Why are RAM prices so high right now?

[CoffeeandBagels]

I finished my normal rig last year and got 8gb of DDR3 ram for about 40 bucks (total probobly like 44 or so). I'm collecting parts for a secondary rig and RAM prices seem to have gone through the roof!! This is a screenshot of the same ram cards I bought last year from PC parts picker.

 

Will the prices go back down again? How long should I wait?

 

[Sir Asvald]

DDR4 is out and DDR3 is and will be phased out in a few years.  Also --> Demand and Supply

[CoffeeandBagels]

Just now, Abdul201588 said:

DDR4 is out and DDR3 is and will be phased out in a few years.  Also --> Demand and Supply

hmm. So you think the price will increase until DDR3 is gone all together?

[Alex Kovacs]

The prices don't go lower. It requires a lot to make a ram stick and it's hard to get those resources.

[Princess Luna]

12 minutes ago, CoffeeandBagels said:

hmm. So you think the price will increase until DDR3 is gone all together?

smart phones are now using DDR4, so the demand increased which made price increase.

[FiveNine]

140-150e 16gb ddr4 on average atm in EU

[Sack]

9 minutes ago, Ficus said:

The prices don't go lower. It requires a lot to make a ram stick and it's hard to get those resources.

That's where you're wrong buddy, RAM are usually some of the cheapest parts of your build.

 

I think that the reason is "coincidence", by that I mean that there are probably a lot of people changing to the new platforms using DDR4 now, and someone mentioned that smartphones have started to use it too now, so you have different factors coming together to make demand higher, and that's when prices go up, with AMD's new products coming up as well there's a big pool of consumers ready to migrate to the new platforms as well.

 

Atleast, that's what I think.

[Alex Kovacs]

1 minute ago, Sack said:

That's where you're wrong buddy, RAM are usually some of the cheapest parts of your build.

 

I think that the reason is "coincidence", by that I mean that there are probably a lot of people changing to the new platforms using DDR4 now, and someone mentioned that smartphones have started to use it too now, so you have different factors coming together to make demand higher, and that's when prices go up, with AMD's new products coming up as well there's a big pool of consumers ready to migrate to the new platforms as well.

 

Atleast, that's what I think.

Well, thanks for informing me

[Sack]

5 minutes ago, Wikiforce said:

but Intel's processors prices decreased for same reason; as more people are will buy ryzen seeing it's performance in leaked benchmarks. Some retailers such as MicroCenter decreased the price of Skylake/ KabyLake chips.

Your point being...?

[atavax]

8 minutes ago, Wikiforce said:

RAM should be cheaper, i see in my region prices for both DDR3 and DDR4 have doubled, not just DDR3.

There is something called the law of supply and demand. When supply is high and demand is low, prices drop. When supply is low and demand is high, prices rise.

 

The demand for DDR4 has rapidly grown with it being used in more and more smartphones. Until Supply catches up, until production of ddr4 ram increases enough to meet demand, the prices will remain high. It sounds like this will be at least until the end of this year http://www.pcgamer.com/heres-why-ddr4-ram-prices-have-spiked/

 

The demand for DDR3 has dropped, but the supply of DDR3 has also dropped. As electronics age, the supply dwindles and the prices rise because supply keeps dropping.

[Sack]

2 minutes ago, Wikiforce said:

RAM should be cheaper, i see in my region prices for both DDR3 and DDR4 have doubled, not just DDR3.

Hah, don't I look stupid, I thought we were talking about a DDR4 price increase *shakes head*. I guess they're trying to milk DDR3 before they need to dump prices to get rid of their stock. Another reason might be if they dump prices on DDR3 then it would incentivise people to stay on old platforms rather than migrating to the new one, which would mean the retailers would not just lose out on the DDR4 price but also new motherboards and CPUs. By inflating prices they make sure that new costumers will buy into the new platform and that only people servicing old ones buy the old stuff.

[Kuro-x]

My 16GB of RAM for the pc I was gonna build officially cost as much as my Ryzen 5 1600. It's insane. First, our GPUs now it's our RAM sticks.

[pyrojoe34]

Yea it's kinda crazy... I bought 32GB DDR4-2666 for $120 last May... now the same exact kit is $360. I should have bought two and sold one of them for a mean profit.

[AncientNerd]

There are a combination of factors at work, first is the demand as others have said there are now a lot of different devices using memory that didn't in the past so there is more pressure on the supply with companies like Apple and Samsung building millions of smart phones that all eat into the DRAM supply. Second, multiple companies have taken fabrication facilities offline in the last couple of months to modernize them, which put additional pressure on the supply side. In addition there are multiple companies that are in the process of bringing new fab lines up in existing fabs which slows down production in those fabs, and others are bringing new fabs online which means they are transferring experienced workers to the new fabs (and in chip fabrication experience really counts), so the older fabs are working with a mix of less experienced workers and older more experienced workers again pulling production down.

 

The upshot is that hopefully in about 6 months the production will ramp back up and prices will be coming back down, but until then the prices stay high or get higher.

[DataMeister]

@AncientNerd - So what you are saying is that RAM manufacturers got caught with their pants down in predicting the increased demand for DDR4 during the transition phase, so now they are all playing catch up. They are simultaneously shutting down a lot of DDR3 production to make room for DDR4, causing both product lines to become more scarce.

 

Here's to hoping they get it all running smoothly again before I want to upgrade my PC. I bought 16GB of RAM in 2015 for about $70. I was hoping I could pay that price for 32GB by 2020 when I figured I'd need to upgrade it. Traditionally that has been how RAM prices fall. Every 4 years or so you can get double the RAM for the same price.