WHY IS RAM SO FREAKING EXPENSIVE IN 2017?!?!

[Princess Luna]

The terrible pricing is what made me take my chances with an international RMA, so much can go wrong but with prices as is I can not afford buying a new kit after mine got defective, gotta hope for G.Skill's lifetime warranty to pay off.

[Wonderguy464712]

On 10/31/2017 at 1:15 PM, MrUnknownEMC said:

Supply is low and demand is high. I got my 32gb kit for 200 dollars early 2016 and now same kit is around 320 dollars. 

lucky my 16gb kit 2x8 cost me 200 dollars 6 months ago

[imReziqn]

I recently bought 4GB of DDR4 for £50 here in the UK... so expensive. I didn't realise my new motherboard only supported DDR4 so my plans of transferring my old DDR3 were ruined and I couldn't afford 8GB for my new system so have to wait and save up for another 4gb stick until I can actually play some of the newer games ..  If i can even start the PC, I have a post about my issues if anyone can help.

[desertcomputer]

14 hours ago, Wonderguy464712 said:

lucky my 16gb kit 2x8 cost me 200 dollars 6 months ago

Still higher than it use to be. Usually you could grab a 16GB kit for 120.

[Crunchy Dragon]

On 10/31/2017 at 8:27 AM, Zodiark1593 said:

RIP those on DDR3.

I moved from DDR3 to DDR4, cost me 80 dollars for a single stick of low-end 8Gb memory

 

On 11/1/2017 at 9:50 AM, Shog said:

WHY the price is expensive is because the government isn't regulating the market. Say we had a government driven economy. The price of ram might be the same and the industries don't have incentive to up their production capacity. Other interference could include RAM vouchers, raffling systems, and further ram ownership restrictions or applications where you would need to identify and prove your reasoning for needing more ram. 

Yes Capitalism allows the price to go up, and that incentives the manufacturers and producers to increase their production capabilities in order to deliver the most ram! To summarize, capitalism is the reason why there's even STILL ram on the market!

Memory prices are high due to the NAND/DRAM shortage happening, actually. Due to the still high demand and drastically lower supply, prices went up.

[Wonderguy464712]

16 hours ago, MrUnknownEMC said:

Still higher than it use to be. Usually you could grab a 16GB kit for 120.

Norwegian stores to get it shipped and mark up makes it more exspensive

[Canada EH]

economics 101 - Low supply + high demand = Expensive

 

Maybe look for used ram

[Hiya!]

Skyhynix factory was on fire and since smarthphone is booming right now the demand for nand memory is increased thats why THE PRICE OF RAM IS TOO DIMM HIGH

[NvidiaIntelAMDLoveTriangle]

I know a lot of people are on the "Supply and demand" train, but I'm not.

I'm on the greed/price fixing train. I don't buy the supply and demand thing in this case at all. Sure we've started to use more DDR4 ram since it came out, but not to the degree that the prices would go up by 300%+ and in same cases I've seen prices go up by 600%+.

No one on this planet can convince me the market for DDR4 grew so much that it would justify that exaggerated price increase.

[Ddarlington36]

On 1/1/2018 at 6:13 PM, NvidiaIntelAMDLoveTriangle said:

I know a lot of people are on the "Supply and demand" train, but I'm not.

I'm on the greed/price fixing train. I don't buy the supply and demand thing in this case at all. Sure we've started to use more DDR4 ram since it came out, but not to the degree that the prices would go up by 300%+ and in same cases I've seen prices go up by 600%+.

No one on this planet can convince me the market for DDR4 grew so much that it would justify that exaggerated price increase.

I have to agree 1000% it isn't just supply and demand. We had this back in 2012 when fuel prices kept increasing but this doesn't feel like that. More like greed and blaming it on shortages and see how much we're willing to pay.  Nearly $400 for 32gb of ddr4 2400mhz is ridiculous in my mind that more than a 3rd of the total cost of a minium spec rig 

[Yogeshramgude]

now days desktop users of numbers highly decrease in the market.very few peoples that only gamer & high end users they only uses Dektop system. so that big manufacture of Dram makers ex. Kingston,corsair etc. they not ready to spend time to make drams for looking limited market.now they cut off the production of Drams. so the same formula work on the market more requirements & less supply.that causes price goes high.then the main thing is now market move on ddr4 drams. so now makers only manufacturing ddr4 rams in limited basis.i think on next coming year ram cost goes high that till manufacturer not makes sufficient numbers of drams.we are all gamer waiting for that time.....

[trevrez]

1 hour ago, Yogeshramgude said:

now days desktop users of numbers highly decrease in the market.very few peoples that only gamer & high end users they only uses Dektop system. so that big manufacture of Dram makers ex. Kingston,corsair etc. they not ready to spend time to make drams for looking limited market.now they cut off the production of Drams. so the same formula work on the market more requirements & less supply.that causes price goes high.then the main thing is now market move on ddr4 drams. so now makers only manufacturing ddr4 rams in limited basis.i think on next coming year ram cost goes high that till manufacturer not makes sufficient numbers of drams.we are all gamer waiting for that time.....

Millions and millions of desktops are still used in offices and business environments across the world.  

[DarkSmith2]

hmn, we have seen this happen from ddr2 to ddr3 too. Over time prices for ram increased everytime.

 

The reason for this is that vendors buy in huge numbers when "new" RAM gets released to get the cheapest prices, So they literally buy every single RAM that was (pre)produced from the manufacturer at that time, after this the stocks of the vendors are fed up to the roof and therefore the vendors wont buy from the manufacturers again for a long time. This forces the manufacturers to reduce production and search for different markets since its hard for them to sell their products at this point.

 

Since nowdays the portable device market for RAM is much more consistent in demand its a logical step to use more capability to manufacture RAM for this market segment instead of RAM for Desktop PCs. Switching the manufacturing facilities to produce more DDR4 again for Desktops when demand grows again isnt as profitable for the manufacturer. And thats why RAM prices go up.

 

RAM prices wont go down by much until DDR5 hits the market, they will probably just go up even more. When DDR5 hits the market hillariously all RAM prices will fall again. (DDR2/DDR3/DDR4)

[yasheshvi yadava]

i had 16 gigs which i bought in 2016 (ddr4). it died a couple of months ago i checked the price and it was around 18000(around $320) for a corsair vengence rgb ram 

[Calidus]

1 hour ago, yasheshvi yadava said:

i had 16 gigs which i bought in 2016 (ddr4). it died a couple of months ago i checked the price and it was around 18000(around $320) for a corsair vengence rgb ram 

I'm not sure in your region but Corsair tends to have more then 2 year warranty on stuff, so I would RMA those sticks.

[Howie.201]

Guys I recomment checking out ebay. Prices are still high af in 2018 but for some reason you can find 2x8gigs ddr4 on abay for around 100 bucks. Not even these ugly green circuit board kinda things but real air cooled custom designs. Just look around a bit...

[App4that]

I've actually seen some great deals recently, picked up a 16g kit of 3200MHz Trident Z RGB for just over 100 bucks US brand new from Newegg. You just have to watch for deals. 

[ShortyfromLV]

https://techreport.com/news/33583/class-action-suit-alleges-samsung-micron-and-sk-hynix-fixed-dram-prices

Answers the 2017 question.