News: 0179972342

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DRAM Costs Surge Past Gold as AI Demand Strains Supply (tomshardware.com)

(Wednesday November 05, 2025 @11:44AM (msmash) from the AI-byproduct dept.)


DRAM contract prices [1]surged 171.8% year-over-year as of the third quarter of 2025. The increase now exceeds the rate at which gold prices have climbed. ADATA chairman Chen Libai stated that the fourth quarter of 2025 will mark the beginning of a major DRAM bull market. He expects severe shortages to materialize in 2026.

Memory manufacturers have shifted production priorities toward datacenter-focused memory types like RDIMM and HBM. Consumer DDR5 production has declined as a result. A Corsair Vengeance RGB dual-channel DDR5 kit that sold for $91 dollars in July now costs a $183 dollars on Newegg. The pricing trend extends to NAND flash and hard drives. Analysts project the increases will persist for at least four years, matching the duration of supply contracts that some companies have signed with Samsung and SK Hynix.



[1] https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/dram-prices-surge-171-percent-year-over-year-ai-demand-drives-a-higher-yoy-price-increase-than-gold



Laptops with SOCAMM2 would be very valuable to us (Score:2)

by williamyf ( 227051 )

Even Smaller than CAMM2, and slighly higher performance. And replaceable/upgradeable!

What's not to like? SOCAMM 2 is a Datacenter technology that would favourably impact us on the personal computer world. So, bring it on!

Sonfoa... (Score:2)

by sabbede ( 2678435 )

I was planning to rebuild my PC in the next year or two. Damnit.

Re: (Score:2)

by Murrdox ( 601048 )

I was thinking about building a new PC for myself 4-5 months ago, and then I decided to wait until next year. CRAP!

Re: (Score:2)

by sabbede ( 2678435 )

Yeah. Now I need to think about getting an RTX 50 instead of waiting for the 60's. At least the 50s are already built, so no worries about expensive memory increasing the price.

Re: (Score:3)

by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

Yeah, RAM prices are crazy - I was upgrading a machine from 16GB to 64GB and the 32GB module prices I paid were insane for DDR4 - they were $200 each. And this was a few months back.

Even worse, the memory makers are not planning on altering production - the last few times memory prices shot up the bubble popped on them and they were forced to sell at a deep discount due to the excess production. So they plan on keeping production the same as they don't want to be doing the same thing again when the AI bubbl

Re: (Score:2)

by sabbede ( 2678435 )

Well, then I'm disappointed in Hynix. I assume Samsung isn't increasing production because they're trying to figure out how to run ads on chips. Maybe replacing m2 heat spreaders with little LCDs?

But seriously, that sounds like a pretty decent explanation. Thanks.

Re: (Score:2)

by Berkyjay ( 1225604 )

Same. Literally saw total price estimate in my PCPartPicker list shoot up several hundred dollars in a few days.

Re: (Score:2)

by ZipNada ( 10152669 )

> But what do you get out of it?

I get about 1,000 lines of working, tested code per day out of it on average.

Just in time.... (Score:2)

by Kekke ( 236130 )

Upgraded to AMD 7 78003D with 64gb of ddr5@5000. If i Recall the price that I payed right, it's now hiked about 40-60% (just for the ram) Even with my modest virtualmachine use, curret ram use is hardly past 60%

Fuc**ng AI bul**hit (Score:2)

by flibbidyfloo ( 451053 )

Crypto finally stopped ruining the GPU market for gamers (mostly) and AI comes along to screw things up for consumers.

Glad I got my current PC up to 64G of RAM last year, but it's still DDR4. Guess I won't be upgrading any time soon.

Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse.
-- Thomas Szasz