Why have RAM prices skyrocketed?

"AI" is being used as an excuse to jack up everything now...
What's next: AI toilet paper, AI hand sanitizer.. milk, bread, etc..

First Energy just sent their yearly junk mail to our homes stating they are going to hit up the utility commission to ask for increase in electric rates for "upgrades and upkeep" shenanigans
 
Ouch..

Screenshot 2025-11-19 153408.png
 
Micro Center has made the memory part of the bundles separate from the cpu and board. 100 for a single 16g stick and 210 for 32 in 2x16. It goes up from there. The cheapest stand alone is 109.99 for that single 16 and 199 for 32. It goes up from there. This is DDR5 of course. Brutal.

My son wants to sell his PC and I’m considering just cashing out on the 32g if ddr4 in there but I almost feel dirty for participating…

And yes bad time to be in need of ram for sure.
 
yinzerniner said:
Again not really fair to compare prices from third party sellers as their entire raison d’etre is to price scalp.

But yeah even ddr5 6000 cl40 is going for $150 per 2x16gb minimum. And there’s no end in sight.

Awful time to build a new setup.
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Again, not from a 3rd party.

These are Canadian prices, I am not American.
 
freeagentt said:
Again, not from a 3rd party.

These are Canadian prices, I am not American.
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So that’s like $60 is freedom dollars? Between that and free healthcare we should all move to Moose Jaw ….

But for real yeah that’s a legit +150% increase in 60 days. This timeline is the worst.
 
I am starting to think it's not the ram chips and more those gold bus plates, even if its gold plated still gold at $4,077.10 for 1oz of gold.
 
Is common DDR 4 / 3200 / 3600 / Cl 18 basic 16GB / 32GB kits also going up in price or is it just DDR5 memory?
 
32GB G.Skill DDR4 is durt cheap here. Like 125 beans before tax. That's like 90 freedom units for my southern buds.
 
my patriot 16gb kit has almost doubled in price since i bought it ages ago, $99>190CAN. last time amazon sent me a "you interested?" email about them they were down to $60. so i guess they have tripled since Sept...
 
Bought my memory right after price hikes started, about 5 weeks ago. It had gone up about 30% from when I started planning my build this summer so ordered the RAM before the rest of the components, as I was afraid of a price spiral. It has gone up another 30% in the last 3 weeks so was the right choice as I was planning to build around black Friday. Also got black friday related discounted price on the 9800x3d, even if the MB was full price (wanted a specific X870E MB), so not too bad overall. Definitely glad I started monitoring RAM prices when they started talking about shortage.
 
I bought my G.Skill 96GB kit back in March before any of this RAM insanity was on the radar. I mostly just did it because it was pretty cheap. $285 cheap, to be exact. Same kit is $800 now. Ridiculous.
 
Peat Moss said:
More's Law is Dead gives further context to the Rampocalypse:


View: https://youtu.be/BORRBce5TGw?si=vmPSAuMo35K6Sxd3
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Apparently MLID is referring to below deal

Marees said:

Samsung, SK Hynix join OpenAI’s $500 bn Stargate project with HBM supply pacts​

The creator of ChatGPT has requested volumes equivalent to as many as 900,000 wafers a month, twice the current global production capacity​

By Jeong-Soo Hwang and Chae-Yeon Kim
Published October 1, 2025 at 9:17 PM(KST)

The two South Korean chipmakers signed letters of intent on Wednesday with OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman to supply high-bandwidth memory (HBM) semiconductors for the US start-up’s so-called Stargate initiative, a program to construct a network of hyperscale AI data centers around the world by 2029.


The San Francisco-based company, the creator of generative AI ChatGPT, has requested volumes equivalent to as many as 900,000 wafers a month, more than twice the current global production capacity.

Analysts estimate the commitment amounts to more than 100 trillion won ($72 billion) of incremental demand for the Korean chipmakers over the next four years.


https://www.kedglobal.com/artificial-intelligence/newsView/ked202510010013

Via

OpenAI orders $71B in Korean memory chips​

CEO Altman orders $71 billion in HBM chips for Stargate project.
Robert Clark, Contributing Editor, Light Reading
October 2, 2025

https://www.lightreading.com/ai-machine-learning/openai-orders-71b-in-korean-memory-chips
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This is yet the latest episode in a long-running series. RAM has been a struggle bus for years, all the way back to COVID.

And since building RAM factories is very expensive and takes a long time to do, companies aren't super keen on building new ones to capture the downstream market (read: us enthusiasts).

Don't forget the downstream effects: you need RAM for everything. Mobo makers especially rely on people being able to buy RAM for their new builds. Why should they ship new SKUs at any volume when RAM prices are insane? ASUS, Gigabyte, et. al. often make almost a dozen different variants on a single chipset. You're going to see fewer SKUs, lower availability, all because of the RAM shortage.

At this point, I should have realized that the seemingly reasonable prices were fleeting, and we were about to hit a RAM shortage with habso-lute-lee stupid prices on RAM. I should have hoarded--should have bought more RAM than I could have possibly thought necessary. Then, at least, I wouldn't be "stuck" without options.

Rampocalypse indeed.
 
Oh my, my memory kit I bought in April (Corsair Dominator Titanium Black 6600Mhz CAS32 96GB 2x48G) for $384 costs over $1229 now! 😮🤣 Thats just stupidly priced. A buddy of mine is building a new system and has to settle for 32GB and is still paying more than I did for 96GB and a much faster kit.
 
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III_Slyflyer_III said:
Oh my, my memory kit I bought in April (Corsair Dominator Titanium Black 6600Mhz CAS32 96GB 2x48G) for $384 costs over $1229 now! 😮🤣 Thats just stupidly priced. A buddy of mine is building a new system and has to settle for 32GB and is still paying more than I did for 96GB and a much faster kit.
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Same here, I need 32gb for a simple build for dad and sister and ended getting lucky to find an alright cl36 kit at $160. The team group 6000 cl34 64gb I bought for $160 in June is now lowest price on Amazon $689.

And it will get worse before it gets better. This will be studied in Econ classes like Tulip Mania, that is if we haven’t completely submitted to our AI overlords by then.
 
pendragon1 said:
tldr "we're dropping consumers to chase AI money"
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Yeah, exactly. This quote says it all...

“The AI-driven growth in the data center has led to a surge in demand for memory and storage. Micron has made the difficult decision to exit the Crucial consumer business in order to improve supply and support for our larger, strategic customers in faster-growing segments,”

So, fuck consumers, we don't have the time or space to support you anymore. When the AI bubble bursts and all the money being spent has to be repaid and they realize AI doesn't make any money, they'll come crawling back with some bullshit about getting back to their roots.
 
Guys, should I be worried and grab some DDR4 now before prices skyrocket even more in the next few months? 😞 I’m currently running an old TrueNAS Core setup with dual E5-2697 v2 and 128GB DDR3 ECC RAM, and was planning on upgrading the server to a low-power DDR5 Intel system but with how mental DDR5 prices are right now that is off the table
 
Sickb0y said:
Guys, should I be worried and grab some DDR4 now before prices skyrocket even more in the next few months? 😞 I’m currently running an old TrueNAS Core setup with dual E5-2697 v2 and 128GB DDR3 ECC RAM, and was planning on upgrading the server to a low-power DDR5 Intel system but with how mental DDR5 prices are right now that is off the table
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Grab whatever you can, that is available/affordable

This shit isn't ending until 2029 or the world's biggest baddest mega-crash — whichever comes first !!!
 
So this box of ddr3 and ddr4 is gonna be worth some cash later. Gonna wait it out till 2026 lol...
Hell should part my 3 vm servers with 384gb ram each
 
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