It’s rough out there for RAM prices. It’ll be a long time before memory prices become properly sensible again, but apparently spot prices have recently dropped. I’d like to take the wins where I can, but I’m not sure the time for celebration is anywhere near.
To briefly recap, the AI industry’s bottomless appetite for both system storage and memory has created a supply crisis, which in turn has led to some truly ridiculous RAM prices. DigiTimes says that spot prices for 16 Gb DDR4 modules soared by 2,200% over the last year, but now they’re finally starting to drop, though only by about 5%.
It feels like especially small potatoes when, in March 2025, DDR4 16Gb was priced around $3.20, but it’s now trading at about $74.10 today, even with the recent dip in price. It’s not the best news, but it does break the spot market’s unbroken, months-long trend of growth.
DDR5 16Gb has also seen its price come down by a similar percentage, though it too saw enormous price rises, going from $5.30 last year to $37.20 last month—that’s still a 600% increase overall. That said, it’s important to note the limits of discussing spot pricing when many of us have consumer pricing in mind.
To be clear, this price fluctuation is yet to reach the markets that PC manufacturers actually source components from. So, even with the return of some much-missed discounts, those thinking about upgrading this year may want to think again as prices are unlikely to come tumbling down imminently.
(Image credit: Future)
Indeed, market research from last month suggests we won’t see affordable RAM until 2028 at the earliest. Micron recently said it’s “seeing NAND demand significantly in excess of our available supply for the foreseeable future,” and its fresh fabs won’t be able to “support meaningful product shipments” until 2028. That feels like a long time away—especially as manufacturers like Samsung estimates its profits will be over 8 times what it was during this same period last year.
But while some are raking it in, others are going full doomer. For instance, Phison CEO Pua Khein-Seng reportedly predicts that many consumer electronics manufacturers “will go bankrupt or exit product lines” by the end of 2026 due to the AI memory crisis.
Framework isn’t exactly full of hope either, with company founder Nirav Patel recently saying, “There is a very real scenario in which personal computing as we know it is dead“. Here’s hoping that at least this grim vision of the future doesn’t come to pass.
