic when things shut down and it suddenly got really complicated to get even the most essential of tech? Well, we’re here again. Only this time around, international supply chains aren’t impacted by a virus; instead all the compute (and storage) is gobbled up by massive datacenters.
The result: RAM prices have tripled in the span of months, new hardware like the Steam Machine is delayed due to the price hikes, and some are even speculating that the situation might spiral down to bankruptcies of hardware manufacturers. It’s likely to get worse before it gets better. As the German poet Rilke might have put it: “Whoever has no gaming PC now will not build one anymore. / Whoever is without RAM now will remain so for a long time.”
So what is one to do in this predicament? For us at iFixit, the way forward is obvious: embrace scrappiness! Just as the challenges of 2020 led to a boom in home repair, now’s the time to get into the tinker mindset again.
Refurb and Used vs New
We’ve always advocated for keeping your devices around for longer. The longer you can keep working with what you already have, the longer you can play the waiting game. Linux can help with that. But if you must get something new, maybe consider getting something that’s actually not new. What makes used hardware especially worth considering right now: the components inside the older machines were manufactured pre-crunch and thus don’t necessarily carry the same price tag.
If you’ve never bought used or refurbished before and aren’t sure what you’re actually getting, we’ve broken down exactly what those terms mean. The short version: certified refurb from a reputable platform—think Back Market, Apple’s own store, the major OEM outlets—is typically solid. “Seller refurbished” on platforms like eBay means you should read the listing very carefully. “Used” means what it says, but the condition can vary dramatically.
What you should check, however, is how repairable and upgradeable the tech you’re getting is. Smartphones and tablets might not have many options for upgrades, but laptops and desktops are a different game. A laptop with 16GB across two SO-DIMM slots and a NVMe SSD (think Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 5) is a platform you can potentially upgrade later, once supply normalizes. The same doesn’t hold true for systems with soldered memory. That distinction is worth an extra ten minutes of research before you buy.
How to Look For Parts
When it comes to finding the right part even if it is out of stock (or prohibitively expensive), there are a few strategies we learned back in 2020.
The most important one relates back to the mantra of “thinking used”: donor devices. A laptop listed as “broken” on eBay could have perfectly working RAM and storage inside. If you need a specific SO-DIMM configuration and can’t find it sold bare, buying a dead machine to extract the memory might be a gamble depending on the info the seller provides, but in the current market, it’s likely still cheaper than buying the modules outright.
If you don’t like the uncertainty of scavenging, make sure to set up price alerts and saved searches. Services like CamelCamelCamel for Amazon, eBay’s saved searches, and Slickdeals alerts let you move quickly rather than checking manually.
Shuck It Like A Polaroid
In comparison to RAM, prices for storage have picked up only recently. Still, it’s good to be prepared in case you’re planning on a new gaming rig or home server.
The trick that might save your project is called shucking. The term describes harvesting external storage drives to get the internal drive within. It works because most external drives are just internal ones in an USB enclosure. And a lot of times, you can just crack open the enclosure, remove the bare drive inside and use it just as would any internal drive.
Here’s what you should consider before shucking it:
- Check the interface: Most 3.5″ external drives use standard SATA and work exactly as you’d hope. Compact external SSDs, however, might use proprietary connectors internally. Always look up the specific model before you buy.
- Watch for the 3.3V pin issue: Some shucked drives behave strangely in desktop systems due to how their enclosures handle the SATA power spec. The fix is a piece of electrical tape over pin 3 of the SATA power connector—yes, really.
- SMR vs CMR: Over the last decade, storage manufacturers have moved more and more towards using Shingled Magnetic Recording or SMR in short. The enthusiast community is highly critical of SMR, favoring the Conventional Magnetic Recording (CMR) drives as the more reliable option. NASCompares has a list covering a lot of the major drives.
Looking for parts?
We’ve got a lot of ’em.
Keep Calm and Fix On
We’ve been here before and even if it looks dire right now: Hardware shortages eventually end. The datacenter buildout will plateau at some point or supply will catch up. Or both. Prices will normalize. But it will take time, and the fixers’ mindset can give you that time.
While you wait out the storm, our repair guides are free, our parts store is stocked with what we can get at reasonable prices, and the community forums are full of people embodying the scrappiness fixing requires.
1 Comment
You cite a Thinkpad, but laptop owners best get used again too to access speeds from the days of spinning rust, or good luck finding an affordable replacement for a decent-capacity SSD compatible with SATA (be it 2.5" or some kind of M2). SSD speeds are addictive, but these things don't have the same almost eternal life as HDDs have, and even the humble 256Gb MSATA drives I once bought for less than 35€ a piece have already tripled in price since fall 2023 (I just bought the last two available on A'zon).
I think that SATA HDDs will continue to be available for the foreseeable future (but maybe more so for the 3.5" version) but the SATA-based SSD offering is clearly dwindling. I should have bought a pile of the seemingly reliable and fast WD SA500 "Red" 2.5" drives back in '23 when the 1Gb version went for 90€ a piece. If you look at their webstore (including the Sandisk one) now there is barely any SSD product left, and those too have almost tripled in price.
rjvbertin - Reply Share