Memory Prices Climb 500% In 12 Months (tomshardware.com) 59
RAM prices have exploded over the past year, with some DDR5 kits approaching 500% year-over-year increases and a 128GB kit now selling for $3,399, which is more than 10 times its previous low. Tom's Hardware reports: Things improve as you step down the memory capacities and speed tiers, but not as much as we'd like. You're still looking at $392 for a memory kit that was just $72 last year. To reinforce the point, I pulled the latest average price data from PCPartPicker, comparing where we are today (August 2026) to exactly one year ago. This data is somewhat approximate, but it should be broadly accurate. [...] A standard 64GB (2x32GB) DDR5-5600 kit that would have cost you under $200 last summer is now demanding over $1,100. It is a 5x multiplier on a component that used to be a fairly boring and predictable line item in a PC build budget.
If you plan to just wait it out on an older AM4 or LGA1700 motherboard with DDR4, you'd better hope your memory holds out too, because DDR4 isn't safe from the fallout. With DDR5 entirely out of reach for most builders, the resulting scramble for older platforms running DDR4 memory has created a massive knock-on effect, and as a result, DDR4 kits are up anywhere from 120% to nearly 180% across the board. Nowhere near as bad as DDR5 pricing, but it still stings when a kit that was $105 last year is $281 this year.
This phenomenon is by no means exclusive to the US, either. German tech site ComputerBase have also been tracking this global trend, reporting just this week that average RAM prices in Europe have skyrocketed by 345% compared to September 2025. Their data shows the squeeze is bleeding into other components too, with hard drive and SSD prices both climbing over 125% in that same timeframe. In fact, the situation is so severe that hyperscale buyers have reportedly already locked in almost all of the global DRAM production capacity for 2027, handing over advance deposits to guarantee their supply of precious DRAM, which is now among the highest-value commodities in the world by weight; mainstream DRAM chips are worth over half as much per kilogram as solid gold.
If you plan to just wait it out on an older AM4 or LGA1700 motherboard with DDR4, you'd better hope your memory holds out too, because DDR4 isn't safe from the fallout. With DDR5 entirely out of reach for most builders, the resulting scramble for older platforms running DDR4 memory has created a massive knock-on effect, and as a result, DDR4 kits are up anywhere from 120% to nearly 180% across the board. Nowhere near as bad as DDR5 pricing, but it still stings when a kit that was $105 last year is $281 this year.
This phenomenon is by no means exclusive to the US, either. German tech site ComputerBase have also been tracking this global trend, reporting just this week that average RAM prices in Europe have skyrocketed by 345% compared to September 2025. Their data shows the squeeze is bleeding into other components too, with hard drive and SSD prices both climbing over 125% in that same timeframe. In fact, the situation is so severe that hyperscale buyers have reportedly already locked in almost all of the global DRAM production capacity for 2027, handing over advance deposits to guarantee their supply of precious DRAM, which is now among the highest-value commodities in the world by weight; mainstream DRAM chips are worth over half as much per kilogram as solid gold.
Thanks, AI bubble! (Score:4, Insightful)
AI doesn't use desktop hardware including RAM (Score:5, Insightful)
Those days are over.
Re:AI doesn't use desktop hardware including RAM (Score:5, Insightful)
Micron shut down their Crucial brand because they knew they would simply not be making anymore of those products.
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Error Correcting RAM? (Score:2)
Re:Error Correcting RAM? (Score:4, Informative)
In this case, it's a different kind of memory - High Bandwidth Memory [wikipedia.org], HBM.
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More tightly integrated “unified memory&rdqu (Score:2)
More tightly integrated “unified memory”, less slots that allow for upgrades.
Re:AI doesn't use desktop hardware including RAM (Score:4, Informative)
People keep assuming the AI funnel is taking all their ram when the sad fact is that memory manufacturers simply stopped making desktop memory to use the raw materials on purpose built chips for data centers.
Not so much the raw materials as the fab space/time, but yes.
We have pretty extensive history of how this goes; there have been a half-dozen DRAM crunches in the last ~40 years. What always happens is that prices explode, manufacturers build out massive new capacity (which takes years, and as fabs have gotten more complex it takes more years), then all the new capacity goes into production at about the same time and RAM prices crater.
And we're definitely seeing the same processes at work this time. Between Samsung, SK Hynix, TSMC and Micron there's almost a trillion dollars of new fab construction going on right now. When all of that comes on line, it's going to provide a massive boost to output... and RAM prices will almost certainly drop precipitously, losing all of the recent gains plus whatever normal decline we'd have expected, plus some more.
When? Probably around 2030. 2029 if we're lucky, though we might see a little softening by 2028. Definitely not this year and almost certainly not next year.
It could happen faster if the AI bubble bursts before then. I wouldn't hold my breath.
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simply stopped making desktop memory
That's not how RAM works. One RAM packager simply stopped putting it on DIMMs, that's all there is to it. When the bottom drops out of the industry and they are left with having to sell the chips they produced it'll be moments before they pivot back to slapping them on consumer PCBs. Also there's no real hole left in the industry here. Crucial was a single brand among a see of consumer memory providers. As soon chips start flowing again there'll be plenty of choice for desktops. Everyone else didn't "stop m
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A sea of consumer memory providers? You do realize that only three companies make the RAM chips that go into DDR4 and 5 memory modules, right? Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix. And they have scaled back production in favor of HBM for AI servers. Prices are up because the supply is very low now. Hopefully CXMT will get in the game and by 2028 produce enough chips to supply the market demand.
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That's not how RAM works. One RAM packager simply stopped putting it on DIMMs, that's all there is to it.
No, that is exactly what happened. The RAM companies were given lots of money to make HBM not desktop/server DDR5. If there is a glut of unsold HBM, it is not likely that HBM can be used in desktops and servers.
Re: AI doesn't use desktop hardware including RAM (Score:2)
That's the case today until someone figures out that they can make motherboards and modules that supports HBM chips.
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Well, it's not purpose built memory - it's HBM (high bandwidth memory), which is a standard thing AMD was heavily pushing for their GPUs.
But the fabs are being redirected from producing standard DDR5 memory to HBM memory because the AI companies are literally throwing money at the RAM companies "take m
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Once more a western company hands everything over to China. Just read reports today that Chinese company CXMT is preparing to ramp up to make desktop RAM at large scales. Now they won't have anything to sell until 2028. But since the incumbent cartel companies have all but abandoned this segment of the market, by then I suspect CXMT will probably be producing most consumer RAM. And when the AI bubble pops and AI demand goes to normal levels, Micron and SK Hynix are going to be in deep trouble. And we'l
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We might see some Chinese companies filling the gap. We can only hope.
Noting that Trump currently has a 20% tariff on all products from China.
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500%>20%, that leaves quite a bit of wiggle room for the Chinese to work on the price.
Re: Thanks, AI bubble! (Score:2)
Only applies to the US market, not the rest of the world.
Re:Thanks, AI bubble! (Score:5, Insightful)
No. The hardware being built for AI is basically using hardware that more closely resembles graphic cards minus the DisplayPort output than anything you can pick apart to insert in your PC. Even the memory modules are completely un-DIMM like.
At best, supply will return to pre-AI levels, but that'll just mean that memory reduces in cost to somewhere between today's absurd prices and Trump's post-tariff prices. The chances of it being reduced to Biden levels is pretty low.
Memory is going to be expensive for the foreseeable future. And all because of what's essentially a con job, an attempt to take over every substantial business in America by making their own employees unable to understand what it is they do, that nobody's prepared to do anything about.
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At best, supply will return to pre-AI levels
No, supply will increase. What you're not considering is that the manufacturers are building fab capacity like crazy right now. When all of that capacity hits (in 3-4 years), prices will crater. We've been through this whole cycle many times.
I remember the first big one, driven by the launch of Windows 95. MS-DOS could use memory above the 640K mark only with significant pain and complexity, but Win95 could address it directly and really liked having an insane amount of RAM... like 16 MB!!. Freakin' h
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> What you're not considering is that the manufacturers are building fab capacity like crazy right now.
Which they'll shutter or repurpose if the demand plummets. You think they're going keep those factories churning out memory chips if prices drop significantly?
At the end of the day they have to make a profit. Making a bunch of memory chips with a profit of $-1 per chip is not making a profit.
Re: Thanks, AI bubble! (Score:2)
Win95 could manage fine in 4MB. OS/2 2.0 really needed 16MB, in 1992. There was a RAM shortage, and this was one of the many factors that hampered the market share of OS/2. Source : I ran OS/2 2.0 on a 16 MB PC in 1992. Installed from a stack of 5.25 floppies.
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It wasn't ethics and games journalism and blue haired college girls coming for your hobbies it was tech Bros and finance Bros. If we have proper antitrust law enforcement the market could actually work and solve t
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There is cheap hardware now. There are very few realistic userspace loads that require DDR5. Waiting two more seconds won't kill you.
You can just buy a 2023-era laptop. It works fine.
Bubble won't pop (Score:1)
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Copilot:
Did memoryâ'chip stocks hedge the 500% RAM price spike?
Yes. The major memory stocks rose hundreds of percent over the same period:
Micron (MU): +718.9% in one year
SanDisk (SNDK): +3,825% in one year
Seagate (STX): +526.8% in one year
Western Digital (WDC): +602.6% in one year
Meanwhile, DDR5 RAM kits rose ~500% yearâ'overâ'year.
So yes: memoryâ'stock returns exceeded or matched the RAM price spike, meaning they would have hedged the cost increase.
Retiring on Memory... (Score:2)
RAM prices have exploded over the past year, with some DDR5 kits approaching 500% year-over-year increases and a 128GB kit now selling for $3,399, which is more than 10 times its previous low. Tom's Hardware reports:
From commodity, to investment vehicle. Anyone loaded with some DDR5 has retirement income.
Al Bundy Says... (Score:2)
"Peg, why is there a correlation between how big your ass is, and ram prices?"
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"Peg, why is there a correlation between how big your ass is, and ram prices?"
"Oh, AI!"
Funny how in this font the lower-case "L" and the upper-case"I" are indistinguishable. If your comment was a sly reference to that, then kudos to you!
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Ya know, "AI Bundy" would be an excellent name for a cartoon character...
Or maybe for a Vice President? For Vance, the capitalized versions of "al bundy" and "ai bundy" are both appropriate.
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LOL ..though, AI Bundy would be more like Ted Bundy than Al Bundy.
Btw that "I vs l" issue bugs me too. Like, there are lot of places where Jupiter's moon Io is referred to as Lo. Even AI readers make that error. I've even heard humans call it Lo instead of Io. Sort of a pet peeve of mine.
Quick google:
Here's an astronomy site calling it that: https://gavrt.lewiscenter.org/... [lewiscenter.org] (search for the word "Lo's" or "Lo:" )
Also: https://www.science.org/conten... [science.org] (they call it lo .. lower case Lo).
Clearly not done as a
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Well, we can get ours back by mangling the phrase "Io and Behold"... ;-)
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The small drop in demand from going to LED is gone (Score:2)
The small drop in demand from going to LED is gone. Now, we have a massive increase in demand, supposedly solely to AI.
RAM, and other related prices, through the roof.
Happy, yet, tech bros? Not only did your greed jack up the global demand for electricity, now your insatiable thirst for cash and power make it so hardware's that much more expensive.
We abandoned our beloved tungsten, for this?
Storage too (Score:2)
Storage prices are also way up, even for used drives. Now is a bad time for an array approaching capacity.
Luckily enthusiast PCs are mostly toys not tools (Score:1)
Utility computing can go many years without a hardware refresh, and intensive tasks need not be shared where they degrade performance on a main machine.
Gaming is completely discretionary and parts may be bought at leisure if one already owns a usable machine.
I buy multiple business class PC cheap after liquidations push them onto Ebay. Linux frees me from needing Windows, a few applications excepted which can run in VMs on Linux hosts or on a cheap secondary PC I remote into (KVM switches are also an option
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Re: Luckily enthusiast PCs are mostly toys not too (Score:2)
Most prevalent failures are power supply electrolytic capacitors
How is this not madness? (Score:4, Insightful)
This was easily preventable if tariffs didn't exist.
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In what way is a completely global supply and demand related issue in any way related to tariffs?
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All the investor money- (Score:2)
Joke's on them ... (Score:3)
If you plan to just wait it out on an older AM4 or LGA1700 motherboard with DDR4, you'd better hope your memory holds out too, because DDR4 isn't safe from the fallout.
Hah! All my systems use DDR3 and DDR2, and I've got a bunch of spare modules in the closet. :-)
My Windows 10 system is a DELL XPS-420 I got from a friend with 8GB DDR2 and my Linux Mint system, which was built from parts, has a ASRock Z77 Extreme3 motherboard from a friend on which I put an Intel Core i7-3770 and 32GB DDR3. Both run great, btw. I have a few other old(er) systems, including a Dell PowerEdge T110 (unused) that has 32GB ECC DDR3 and the AMD motherboard from an HP a6130n with a Athlon 64 X2 (B) 5000+ and 8GB DDR2 that I'm using as my OPNsense router/firewall -- I switched to that when a bad "won't fix" security bulletin was announce for my D-Link DSR-250 as I had the system lying around, so it was cheaper and more flexible than getting something new/dedicated. All my systems have SSDs for the systems files and I've added SATA3 PCI cards to the systems with only SATA2 on the motherboard (except for the OPNsense system). None of them are powerhouses, but they're fine and do what I need them to do pretty well. As a bonus, from a home security standpoint, I don't think anyone would ever want to steal any of them. :-)
DDR3 server still ticking (Score:1)
My home server is an old HP Proliant DL380P that's full of DDR3 memory and 18 LFF SATA drives. Even though it's probably circa 2014 or so, it just keeps on reliably doing what I need. Currently running TrueNAS Scale on it with Plex, NextCloud and a TailScale VPN. (May also spin up a dedicated game server for "Pal World" since our extended family have been playing it a lot lately.)
Every time I think about retiring it for something newer -- it just doesn't add up financially to do it. The crazy memory and m
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Even with a motherboard failure, your memory and storage should work just fine on a new motherboard. In fact, all your components except the CPU should transfer over just fine. Sure, they won't run as fast as brand new DDR5 stuff, but that's okay.
Yay for seeing the future. (Score:2)
I upgraded both of my home lab Proxmox servers to 128Gb of DDR4 - cost me $390 AUD per 64Gb kit (2 x 32Gb sticks).
Could sell that second hand now for over $1600 AUD... Problem is, then you have nothing to replace it with because everything else is just nuts.
A while back, I upgraded from an AMD 5700XT GPU to a 6700XT and it cost me ~$200 out of pocket... Mostly for the mining craze wanting the 5700XT...
I haven't bought any real major upgrades since - its just too expensive...
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I upgraded both of my home lab Proxmox servers to 128Gb of DDR4 - cost me $390 AUD per 64Gb kit (2 x 32Gb sticks).
Whoops - that's actually $390 AUD per 128Gb! Looked at the invoice properly.... On June 16th 2025, a 64Gb kit was $195 AUD...
nVidia (Score:3)
I hope everyone remembers the role nVidia has played over the last 8+ years in this pricing insanity. From crypto bros to AI hoes. I wish only the worst for that little leather-bound troll of a CEO.
Feeling like a King with 256GB (Score:2)
DDR4 though....
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Isn't the real shortage money? If you'd bought memory stocks a year ago, would you have more than enough money to buy the RAM you wanted now?
Copilot:
RAM prices rose 500%
memoryâ'producer stocks rose 500â"3,800%
the equity gains would have offset the consumerâ'side price spike
Where is all that money going? (Score:2)
The profits Samsung and Micron are reporting are obscene. I can't believe the chip fabricators are spending much money on increasing capacity for what they surely see as a temporary increase in demand. They're just waiting for the AI bubble to burst along with everybody else.