When it comes to NAND, NAND suppliers also prioritize large customers, which happen to be makers of AI servers. Chen does not expect capacity to swing back to PCs, smartphones, and other consumer devices in 2026, which will affect the prices of these devices.
The effects are clear to see. Enthusiasts are seeing RAM prices for custom-built PCs increase by orders of magnitude week on week, with 64GB of DDR5 RAM now costing more than a PS5 in some cases . This week's Black Friday and Cyber Monday RAM deals might be the last chance to buy RAM before prices skyrocket even further.
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Anton Shilov Social Links Navigation Contributing Writer Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.
russell_john The 32GB DDR5 6000 CL30 RAM I bought in late March for $99 is now going from the same vendor for $297 or exactly triple what I paid for it just 8 months ago …… I'm glad I don't have to worry about it for the next year or two Reply
Shiznizzle russell_john said: The 32GB DDR5 6000 CL30 RAM I bought in late March for $99 is now going from the same vendor for $297 or exactly triple what I paid for it just 8 months ago …… I'm glad I don't have to worry about it for the next year or two 3 weeks ago the 32GB 6000 38CL kit, which is not even good latency but will do for awhile, was 149 pounds. 5 weeks ago this kit was not even 80 pounds Overclockers in the UK last priced it at 419 pounds. 554 dollars for 32GB of mediocre DDR5. Double for manufacturers. Triple for us consumers. I am glad that i at least have some DDR5 now cos i can move up to Am5 even though my systems does not really need to move up. I could ride out this R 7 5800x, 32 GB 3600 DDR4, AMD 9060XT 16GB, 2 TB 990 EVO Plus M2 out till possibly Am6. The 9060 gives me solid 60 FPS at 1080. I dont need much. The only reason i wanted to move up to AM5 was to take full advantage of the 9060 in a PCIe 5 slot Reply
abufrejoval Well, on one hand this is going to seriously blunt the leading edge of all those new desktop CPUs coming out, because those would need matching memory to shine. On the other hand it's a lot of opportunities to become creative and recycle things that were going to scrap: I like that game more than the actual gaming: for me that's validation and I leave that mostly to the kids. E.g. I did buy some SO-DIMM to DIMM adapters for DDR4 and DDR5 when I when big on buying 32GB SO-DIMMs for my µ-servers, just in case I'd want to reuse that RAM after those NUCalikes had lost their low-power appeal. They seem to work, but I haven't really doubled down to see how timing and reliability might be impacted. They were dirt cheap so I just added them to the shopping basket on AliExpress, I didn't bet the farm on them. Too bad you can't split the capacity, too, because most other use cases don't really require 64GB RAM capacity and single channel RAM pains me physically; perhaps others might be more pinched not having a system at all. And that's one way to make productive use of these huge caches, right? 😜 How much one would invest into that obviously depends on how big AI will remain. But just trying to think on how much those huge megavendors have riding on their predictions, makes me rather glad I'm doing no more than DIY these days. For those who've been ditching older hardware because of W11: you know that Win11 24H2 IoT LTSC is supported until 2034 and runs on anything that supports POPCNT (since Nehalem) without a TPU, right? And you can excise CoPilot and all those other M$ nasties with slimmed down ISOs as well. While I don't mind playing around with Bazzite (or any other form of Linux), the kids really prefer to spend their time in-game, especially since they've become working adults with less fun time to spare. Reply
peterf28 RAM should be considered habitat/living space, because AI lives there. Reply
einheriar Looks like I am going to be a little longer on my am4 systems than anticipated.. I have 64GB in each PC (work PC and gaming PC) so I guess I need to upgrade my work PC to a 5950x (gaming has 580x3d) Getting the AM5 in 2026 -27 is going to be a bizarre money sink. Sp CPU upgrade and a new gaming graphics card will have to carry me over the next two years Reply
SayAgain Samsung leaked emails indicating this is entirely a “profit” strategy and nothing to do with supply and demand … just controlling the supply. I guess they learnt from nVidia how to manipulate the market for huge profit. The corporate world of excessive greed … or the failure of unregulated capitalism, take your pick. Samsung tried to suggest it was high demand from AI servers until some of their internal emails were leaked by hackers that breached their servers. Reply
EzzyB russell_john said: The 32GB DDR5 6000 CL30 RAM I bought in late March for $99 is now going from the same vendor for $297 or exactly triple what I paid for it just 8 months ago …… I'm glad I don't have to worry about it for the next year or two Not even that long ago. I bought 48GB of DDR5 6000 CL 30 in September for $139. Apparently I got in just under the wire. Reply
usertests SayAgain said: Samsung tried to suggest it was high demand from AI servers until some of their internal emails were leaked by hackers that breached their servers. Got a link? Reply
SevenandForty Isn't TeamGroup from Taiwan? Also I wonder how much of an effect this will have on DDR4 prices. Maybe we'll see AM4 make a resurgence again, at least for midrange or budget builds, although I suppose production ended recently. Reply
ohio_buckeye SevenandForty said: Isn't TeamGroup from Taiwan? Also I wonder how much of an effect this will have on DDR4 prices. Maybe we'll see AM4 make a resurgence again, at least for midrange or budget builds, although I suppose production ended recently. I think we’re already sing that trend. I peruse eBay a bit. Take a look at the prices on a 5700x or even a 5700g. For example if I sort by buy it now and lowest pricing in the US only, the cheapest ryzen 7 5700x is close to $175. In fact I just purchased a second hand hand 5700g for about $130 but many of them are in the $160 range. So I imagine you’ve got a lot of folks who were thinking of am5 that still have ddr4 sitting from an older box and are going that route with gpus being relatively inexpensive at the moment. Reply
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/the-ram-pricing-crisis-has-only-just-started-team-group-gm-warns-says-problem-will-get-worse-in-2026-as-dram-and-nand-prices-double-in-one-month#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com
- HPE adopts AMD’s Helios rack architecture for 2026 AI systems — new rack form factor gets its first major partner ahead of 2026 availability
- Into the Omniverse: How Smart City AI Agents Transform Urban Operations
- NVIDIA Accelerates AI for Over 80 New Science Systems Worldwide
- IBM CEO warns that ongoing trillion-dollar AI data center buildout is unsustainable — says there is 'no way' that infrastructure costs can turn a profit
- Samsung touts 96% lower-power NAND design — researchers investigate design based on ferroelectric transistors
Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.