The rising price of memory has produced an interesting phenomenon: technologists wondering if the memory they have installed in home labs, or bottom drawers, might make them rich.
“Forget Crypto or Gold,” wrote Broadcom staffer Tyson Then. “In 2026 VMware Cloud Foundation Home Labbers making bank. Awwww yeahhh.”
Tyson Then shows off his memory - Click to enlarge
Then’s belief he could score a payday is supported by informal analyses that suggest the price of second-hand memory has surged by 700 percent or more over the last year.
Home labs can require plenty of RAM. Another VMware staffer, William Lam, recently advised that a minimal lab configuration of Broadcom’s Cloud Foundation stack requires 194GB of memory – but that’s a single-host rig. Many home labs use several hosts, meaning their owners are sitting on perhaps half a terabyte of memory.
Over on Reddit, a member named gpot97 last month claimed he recently chose to be paid for a gig in hardware, and took 34 sticks of 16GB DDR4-2400, half a dozen 7.68TB U.2 SSDs, plus a pair of 1.6TB Samsung PM1725a SSDs.
“It ain’t fast but with prices the way they are right now I’m not complaining,” he wrote. “Can’t say I’ve ever been paid in gold bars before.”
Another Redditor, “elecboy,” wondered if he could pay off his mortgage with the ~100 DIMMS he got his hands on to upgrade machines at his workplace.
Over on Instagram user markhoward642 photographed a single DIMM and supposed “I could be a millionaire.”
Tyson Then gets the last word, because he finished his post by observing “Self Development ALWAYS pays off. Often in unpredictable ways.” ®
Source: The register