RAM prices soar 500% in a year, 128GB DDR5 now $3,399
Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months, up to 10x the lowest ever tracked prices
Memory prices have skyrocketed, with 128GB DDR5 kits now costing $3,399—ten times their lowest-ever tracked price. Even mainstream 32GB DDR5-6000 kits have jumped from $72 to $392 in just 12 months. The surge, driven by AI demand, has left PC builders facing unprecedented costs, as detailed in Tom's Hardware's price tracking and PCPartPicker data.
We're officially in dire straits.
- nirav72
I've inadvertently stocked piled a bunch of DDR4 memory over the years. Usually bought them on an impulse when I saw a good deal, hoping to use it later when someone in the family/friend wanted a new gaming PC or for my own homelab projects. I'm happy with just using DDR4 at this point. The motherboards/CPUs are still relatively cheap either new or on secondary markets. With a decent GPU, the performance difference between DDR4 vs DDR5 is marginal. Most people won't even notice it. My point is, if cost is a factor for a new build, then stick with older hardware. Especially if your use case is gaming or home server.
- 1saadcodes
500% in a year is just insane. I knew RAM prices were going up, but $3k+ for 128GB of DDR5 makes me wonder how much of this is actually AI demand, and how much is this just manufacturers taking advantage of it. They have done this in the past after all
- z_rho_one
After RAM prices climbed 200% between August and November of last year, a store associate at Micro Center encouraged me to buy some RAM sticks if I needed them because "prices might continue to rise for a few years". I told him that was ridiculous and nobody would tolerate it if prices got higher. How wrong I was...
- cosmic_cheese
The situation is absolutely awful for anybody who needs significant memory or storage (or devices incorporating such).
Even people who think they have enough for the next few years already could end up with an unpleasant surprise if they e.g. have a stick or two of RAM go bad or a GPU fry. I have a few machines with aging sticks that I'm hoping will manage to hold out until when/if things improve.
- haunter
If you want even more bad news: display panel makers also want to raise prices
"Due to the continued rise in the prices of core components globally, the production cost of monitors has increased significantly, and we can no longer absorb this pressure on our own."
https://respawnfirst.com/we-can-no-longer-absorb-this-ktc-wa...
- atleastoptimal
Is the end result of this is that anything that is useful to AI going to be permanently more expensive, as the value a human hobbyist can get out of a certain amount of RAM will always be far less than the value a frontier AI model can get out of it?
- tedggh
I still hope all this will come crashing down, there will be an oversupply of components and RAM will be cheaper than paper.
- Taikhoom10
It is all temporary and cyclical - https://s-1.vercel.app/posts/the-capital-cycle-theory/
- sys32768
My Dell rep quoted me $736 for a single 16GB RDIMM for the newer Dell Pro 16 laptop, which retails at its baseline configuration with 16GB for ~$1000.
- techteach00
There is no law that states memory must be a consumer product. I truly believe the era of personal computing was a beautiful blip that our masters are beginning to take away from the general public. It could be terminals and time sharing for the foreseeable future through "smart" phones.