RAM prices

See, now I think the prices are very reasonable. But then I do remember when it was a pound per megabyte back in 1996. Cost me over £100 for a 128Mb stick.
 
As Tres says supply and demand.

I think a couple of companies have scaled down production/pulled out of the consumer ram market in the last while, as well as thngs like moving fabrication plants over from RAM to Flash memory (which I think was more profitable for some companies).
Also more ram is being used in mobile devices (decreasing stock available to be put onto ram modules for PC's), and a new major chip has just come out which will likely increase the number of prebuilt systems sold for a bit.

I remember seeing ram literally doubling in price in the past after things like earthquakes, as well as plummeting through the floor (comparatively speaking) when a company has decided to pull out of the market/needed the cash urgently and dumped stock from it's warehouse.

At the moment you can get 16GB of decent DDR3 ram for around a hundred, about 4 years ago that was 4igb of DDR2, a few years before that, 1gb of DDR.

Unfortunately you can never really predict ram prices, as there are so many factors that can influence them, everything from the weather in Asia (extremely heavy rain can lead to a fabrication plant losing power and having to shut down*), to the exchange rate between the UK and the US :)

One thing you can normally predict is that within a couple of weeks of me buying ram for my home machine, the price will half.
So I'm half expecting 32GB of ram to drop to £100 in about a week as I bought some last week :p



*Or in the case of the HDD manufacturers, flood several of the major factories, and worse than that, flood a number of the big suppliers of parts for the drives (thus affecting drives being made in factories in other regions).
 
When the 2x4GB HyperX Grey 1600MHz kits were on deal of the day for £20 last year I accidentally duplicated my order, but luckily 5UB was able to cancel one for me before they shipped, god if I knew then what I know now lol... (that kits £54 today).
 
snitcher said:
monopolistic pricing. it only comes down if there is any competition.
Click to expand...

Except there is a fair bit of competition.
But it's more profitable for them to make other products with the factories than ram at the price it was selling at, or to sell the RAM chips for use in other things*.
Hence from memory some of the fabrication plants moved to making stuff that actually made them some reasonable money :)

It doesn't take a large percentage change in the production of RAM to affect the pricing, especially if demand is reasonably high.

I've got a feeling that there was also a big slump in the sales of PC's and Laptops last year which would have affected the price of RAM, as there would have been more on the market than needed (due to it not being used in making boxed systems), hence the price per GB would have dropped..

*Back when DVD was relatively new, most of the DVD drives used the same chip as needed for mobile phones, so when they could get more money selling the part to Nokia/Samsung/Sony etc for use in the mobiles, the supply for DVD drives dropped, cue an increase in the price of the DVD drives and players (or at the very least a shortage in them), as they weren't able to make as many.
 
aye the huge price increase makes me glad that haswell and richland are still on ddr3, means i can change cpu and mobo and keep my current sticks, paid £30 for 8GB last year when i went from 4gb to 12gb
 
I asked because I paid for 16GB RAM £72 Jan 2012. Up until Jan this year prices were same or cheaper. Now they've doubled.

I thought I missed something like a flood in a RAM manufacturing plant.

But its just the normal cycle I guess, in time for new haswell builds.
 
ubersonic said:
When the 2x4GB HyperX Grey 1600MHz kits were on deal of the day for £20 last year I accidentally duplicated my order, but luckily 5UB was able to cancel one for me before they shipped, god if I knew then what I know now lol... (that kits £54 today).
Click to expand...

Same. I purchased mine for £20 or thereabouts last year. They were dirt cheap.
 
high..You are joking right.. Even with some variable increases, memory has never been so low. I recall only a few years back paying £200 for a measly gig , if that.
 
The ram prices are still low compared to some years ago as some have mentioned already, but compared to what they were less than a year ago they are high.

I guess some of us got used to seeing them at such low prices for a while it's making it look expensive now, but they are not really looking back on past purchases (looks at ocz platinum sticks).
 
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