whats up with ram prices

Associate
Joined
20 Jun 2009
Posts
258
as daft as it may sound it is making me a little hesitent to upgrade at the moment, but there is no sign of it coming back down. Might have to just pay to extra needed:(
 
Man of Honour
Joined
25 Oct 2002
Posts
31,750
Location
Hampshire
^^because RAM was 'underpriced' for a while. If you look at the history of the RAM market, it is traditionally by far the most volatile when it comes to pricing out of all components. It's not the first time we've seen mature technology get a price hike when it comes to memory, and in fact I wasn't surprised it's gone back the other way because it had got to the stage where the 'normal' amount of memory was only costing like £60.

Things did start expensive and got cheaper for DDR3. It used to be what, £200+ for a 2GB kit? Then it dropped down as you expected, but then because it's RAM prices fluctuated up again. That's what happens with memory, you get these periods where it gets more expensive, it doesn't follow a hard and fast rule.

Good example here from 2006 (posts prior to that have been nuked): http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17623644
As you can see people were quite happy paying well over £100 for the 'normal' amount of RAM at the time (2GB).
 
Last edited:
Associate
Joined
3 Apr 2010
Posts
87
Location
London
but is the price of ddr3 going up more or is it gonna drop soon i can probily wait till the end of summer

I can't wait, *not as in, overtly excited, but as in panic. lol. I'm borrowing a cheap laptop sold to its owner in 2006, it's slow, sluggish and can JUST about handle internet; trying to load & play youtube vids is very temperamental. The laptop is well overdue to be returned to its rightful owner - all the while because I have no PC. So of course I'm going to HAVE to buy RAM at whatever price it's at. Very annoying. Oh well. I'll just have to hope the price goes sky-high when I come to sell it off, but I think Nvidia will be the sole graphics producers by that time & the 2030 Olympics will once again be back in China. :p
 
Man of Honour
Joined
25 Oct 2002
Posts
31,750
Location
Hampshire
Personally I doubt DDR3 will go above £150 for a cheap 4GB kit but that is just my gut feeling based on the typical price of memory at any given point over the last decade rather than actually based on any kind of facts or industry knowledge.

I think the key point is that the high-end stuff (PC16000+ or CAS7) may shoot up in price due to low yields but if you NEED to buy memory at any given point in time you can always go for some cheapy PC10666 CAS9 stuff which I doubt will get too extreme price wise. And the performance benefit of faster memory, for the vast majority of people, is fairly minimal (certainly 4GB of cheap DDR3 is way better than 2GB of posh stuff).
 
Soldato
Joined
11 Jan 2005
Posts
9,961
Location
Birmingham
****** stupid now...

I paid 80quid for 6gb of good ocz ram (tri channel) like last summer... 160 now.

Moving to mitx I'd need 2x4gb (as 4gb just isnt enough for me tbh and with only 2 ram slots..) 400 quid? FOR HUNDRED POUNDS?
 
Last edited:
Soldato
Joined
7 Aug 2009
Posts
4,901
Location
London
4gb of 1600mhz ram can still be got for the equivelant of £65 in America.

The prices haven't gone up, the UK is just getting ripped off as usual and we take it bending over backwards as usual.
 
Associate
Joined
5 Sep 2009
Posts
1,225
4gb of 1600mhz ram can still be got for the equivelant of £65 in America.

The prices haven't gone up, the UK is just getting ripped off as usual and we take it bending over backwards as usual.

get it imported, not everything is spotted and its probably worth the risk.

i got a DLPprojector through a lot cheaper :)
 
Caporegime
Joined
17 Feb 2006
Posts
29,263
Location
Cornwall
People may turn their noses up at paying £100 for memory bearing in mind you could get away with spending around half that a year or two back, but if you compare to the cost of other components (CPU, Mobo, Gfx card, Monitor, SSD etc) it is not really that outlandish a price.

That only really holds up if you bought at least an i3/phenom for cpu, and at least a 5770, etc.

My CPU was £60, my gfx was £60 (2nd hand tho, doesn't count I guess), and my motherboard was £65.

So £100 for RAM *is* a bit much. Given that you can't really get away with 2gb RAM anymore.
 
Caporegime
Joined
17 Feb 2006
Posts
29,263
Location
Cornwall

You have to wonder how much longer these ludicrous prices will persist for.

(Or should that be, "You have to wonder for how much longer these prices will persist?" I forget.)
 
Caporegime
Joined
17 Feb 2006
Posts
29,263
Location
Cornwall
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-165-OC&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517

im pretty sure these werent there yesterday, but if any do magically restock themselves, im defo getting a pair. only 8 quid more than what i paid for the ones im using now.

giving the fact they're only 3 months old i could probably make a profit...

Not saying this is an example, but you know a lot of retailers have what I call "google specials". They're never in stock, and they're priced really low.

It seems the sole purpose of these products is to find their way into price comparison search results, such as Google Shopping. But you can never actually buy any.
 
Soldato
Joined
22 Mar 2008
Posts
11,658
Location
London
^^because RAM was 'underpriced' for a while. If you look at the history of the RAM market, it is traditionally by far the most volatile when it comes to pricing out of all components. It's not the first time we've seen mature technology get a price hike when it comes to memory, and in fact I wasn't surprised it's gone back the other way because it had got to the stage where the 'normal' amount of memory was only costing like £60.

Things did start expensive and got cheaper for DDR3. It used to be what, £200+ for a 2GB kit? Then it dropped down as you expected, but then because it's RAM prices fluctuated up again. That's what happens with memory, you get these periods where it gets more expensive, it doesn't follow a hard and fast rule.

Good example here from 2006 (posts prior to that have been nuked): http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17623644
As you can see people were quite happy paying well over £100 for the 'normal' amount of RAM at the time (2GB).

There is no reason why RAM prices should be any more volatile than other things
 
Back
Top Bottom