Why have RAM prices skyrocketed?

In 2022 I paid 450 plus tax for a 64GB 6400 C32 xmp kit at this point I paid the new high capacity low latency tax

Last week I paid 550 plus tax for a 48GB 6000 C26 expo kit at this point I payed the ai shortage new 48gb module low latency tax

I've always been unlucky with ram kits.

But I grabbed a X870E board and with the new 9850X3D round the corner I've had enough of the god damn e cores bullshit and looks like Intels next CPU is going to have even more e cores enough is enough lol.

So my current rig with 64GB 6400 Cl32 13900KS system will be my backup/home theater rig and my new main gaming system will be the 9850X3D 48GB 6000 Cl26 setup.

Yeah I paid a few hundred more and it sucks BUT I'm good for the next 5 years for sure and even though I overpaid for RAM every time at least I get the best high capacity and low latency sets and it will last a long time so I'm set 😵

Sometimes you get snowballed lol 😁
 
cpufrost said:
The Crucial 128GB DDR5 5600 kit (2x64GB) we bought back in August for $299 is now $1155! I knew I should have ordered the limit on those!
Click to expand...

G9B_LlMXwAAyOf1.png
 
Has DDR3 gone up in price too? I'm running 4x4GB DDR3 1333MHz 8-8-8-20 on LGA1156.
They should produce some adapter that will allow the use of DDR3 memory on the am4 socket. You put a bunch (64-128GB) of cheap DDR3 memory on AM4 and just play.
 
Strange bird said:
Has DDR3 gone up in price too? I'm running 4x4GB DDR3 1333MHz 8-8-8-20 on LGA1156.
They should produce some adapter that will allow the use of DDR3 memory on the am4 socket. You put a bunch (64-128GB) of cheap DDR3 memory on AM4 and just play.
Click to expand...

Lol
I'm quite sure the memory support is baked into the Ryzen memory controller with exclusive DDR4 support only.
 
When you have 64GB or more of RAM, you don't need virtual memory that constantly writes to your SSD?
 
jlbenedict said:
Lol
I'm quite sure the memory support is baked into the Ryzen memory controller with exclusive DDR4 support only.
Click to expand...
It seems so. For that to work, you would have to do everything from scratch.
"Passive mechanical adapters that convert DDR3 modules to fit DDR4 slots do not work because of incompatible signaling and voltages. Any claim of an adapter making DDR3 run in DDR4 mode is incorrect."
 
Even running slow DDR4 limits the performance of a Zen 3 CPU a lot. Just going from average latency single rank DDR4 3200mhz to a low latency 3600mhz dual rank set can be more than 5% performance difference in a lot of use cases so don't want to know how bad a DDR3 kit would limit a Zen 3 CPU, if they were compatible.
 
Strange bird said:
It seems so. For that to work, you would have to do everything from scratch.
"Passive mechanical adapters that convert DDR3 modules to fit DDR4 slots do not work because of incompatible signaling and voltages. Any claim of an adapter making DDR3 run in DDR4 mode is incorrect."
Click to expand...
Exactly, the CPU's memory controller has to be compatible with it.
Phenom II was compatible with both DDR2 and DDR3, but AM4 CPUs are all DDR4 exclusively.
 
I'm running 4x8gb DDR4 and debating picking up an extra kit in case. Then again, don't OC and running at specific 3200 and ram is like the last failure point but these prices are just becoming nuts.
 
Was debating on picking up some additional sets just in case as well...
I've noticed in just this weekend 32gb DDR4 kits have jumped $40 in a span of just a couple of days..
 
jlbenedict said:
Was debating on picking up some additional sets just in case as well...
I've noticed in just this weekend 32gb DDR4 kits have jumped $40 in a span of just a couple of days..
Click to expand...
When I checked around a month ago, the 3600mhz CL16 2x16GB dual rank kit I used with my 5800x3D was priced at 2x what it cost in December 2024. Still have a spare that is supposed to replace the slow 3200Mhz CL 18 memory in my secondary, just haven't gotten around to swapping it. My the secondary computer is rarely used as it is mostly for big TV gaming and I've mostly done that on my PS5 Pro, even if the 5800X + 7900GRE is a bit faster.
 
jlbenedict said:
Was debating on picking up some additional sets just in case as well...
I've noticed in just this weekend 32gb DDR4 kits have jumped $40 in a span of just a couple of days..
Click to expand...
yeah prices on DDR4 are nuts now. kick myself for not picking up a spare but honestly, why would anyone have picked up spare DDR4 before this craziness.

Atleast sticks generally have a lifetime warranty in case. I honestly toned down my pc to run my 5800XT on ECO, and sticking to 3200 on my sticks to keep everything cool. Gotta protect this rig! I was debating upgrading my board since x370 is showing its age with single m2 slot and PCIE3.0 but it plays so nice with my 4x sticks I'm just sticking it out.
 
If I didn't need it before, I don't need it now. No need to waste money on "backups". I can count the number of times on 1 hand from 30 years of building PCs when a component died and I needed a backup, and most the time i ended up upgrading that component anyway, not swapping it. Ur basically paying stupid prices for something you do not need. Its still better to just keep that money for an eventual upgrade down the road and invest it in the meantime (which unless ur selling said component, thats not an investment).
 
Last edited:
III_Slyflyer_III said:
If I didn't need it before, I don't need it now. No need to waste money on "backups". I can count the number of times on 1 hand from 30 years of building PCs when a component died and I needed a backup, and most the time i ended up upgrading that component anyway, not swapping it. Ur basically paying stupid prices for something you do not need. Its still better to just keep that money for an eventual upgrade down the road and invest it in the meantime (which unless ur selling said component, thats not an investment).
Click to expand...
You're 100% right. It's all FOMO across the space now. Although I am thinking if it's worth trying to sell my Board/CPU/Ram and jump on a bundle from microcenter but honestly, I really don't even need it.... fomo...
 
qwertyaas said:
yeah prices on DDR4 are nuts now. kick myself for not picking up a spare but honestly, why would anyone have picked up spare DDR4 before this craziness.
Click to expand...
I did. My rig was crashing and memtest86 said I had a bad stick so I RMA'ed it and picked up another kit to use until I got it back. Ram swap fixed the problem. Got the RMA back from G.Skill and now I have spare DDR4.
 
I was debating buying the 5800 XT cpu when they offered the free memory kit (lol at that deal now).. I have the 5700x on B550 MSI Mortar with 4 x 8GB Muskin Redline matched kits @ 3600Mhz Cl 14, it's always been happy to run a 4 x 8GB config if that is the only way you can get there.
 
crazycrave said:
I was debating buying the 5800 XT cpu when they offered the free memory kit (lol at that deal now).. I have the 5700x on B550 MSI Mortar with 4 x 8GB Muskin Redline matched kits @ 3600Mhz Cl 14, it's always been happy to run a 4 x 8GB config if that is the only way you can get there.
Click to expand...
4x8gb is supposedly valid for am4, for am5 it is supposedly a problem with 4 ram sticks, it may or may not work
 
Strange bird said:
4x8gb is supposedly valid for am4, for am5 it is supposedly a problem with 4 ram sticks, it may or may not work
Click to expand...
That depends on the speed and number of ranks. The more DIMMs and more rank you have the slower you have to go. 4x dual rank should work just fine at JEDEC speed, maybe a bit more. You're not getting max speed with 4x dual rank dimms though. Just look at what's on the market and board specs for the ones that actually list max speeds for different combinations of ranks per dimm and # of dimms. 2x single rank is always the fastest, at least in terms of clocks. Usually 2x dual rank is even or faster than 4x single rank, and of course 4x dual rank is the slowest.

It's the same way for Intel. Can't get max clocks with more than 2 single rank modules.
 
zandor said:
That depends on the speed and number of ranks. The more DIMMs and more rank you have the slower you have to go. 4x dual rank should work just fine at JEDEC speed, maybe a bit more. You're not getting max speed with 4x dual rank dimms though. Just look at what's on the market and board specs for the ones that actually list max speeds for different combinations of ranks per dimm and # of dimms. 2x single rank is always the fastest, at least in terms of clocks. Usually 2x dual rank is even or faster than 4x single rank, and of course 4x dual rank is the slowest.

It's the same way for Intel. Can't get max clocks with more than 2 single rank modules.
Click to expand...
Dual rank has advantages and the slightly slower timings is often made up for by those advantages. You need quite a bit lower timings on 2x single rank to beat 4x single rank or 2x dual rank . Running 4x dual rank is usually not a good idea though, unless one needs the amount of memory. The Zen 3 memory controller is much more robust than the controllers on earlier offerings so running 2x dual rank or 4x single rank is generally fine.
 
evhvis said:
Dual rank has advantages and the slightly slower timings is often made up for by those advantages. You need quite a bit lower timings on 2x single rank to beat 4x single rank or 2x dual rank . Running 4x dual rank is usually not a good idea though, unless one needs the amount of memory. The Zen 3 memory controller is much more robust than the controllers on earlier offerings so running 2x dual rank or 4x single rank is generally fine.
Click to expand...
Can confirm, my 9950X3D handles 2x Dual Rank 96GB (48GB x 2) perfectly fine, and with tight timings. Running 1:1 6400MT/s 28-36-36-44-68 @1T, no issues, perfectly stable with 1.45V on the Dimms.

Plus, if you use X3D, the ram timings matter even less.
 
My man is slamming 1.45v into like $1500 worth of ram right here!

I know it’s considered safe but my 3 ddr5 kits are all back at 1.25 and whatever I can run stable.
 
TheHig said:
My man is slamming 1.45v into like $1500 worth of ram right here!

I know it’s considered safe but my 3 ddr5 kits are all back at 1.25 and whatever I can run stable. Super oft I know…
Click to expand...
Do you think it's not a good idea to run 1.45v into ram? Do you know of any voltage causing degradation on ram kits running 1.45? I have a cl26 kit that requires 1.45v but not sure if I'm going to keep it or return it.
 
Gaming it does not even hit 43C... lol. And yes, even though I know it is in "jest", for anyone out there, anything under 1.5V is considered safe even with passive cooling. If I am running a heavy Ai workload that uses the RAM (when it does not fully fit on my 5090) the RAM will get to around 54C, but still have had 0 issues, even when it is being slammed at like 86GB/s in bandwidth.
 

I purchased 4 sticks at Micro Center in September​

My AM5 motherboard can only run two sticks:(

G.SKILLDDR5.jpg

GSkill87499.jpg
 
Last edited:
I paid $49.97 (With tax) for This 32GB Set (16GB x 2) of DDR4 SODIMMS now it is up to $182.99 no tax! That is over three times what I paid for in in August of 2023!
 
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
Format _C: said:
I paid $49.97 (With tax) for This 32GB Set (16GB x 2) of DDR4 SODIMMS now it is up to $182.99 no tax! That is over three times what I paid for in in August of 2023!
Click to expand...

2023 was a great year for RAM I guess. Microcenter had piles of returned RAM from their combo deals.
1000006197.jpg
 
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
patric said:
2023 was a great year for RAM I guess. Microcenter had piles of returned RAM from their combo deals. View attachment 779234
Click to expand...

Yes it was a great year for PC prices me not so much :( as that was the year I got an infected knee replacement but so far 2026 is going to be my year!
I bet that ram is now up over the price of the "was $139.99" price was even for returned ones!
 
Thug Esquire said:
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.
Click to expand...
Yep, the long running series 'Gouging the MF World'. It started in Covid when 32GB DDR3 RDIMMs in the used market shot up from $24/ea to over $70/ea for 3 years, and then crashed down to as cheap at 19c/GB. That same stuff is now well over $1/GB, if even that cheap. DDR4 followed the same route but not as bad during covid since it was unobtainium and server upgrades were paused so no one needed DDR4. Then when the data center upgrades came, the prices in the used market dropped to the same prices as DDR3 32GB RDIMMs--as cheap as 19c/GB for the 2400Mhz stuff.

Covid era also taught companies that storage can be manipulated, first with Chia which did cause real supply demand changes that resulted in price changes, but then also artificial changes will result in the same buy patterns which they learned well.

I remember the 10xx series gouging from covid time as well--gpu prices and gouging have now become 'normal'.

motherboards, power supplies, etc - same playbook.

So what's going on? It's a new shift in pricing policies from the standard 'we are manufacturing at X, distributor gets it for 2X, retailer for 4X, consumer at 5X' (each level of distribution generally needs a 100% markup to cover overhead and a <10% net profit), to a we manufacture for X, let's see how much MF money we can get for this, starting at 50X, so there's no more distribution markups or anything else that's logical (especially with direct sales), just an F everyone, let's get as much money as fast as we can. And then the next step will be to bail out and screw over everyone. That's the quick fly by nights. With the big companies, I guess they can sell to private equity 'investors' who destroy companies on the regular.

So what all does this really mean? Well, for one, this is all temporary and is just being fed and fanned by mob rule. Step out of the mob, let them go crazy until they stop, and when they stop, the prices will drop back to normal. Two, if companies want to build a steady, available product line at a fair price, there will be a long term market for it. But who knows if consumers care about longevity anymore, hence all this 'get rich now and F everyone' behavior. I mean, do they know something we don't? Like there's an asteroid heading to Earth? Or the oceans will jump by 10ft next year? Everyone seems to be living like on borrowed time now. Are we almost extinct? I thought that was only supposed to happen in 2100 after the chinese take over the world in 2050 and really F it up...

This is another reason to bring back manufacturing to the US. Even micron doesn't have a fab here anymore (from what I recall). If we had US factories, US could be banking on all this gouging, and/or making domestic supply for critical needs like military and medical.
 
Had a customer email me asking to quote for a 32GB RAM upgrade and 1TB NVMe upgrade for their gaming laptop.

I sent them a quote and was not in the least bit surprised when they didn't come back.

To be honest this could be the nail in my business coffin. Thank goodness the mortgage is paid, no credit cards or car finance and my old $1200 a month company pension kicks in in April.
 
I ordered 512G of DDR4 memory (A-Tech 512GB 8x 64GB 2S2Rx4 4Rx4 PC4-21300 2666 ECC REG RDIMM Server Memory RAM) on eBay for 1 of my Proxmox servers on 10/22/2025 for $1157. I just checked and it is now going for $3200... This is insane. That with the rise in price on SSDs, going to kill the market. Of course, when the AI boom dies, there is going to be so much compute, memory and storage hit the used market, it will be a good time to upgrade. Just wish that were sooner...
 
As an eBay Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
vorpel said:
I ordered 512G of DDR4 memory (A-Tech 512GB 8x 64GB 2S2Rx4 4Rx4 PC4-21300 2666 ECC REG RDIMM Server Memory RAM) on eBay for 1 of my Proxmox servers on 10/22/2025 for $1157. I just checked and it is now going for $3200... This is insane. That with the rise in price on SSDs, going to kill the market. Of course, when the AI boom dies, there is going to be so much compute, memory and storage hit the used market, it will be a good time to upgrade. Just wish that were sooner...
Click to expand...
🤞 🤞
 
As an eBay Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top