Memory Prices Climb 500% In 12 Months (tomshardware.com)
- Reference: 0185042158
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/08/18/202210/memory-prices-climb-500-in-12-months
- Source link: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ram/memory-prices-climb-500-percent-in-12-months-up-to-10x-the-lowest-ever-tracked-prices-128gb-of-ddr5-now-usd3-399
> 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 [2]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.
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> This phenomenon is by no means exclusive to the US, either. German tech site ComputerBase have [3]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.
[1] https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ram/memory-prices-climb-500-percent-in-12-months-up-to-10x-the-lowest-ever-tracked-prices-128gb-of-ddr5-now-usd3-399
[2] https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/
[3] https://www.computerbase.de/news/storage/speicherpreise-im-check-ein-neuer-hoechststand-ist-erreicht.98854/
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?"
Re: (Score:3)
> "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!
Re: (Score:2)
Ya know, "AI Bundy" would be an excellent name for a cartoon character...
Re: (Score:2)
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: [1]https://gavrt.lewiscenter.org/... [lewiscenter.org] (search for the word "Lo's" or "Lo:" )
Also: [2]https://www.science.org/conten... [science.org] (they call it lo .. lower case Lo).
Clearly not done as a
[1] https://gavrt.lewiscenter.org/Campaigns/Jupiter-Quest/Background-on-Jupiter-Quest/
[2] https://www.science.org/content/article/watch-sky-high-eruption-jupiters-moon
Re: (Score:2)
Have we sold them the ropes with which they can hang us yet?
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
Re: (Score:2)
he expected life of computer capacitors typically ranges from 5 to 15 years of real-world use, depending heavily on temperature, quality, and type. Of course, capacitor failure usually doesn't mean your computer fries and stops working, it usually just means the error rate goes up without filter caps.
How is this not madness? (Score:4, Insightful)
This was easily preventable if tariffs didn't exist.
All the investor money- (Score:2)
-has gone to buying cool cars and fancy handbags in Korea. It's like a "flywheel", except the wheel has come off and rolled down the hill and over the horizon!
Joke's on them ... (Score:2)
> 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
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
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...
Re: (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).
Whoops - that's actually $390 AUD per 128Gb! Looked at the invoice properly.... On June 16th 2025, a 64Gb kit was $195 AUD...
Thanks, AI bubble! (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm hoping there will lots of cheap hardware availble once the bubble pops.
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)
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.
Micron shut down their Crucial brand because they knew they would simply not be making anymore of those products.
Re: (Score:3)
That's the really sad part. No aftermarket for them since they will all be industrial grade parts not even compatible with home systems.
Error Correcting RAM? (Score:2)
There’s plenty of consumer oriented motherboards that can support Error Correcting RAM. Unless “industrial” is referring to something else.
Re: (Score:2)
In this case, it's a different kind of memory - [1]High Bandwidth Memory [wikipedia.org], HBM.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Bandwidth_Memory
Re: (Score:2)
Thank you for the link
More tightly integrated “unified memory&rdqu (Score:2)
There’s also the trend of tightly integrating the RAM with other chips, creating a package with unified memory. Like on Apple Silicon. We’ll probably see more or this on the PC side as we move to ARM based PCs. Maybe on the Intel side too?
More tightly integrated “unified memory”, less slots that allow for upgrades.
Re: (Score:2)
We might see some Chinese companies filling the gap. We can only hope.
Re: (Score:2)
> 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.
Re: (Score:3)
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 t