DRAM Prices Surge 172% YoY with No Signs of Slowing Down

[hobib_ali]

Ive not been following this, I just checked what I paid for 64gb (2x32gb) Corsair Vengeance Expo DDR5 6000Mhz £194, now it's showing £599 on here, all be it out of stock.
Pleased I built my PC back in January now.

what!!

are you for real?

you paid 200 for 64gb of ram and now its 600 quid?! that triple the cost, wtf is goin on, its a non moving part, its like printing paper, how comes the regulators dont get involved

this is obscene, i swear some ceo out there is rubbing his hand's in glee as they are getting away with daylight robbery and its a crime, you cant triple the cost or RAM and leave everything else as normal, there deffo something going on 100%

so, if someone is building a DDR5 system what can they do to hold them down until it gets back to normal?

I mean can someone not buy a single stick of 8/16gb ram at the lowest cheapest speed to run on their set up until they buy a full set on RRP ?

 

[Purgatory]

what!!

are you for real?

you paid 200 for 64gb of ram and now its 600 quid?! that triple the cost, wtf is goin on, its a non moving part, its like printing paper, how comes the regulators dont get involved

this is obscene, i swear some ceo out there is rubbing his hand's in glee as they are getting away with daylight robbery and its a crime, you cant triple the cost or RAM and leave everything else as normal, there deffo something going on 100%

so, if someone is building a DDR5 system what can they do to hold them down until it gets back to normal?

I mean can someone not buy a single stick of 8/16gb ram at the lowest cheapest speed to run on their set up until they buy a full set on RRP ?

My 64GB ram in the desktop and laptop have tripled in price since when I purchased them and still going up everyday.


It has all become insane and huge scam. Welcome to this "new world" we have created. Just look at prices for everything now, since covid most things they say have gone up 10% LOL but really doubled and tripled in price, not sure where they are getting the 10% rubbish from.

 

[LostCorpse]

what!!

are you for real?

you paid 200 for 64gb of ram and now its 600 quid?! that triple the cost, wtf is goin on, its a non moving part, its like printing paper, how comes the regulators dont get involved

this is obscene, i swear some ceo out there is rubbing his hand's in glee as they are getting away with daylight robbery and its a crime, you cant triple the cost or RAM and leave everything else as normal, there deffo something going on 100%

so, if someone is building a DDR5 system what can they do to hold them down until it gets back to normal?

I mean can someone not buy a single stick of 8/16gb ram at the lowest cheapest speed to run on their set up until they buy a full set on RRP ?

yes its obscene, but it comes down to profit. all the big money is in infrastructure. and there isnt enough supply to meet demand.
storage and CPU prices are expected to go up as well, RAM is just the start.

if building a DDR5 system at the moment there are 6 options i see :
1) buy a premade system
2) Buy what you need RIGHT NOW while its "cheap"
3) buy a 2x DDR5 32GB systems, strip out 16gb ram resell the system so you end up wit 32 GB
4) Dont buy at all
5) consider DDR4 systems in place of
6) consider using a GPU Docking station and Oculink External GPU Card

i'm in-between options 2 / 4 / 5

i have a ram order but not likely to ship until February assuming it ships at all.



lets say some one has been waiting over 6years to order a new pc/parts... and when they are ready to do it RAM prices inflate drastically ...

that person may not be very happy... one might think the powers at be are trying to send a message..

 

[Deleted member 280263]

It will come down, but I bet not by a lot. Just look what happened to GPUs and motherboards, they've become ridiculously expensive.

What do you mean?

GPU's were always expensive, and the most expensive part of a system?
They've just became the price that is relative to inflation and the modern higher wages we get - just like the minimum wage is now what people years ago considered a high paid wage.

Motherboard pricing is the same - you can still get something very decent for around £130-180, which has always been the case.
Yes, you can overpay for a motherboard, but they've always offered crazy priced stuff, don't you remember the Fatality colab years ago, it's no different from the 'gamer' or anime branded stuff now; but you don't have to buy that tier, to get something that won't bottleneck/does what you need it to.

 

[aaronyuri]

Welcome to this "new world" we have created.

COVID was absolutely the catalyst for this. NVIDIA and retailers figured out that people would pay whatever they wanted to charge, and now everyone else is figuring it out, too.

 

[Deleted member 280263]

COVID was absolutely the catalyst for this. NVIDIA and retailers figured out that people would pay whatever they wanted to charge, and now everyone else is figuring it out, too.

Yup, as I said earlier:

They started ripping people off during Covid, bumping the prices up. Then they never went back down.
Nothing will change, only inflate further.

 

[beachBOYken]

what!!

are you for real?

you paid 200 for 64gb of ram and now its 600 quid?! that triple the cost, wtf is goin on, its a non moving part, its like printing paper, how comes the regulators dont get involved

this is obscene, i swear some ceo out there is rubbing his hand's in glee as they are getting away with daylight robbery and its a crime, you cant triple the cost or RAM and leave everything else as normal, there deffo something going on 100%

so, if someone is building a DDR5 system what can they do to hold them down until it gets back to normal?

I mean can someone not buy a single stick of 8/16gb ram at the lowest cheapest speed to run on their set up until they buy a full set on RRP ?

That’s the out of stock price, It’s more like £700-800 now.

 

[GordyR]

The 96GB of 7200MTS Corsair Dominator Titanium I bought back in October 2024 for around £350-390 is now priced at £1,065.

 

[AMDPower]

interesting take on this mess, since some are complaining about not providing a summar,

Here is a summary of the key points discussed:

• HBM Demand is Warping the Market: The primary driver of the current market disruption is the explosive demand for High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) from data centers for AI applications [06:28]. HBM, which was a minor business just a few years ago, is forecast to become a $100 billion a year business [06:49].
• The Production Shift: HBM is highly profitable but requires significantly more wafers to produce the same amount of memory bits compared to standard DDR memory (like DDR4 or DDR5) [09:31]. As memory manufacturers shift production to the more profitable HBM, fewer wafers are available for consumer-grade memory, which is what is used in gaming PCs and consoles [14:54].
• Market Behavior and Hoarding: The hosts discuss reports that companies, such as Open AI, are buying up and potentially hoarding large portions of the global HBM supply, contributing to overall market desperation and escalating prices [15:14].
• DDR Transition: The natural industry shift from the older DDR4 standard to the newer DDR5 standard is another factor contributing to the supply constraints and transition challenges in the market [17:59].

 

[Monkeynut]

I hope that the Chinese chip makers manage to start pumping out DDR5(even the slower stuff) just to get prices back to a sane level. Currently there's only a few big players and who cares about the consumer when you can sell your entire capacity to LLM's?

 

[Raiden85]

What do you mean?

GPU's were always expensive, and the most expensive part of a system?
They've just became the price that is relative to inflation and the modern higher wages we get - just like the minimum wage is now what people years ago considered a high paid wage.

Motherboard pricing is the same - you can still get something very decent for around £130-180, which has always been the case.
Yes, you can overpay for a motherboard, but they've always offered crazy priced stuff, don't you remember the Fatality colab years ago, it's no different from the 'gamer' or anime branded stuff now; but you don't have to buy that tier, to get something that won't bottleneck/does what you need it to.

On AM4 I had the Asus X570 Formula, it had built in water cooling, 5G & 2.5G Ethernet, the all metal armour backplate and a very handy OLED screen which actually told me what it was doing. Paid about £520 or so for it. When I upgraded to the Asus X670E Hero for AM5 which is a step-down from the formula, I lost that rear metal backplate, lost 5G and only have 1x 2.5GB port, lost the OLED screen and stuck using that crappy 2 digit red display and lost the water cooling. And that board cost me £620.

So all those lost features for £100 more, motherboards are now a damn rip-off, especially when it comes to Asus tax.

 

[Moothead2]

What do you mean?

GPU's were always expensive, and the most expensive part of a system?
They've just became the price that is relative to inflation and the modern higher wages we get - just like the minimum wage is now what people years ago considered a high paid wage.

Even if they are their relative performance increase to the last generation has dropped massively. The 1060 was competing with the 980 on release and cost about half the MSRP (£250). The 5060 is still getting trounced by the 5 year old 3080. The feeling of value from the new mid range GPUs just isn't anywhere near as strong as it was.

 

[Grim5]

interesting take on this mess

TLDR?

 

[Deleted member 280263]

Even if they are their relative performance increase to the last generation has dropped massively. The 1060 was competing with the 980 on release and cost about half the MSRP (£250). The 5060 is still getting trounced by the 5 year old 3080. The feeling of value from the new mid range GPUs just isn't anywhere near as strong as it was.

My point was relating to pricing. It wasn't a debate on performance
Whether X card is better than Y, means nothing. They'll be expensive regardless. Just like they always have been, and will continue to be.

On AM4 I had the Asus X570 Formula, it had built in water cooling, 5G & 2.5G Ethernet, the all metal armour backplate and very handy OLED screen which actually told me what it was doing. Paid about £520 or so for it. When I upgraded to the Asus X670E Hero for AM5 which is a step-down from the formula, I lost that rear metal backplate, lost 5G and only have 1x 2.5GB port, lost the OLED screen and stuck using that crappy 2 digit red display and lost the water cooling. And that board cost me £620.

So all those lost features for £100 more, motherboards are now a damn rip-off, especially when it comes to Asus tax.

So you paid for an overpriced motherboard, that's nearly 3 times the price of anything decent; with features you didn't really need, such as the watercooling/OLED.
Then you did it again with another board, yet are some how surprised that you overpayed. You knew the spec versus the price, both times.

At that inflated price point, you've shilled for a brand/board, and are a contributing factor, as to why they can rip people off, with products such as those boards.

 

[BUDFORCE]

TLDR?

Yea it annoys the carp out of me when people post links to videos or articles without adding at least a short summary or their own take/opinion.

Well, I just don't ever click on whatever it is, making their post completely irrelevant to me anyway, I'm guessing a lot of others will do the same.

 

[Deleted member 280263]

Yea it annoys the carp out of me when people post links to videos or articles without adding at least a short summary or their own take/opinion.

Well, I just don't ever click on whatever it is, making their post completely irrelevant to me anyway, I'm guessing a lot of others will do the same.

Yep, in general it's usually "here's a 20 minute video, that I expect you to watch all of, all so I appear right in a comment"
NEXT!

 

[TNA]

Yea it annoys the carp out of me when people post links to videos or articles without adding at least a short summary or their own take/opinion.

Well, I just don't ever click on whatever it is, making their post completely irrelevant to me anyway, I'm guessing a lot of others will do the same.

Grim is the worst for that. I think he has calmed down these days though after it got pointed out multiple times

 

[Vimes]

Exactly. So it's never going back down.

I think that when prices plateau at their maximum, probably not there yet, there will be reductions in time. For most that will mean relief, but....
Like when you previously mentioned the Covid situations, they will keep to a new normalised much higher price.
All those in the manufacturing and supply chain, including retail, will probably enjoy much healthier margins. Whilst being sympathetic to the new uncontrollable situation.

 

[Timber]

Was watching one of the numerous YouTube videos on this last night and it's certainly a bit depressing. Mentioned Dell increasing all their PC prices by 20%, the Raspberry Pi foundation putting the price up of their cheapest RPi boards due to memory costs. And the huge potential this has on GPU prices for 2026.

I've been in this game for a long time, first PC bought in the 90's. This just takes the fun out of PC building, in a similar vein as to the GPU shortages of 2018 and 2020. Fortunately I'm a multiplatform gamer so I'm not a power user on the PC side which lessons the impact for me, but will impact me when and if I upgrade, it buy PC components in the future.

 

[BUDFORCE]

Was watching one of the numerous YouTube videos on this last night and it's certainly a bit depressing. Mentioned Dell increasing all their PC prices by 20%, the Raspberry Pi foundation putting the price up of their cheapest RPi boards due to memory costs. And the huge potential this has on GPU prices for 2026.

I've been in this game for a long time, first PC bought in the 90's. This just takes the fun out of PC building, in a similar vein as to the GPU shortages of 2018 and 2020. Fortunately I'm a multiplatform gamer so I'm not a power user on the PC side which lessons the impact for me, but will impact me when and if I upgrade, it buy PC components in the future.

Yup and we've been hit hard in recent years, GPU prices with the mining thing, that despite what some say I don't think ever really went quite back to pre 2020/2021 , granted they have been slightly more sensible in the last year.

Now this, at least with a GPU it's not a necessary thing, if you are not fussed about playing AAA titles (which less face it are pretty awful these days) even a moderate GPU (in some cases even integrated CPU graphics) can be adequate.

Without memory you are screwed, and memory in some form or another is in everything.

If this gets really bad, and it's starting to look that way, the price of everything could end up going up, not just restricted to PC hardware, but every electronic device that uses memory.