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

Vonhelmet said:
Consoles have RAM in too… prices will go up there as well.
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If they do it won't be nearly as bad

When you buy in bulk you get wholesale market pricing, when you buy private you pay the marginal market price, so when there is little to no supply in the private market, you may pay 2-4 x higher price than if the market was saturated

A non PC example of this would be face masks during the covid outbreak - the NHS was still able to buy masks at a good price, but if you want to buy a mask privately, due to the shortages on the private market you'd pay crazy money. Same applies here

Currently Sony is cutting ps5 prices for holiday sales, so they can't be feeling too bad about memory prices lol
 
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Grim5 said:
If they do it won't be nearly as bad

When you buy in bulk you get wholesale market pricing, when you buy private you pay the marginal market price, so when there is little to no supply in the private market, you may pay 2-4 x higher price than if the market was saturated

A non PC example of this would be face masks during the covid outbreak - the NHS was still able to buy masks at a good price, but if you want to buy a mask privately, due to the shortages on the private market you'd pay crazy money. Same applies here

Currently Sony is cutting ps5 prices for holiday sales, so they can't be feeling too bad about memory prices lol
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Rumours that Sony may have stockpiled a significant amount of RAM, so they certainly won't be having issues with PS5 prices if they have. If Sony is cutting prices, then they must have.
 
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Yup, it is, but it's letting me get right upto payment details and still says £129. I should buy it to pay for the kid's university
 
Jay85 said:
CL28 and CL30 6000mhz 64gb kits are going for £800-900!!!!

I feel like im sitting on a small gold mine right now....

Dread to think what CL26 kits cost... if you can even find them
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My gskill cl26 must be worth 1K now I can imagine it all being scalped and sold for profit. Who would have thought it for ram. For sure it’s just going to make pc gaming even more unviable for some going forward.
 
BKUK said:
My gskill cl26 must be worth 1K now I can imagine it all being scalped and sold for profit. Who would have thought it for ram. For sure it’s just going to make pc gaming even more unviable for some going forward.
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It's a bit silly, the kit I bought over two years ago when they were the latest thing was £124. It's now £400 on OcUK and £480 on Corsairs own site.
 
I bought 2 sets of ram a few months ago. 48gb cudimms, purchased price £350 now £499. 64gb standard dimms for £297, now £750!
 
Armadillo said:
So that's everything shafted again then :(. I guess gpus will be next and it will be like it was with the 30 series where all the entry level "cheaper" ones don't exist as the limited supply is used for the higher models.

I am completely out of touch with it, but I don't get the endgame with AI or how they plan to make up all the money. Nothing "AI" I've seen yet is amazing and something to "sell". I guess I am just out of touch.
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The end game is for the megacorps to fire every human they can replace with an AI running out of a data centre.
 
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Rob_B said:
Yup, it is, but it's letting me get right upto payment details and still says £129. I should buy it to pay for the kid's university
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Will be a cached page, if it lets you process the order at £129 I'd be amazed, maybe give it a try.
 
Grim5 said:
If they do it won't be nearly as bad

When you buy in bulk you get wholesale market pricing, when you buy private you pay the marginal market price, so when there is little to no supply in the private market, you may pay 2-4 x higher price than if the market was saturated

A non PC example of this would be face masks during the covid outbreak - the NHS was still able to buy masks at a good price, but if you want to buy a mask privately, due to the shortages on the private market you'd pay crazy money. Same applies here

Currently Sony is cutting ps5 prices for holiday sales, so they can't be feeling too bad about memory prices lol
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The DRAM market doesn't really work like that. Big OEMs usually place long term purchasing contracts with a DRAM manufacturer, so for example Sony might commit to buy X number of GDDR6 chips at a certain price over a certain timescale. While that contract is in force the price of the chips won't change. It seems that Sony has current contracts with multiple DRAM manufacturers, so the memory in the PS5 will not cost more until those contracts run out.

But they will run out. At that point the memory manufacturers will charge considerably more, as Sony will directly be competing with everyone else for a very much reduced supply of DRAM.

There's rumours Microsoft did not have long term contracts for the XBox. They may have just been buying memory on the spot market, which can be a good move sometimes - it keeps a large financial liability off the balance sheet and means flexibility to take advantage of sudden drops in the cost of DRAM - but it can be a huge crisis if the cost shoots up, as it's doing now.
 
Gibbo said:
Will be a cached page, if it lets you process the order at £129 I'd be amazed, maybe give it a try.
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I'm at the page to input my card details with the pay now button and it still says that price, not sure I need another kit.
 
DrBombcrater said:
The DRAM market doesn't really work like that. Big OEMs usually place long term purchasing contracts with a DRAM manufacturer, so for example Sony might commit to buy X number of GDDR6 chips at a certain price over a certain timescale. While that contract is in force the price of the chips won't change. It seems that Sony has current contracts with multiple DRAM manufacturers, so the memory in the PS5 will not cost more until those contracts run out.

But they will run out. At that point the memory manufacturers will charge considerably more, as Sony will directly be competing with everyone else for a very much reduced supply of DRAM.

There's rumours Microsoft did not have long term contracts for the XBox. They may have just been buying memory on the spot market, which can be a good move sometimes - it keeps a large financial liability off the balance sheet and means flexibility to take advantage of sudden drops in the cost of DRAM - but it can be a huge crisis if the cost shoots up, as it's doing now.
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True *but* as the rumours imply; Sony may have bought GDDR6 at a price that may let them do it affordably 120-130M Milestone without the price hike. I mean considering how well PS5 Consoles have charted in October I won't be suprised if the PS5 smashes the 95M barrier or even breach 100M this year (for reference 75M in 17th of Feburary 2025 Vs 50M in 28th of December 2023) due to discounts. If Sony is not dumb they'd lock down supply for another 20-30M consoles or even more than that just in case the PS6 has to be delayed.
 
DrBombcrater said:
The DRAM market doesn't really work like that. Big OEMs usually place long term purchasing contracts with a DRAM manufacturer, so for example Sony might commit to buy X number of GDDR6 chips at a certain price over a certain timescale. While that contract is in force the price of the chips won't change. It seems that Sony has current contracts with multiple DRAM manufacturers, so the memory in the PS5 will not cost more until those contracts run out.

But they will run out. At that point the memory manufacturers will charge considerably more, as Sony will directly be competing with everyone else for a very much reduced supply of DRAM.

There's rumours Microsoft did not have long term contracts for the XBox. They may have just been buying memory on the spot market, which can be a good move sometimes - it keeps a large financial liability off the balance sheet and means flexibility to take advantage of sudden drops in the cost of DRAM - but it can be a huge crisis if the cost shoots up, as it's doing now.
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Yes they will pay more, I'm just saying they will pay a lot less than you or I. Don't expect the PS5 to increase by $300 just because a kit of RAM at OC UK is now $300 more expensive thats what I'm saying
 
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Seems Samsung Phones did NOT go for a very long-term contract from Samsung Semi...
www.computerbase.de

Unberechenbare Speicherpreise: Samsung schließt selbst intern keine Jahresverträge mehr ab

Samsungs Chipsparte hat angeblich einen geplanten Jahresvertrag der eigenen Smartphone-Sparte mit Anfrage nach Speicher abgelehnt.
www.computerbase.de www.computerbase.de

So they only got a quarterly supply agreement - so much for being part of the Samsung juggernaut!

The article does imply Apple did a long-term deal with Kioxa though - might be NAND rather than DRAM though - which is ironic. Didn't the closed-wall fruit company out-ship Samsung recently too?
Also interesting was this snippet there from Micron:
HBM3E consumes three times the amount of silicon compared to D5 to produce the same number of bits. Looking ahead, we expect the trade ratio to increase with HBM4, and then again with HBM4E when we expect it to exceed 4 to 1. This sustained and significant increase in silicon intensity for the foreseeable future contributes to tightness for industry leading edge node supply and constrains capacity for non-HBM products.
HBM also needs far more complex 2.5D/3D packaging which might have a further negative impact on yields.
 
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Cadder said:
Managed to order Acer Predator VESTA2 64GB DDR5 600MHz CL300 for £401 delivered. Feels like a ridiculous price but was the cheapest by hundreds.
I hope it's a good kit.
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I've been using it since last march on my Asrock boards, it looks and performs great.
 
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