DDR5 prices drop nearly 30%, but memory costs are still far from normal

[DragonSlayer101]

The big picture: After nearly a year of AI-driven DRAM price hikes that have increased the cost of consumer electronics and made memory upgrades unaffordable for many gamers and PC builders, relief may finally be on the horizon. According to supply chain sources in Asia, DDR5 prices dropped by nearly 30% last month, while DDR4 prices fell by around 5%, marking the first monthly decline since February 2025.

The spot price of a 16GB DDR4 chip has reportedly fallen by around 5% to $74.10 over the past month, following more than a year of unrelenting increases. This modest correction marks the first monthly decline in DRAM spot pricing since the rally began in early 2025, when a 16GB DDR4 chip cost just $3.20. Over the past 12 months, DDR4 spot prices have surged by an astonishing 2,200%, driven primarily by the rapid expansion of AI data centers.

Meanwhile, 16GB DDR5 spot prices have dropped to $37.20, and this decline is already reflected in the retail prices of consumer DRAM kits across online marketplaces in the US and China. As noted by Tom's Hardware, some 32GB DDR5 kits on Amazon are now 30% cheaper than they were last month.

However, despite the recent correction, both DDR4 and DDR5 are still trading at roughly 20 times their early-2025 prices. This is largely due to persistently high DRAM costs in the contract market, where PC OEMs source their components.

According to DigiTimes, the decline in spot prices can be attributed to two main factors. First, distributors that stockpiled memory at the start of the rally have finally begun selling off their inventories. Second, Google's announcement of the TurboQuant memory compression technique has prompted some distributors to clear out their stock.

However, lower prices in channel listings are unlikely to translate into reduced consumer DRAM costs, as spot trading represents only a small fraction of total memory sales.

Despite the temporary relief for spot traders, memory prices in the contract market are expected to rise between 58% and 63% quarter-over-quarter in Q2 2026, following a 95% increase in the previous quarter. Meanwhile, NAND flash prices are projected to jump 70 – 75% during the current quarter, suggesting SSD prices could climb even further in the coming weeks after already rising significantly in recent months.

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DDR5 prices drop nearly 30%, but memory costs are still far from normal

 

[noel24]

On top of AI bubble, Agent Orange started global recession, people will NOW grab Their wallets tight.
I don't know a single person who bought a computer this year, and I used to advise family and friends on the topic, because of this hobby. It's gonna be a disaster for the DIY industry, and smaller OEMs.

 

[m4a4]

Yeah... glad to see it finally happen. I did manage to grab enough for my rig just as it was starting to go up, so I am set for several years regardless.

But considering how close we are to having the Steam Machine compete with other stale offerings, it will be nice having that price stabilize to a more affordable level.

 

[NumberNine]

Just a 30% kinda day I guess.

 

[Loadedaxe]

On top of AI bubble, Agent Orange started global recession, people will NOW grab Their wallets tight.
I don't know a single person who bought a computer this year, and I used to advise family and friends on the topic, because of this hobby. It's gonna be a disaster for the DIY industry, and smaller OEMs.

“Agent Orange started a global recession” is a stretch when RAM prices have been riding the same boom to bust cycle long before AI was even a buzzword.

What you’re seeing now is classic overproduction meeting softer demand. Manufacturers went all in expecting AI and post COVID demand to keep climbing, and now inventories are catching up. That’s not politics.....that’s business misreading the room.

And..... “I don’t know a single person buying a computer” isn’t exactly a market indicator. That just means your circle isn't upgrading right now. Meanwhile, data centers, enterprise, and yes, AI all have been soaking up supply for the past couple years.

DIY will be fine.....It always looks “dead” at the peak and “booming” at the bottom. We’re just somewhere in between, like every other cycle.

But hey, if RAM prices dropping is now a political conspiracy, I guess we’ll blame elections for GPU shortages next too?.....or does that not fit your agenda?

 

[Megalomaniac]

My motherboard maxed out at 64GB DDR5 and I'm glad it did - otherwise I'd have wasted a lot of money pushing it to 128GB for no good reason. Hopefully components are back to normal ten years from now when I upgrade again.

 

[noel24]

“Agent Orange started a global recession” is a stretch when RAM prices have been riding the same boom to bust cycle long before AI was even a buzzword.

What you’re seeing now is classic overproduction meeting softer demand. Manufacturers went all in expecting AI and post COVID demand to keep climbing, and now inventories are catching up. That’s not politics.....that’s business misreading the room.

And..... “I don’t know a single person buying a computer” isn’t exactly a market indicator. That just means your circle isn't upgrading right now. Meanwhile, data centers, enterprise, and yes, AI all have been soaking up supply for the past couple years.

DIY will be fine.....It always looks “dead” at the peak and “booming” at the bottom. We’re just somewhere in between, like every other cycle.

But hey, if RAM prices dropping is now a political conspiracy, I guess we’ll blame elections for GPU shortages next too?.....or does that not fit your agenda?

I meant, on top of AI bubble, Hormuz straight debacle will cause people stop spending, alwayd do when austerity hits. Unlike in the past, PC component price increases are compounding, manufacturers stop invest in personal computers, nvidia and others push for paid cloud access to computational power. And long before We notice, new generation may loose interest, or not even realise personal computing was a thing. Like a VHS player. How many people have it today? I'm not American, I don't care about Your president, and Your egg prices, unless He destroys global economy, only for His cronies to play short on American economy.

 

[The Eck]

CV? I'm not American, I don't care about Your president, and Your egg prices, unless He destroys global economy

You mention Hormuz but you obviously don’t know oil prices today are LOWER than they were in 2008, and again in 2023, when Joe Biden was making good on his promise to “end the fossil fuel industry”. Even funniest is “green” Europeans setting monster taxes on oil and gas to reduce consumption, then whining like little girls over high prices.

 

[noel24]

You mention Hormuz but you obviously don’t know oil prices today are LOWER than they were in 2008, and again in 2023, when Joe Biden was making good on his promise to “end the fossil fuel industry”. Even funniest is “green” Europeans setting monster taxes on oil and gas to reduce consumption, then whining like little girls over high prices.

No matter who does that, high oil prices slow down economy and progress, make people stop buying, either because They feel They cannot afford, or wait for resolution. 2008 was crisis in general (lo and behold - US subprime crysis) - 65/55 nm was way too long offered in few generation of cards. 2022, not 2023, was probably Russian invasion of Ukraine, not US politics, and yeah, We have one long crysis in consumer semiconductors since 2018 crypto scam bubble.
Interesting that conservatives from around the world always put blames on liberals, but if You look at actual reasons, It's conservative governemnt action from previous term, that lead to the crysis.

 

[noblody]

I think it is important to mention these are quotations for 16Gb memory chips (not 16GB), so 8 of these are needed for a 16GB RAM stick.
For the curious, you can check the dramexchange.com website

 

[OortCloud]

The start of the end hopefully, but we'll see.
Just been reading some very inciteful stuff about OpenAI and how bad it's getting for them. It seems it costs them at least twice as much money to run their AI farms as they get back in revenue and the debt is only getting larger. Monetization of AI is proving far more difficult than they thought. For instance Sora cost $15 million a day in infrastructure and energy usage to run and it's best ever daily return was $2 million. The same story comes up time and again for all players. People like a bit of AI but it's just not good enough in most use-cases to be worth paying much for. There are obviously exceptions to this where AI is fantastic - development, medical etc etc. But in so many industries the unreliable and slightly whooly nature of the results just isn't good enough.

 

[Starfals]

On top of AI bubble, Agent Orange started global recession, people will NOW grab Their wallets tight.
I don't know a single person who bought a computer this year, and I used to advise family and friends on the topic, because of this hobby. It's gonna be a disaster for the DIY industry, and smaller OEMs.

Yep, I build around 15-30 computers a year. For friends, family and even friends of friends. This is the first time in 20 years that I dont do anything. Literally 0 computers so far. People always want to upgrade, add SSD, ram or a new CPU/GPU. Nothing this time. Even during the shortages... people bought computers and video cards. Stores had 1-3 cards in total and people still bought stuff somehow. Now? Everything is in stock, nobody is buying. Total disaster. Units sold also reflect that. Most stores here show the data on each product. Its VERY bad. we are April and they have sold a few cards only. Same for SSDs and RAM.

 

[JamesBlond]

“Agent Orange started a global recession” is a stretch when RAM prices have been riding the same boom to bust cycle long before AI was even a buzzword.

What you’re seeing now is classic overproduction meeting softer demand. Manufacturers went all in expecting AI and post COVID demand to keep climbing, and now inventories are catching up. That’s not politics.....that’s business misreading the room.

And..... “I don’t know a single person buying a computer” isn’t exactly a market indicator. That just means your circle isn't upgrading right now. Meanwhile, data centers, enterprise, and yes, AI all have been soaking up supply for the past couple years.

DIY will be fine.....It always looks “dead” at the peak and “booming” at the bottom. We’re just somewhere in between, like every other cycle.

But hey, if RAM prices dropping is now a political conspiracy, I guess we’ll blame elections for GPU shortages next too?.....or does that not fit your agenda?

There are none as blind as those who chose not to see...
every conspiracy so far in the last 5 years as come true, point out one that has not... please

 

[Endymio]

Interesting that conservatives from around the world always put blames on liberals, but if You look at actual reasons, It's conservative governemnt action from previous term, that lead to the crysis.

We'll have no revisionist history here. The 2008 subprime crisis was caused by excessive government intervention in the housing market -- for the entire decade before, the federal government was literally suing banks who failed to issue enough subprime mortgages in high-risk areas, under the guise that it "adversely impacted minorities". Much more relevant is the fact that the crisis acted to *lower* oil prices, not raise them, and wasn't responsible for the record high oil prices that year.

Nor were the high oil prices in 2022 due to "the prior administration". In the US, the Biden Administration was canceling oil leases, slow-rolling new drilling permits, and enacting more than 50+ expensive new regulations on the oil industry...but the much larger factor was Europe in emergency mode, attempting to wean themselves off Russian oil and gas.

 

[Loadedaxe]

I meant, on top of AI bubble, Hormuz straight debacle will cause people stop spending, alwayd do when austerity hits. Unlike in the past, PC component price increases are compounding, manufacturers stop invest in personal computers, nvidia and others push for paid cloud access to computational power. And long before We notice, new generation may loose interest, or not even realise personal computing was a thing. Like a VHS player. How many people have it today? I'm not American, I don't care about Your president, and Your egg prices, unless He destroys global economy, only for His cronies to play short on American economy.

You’re stacking a lot of unrelated things into one doomsday tower.

The Strait of Hormuz having issues would affect energy prices, but jumping from that to “people will forget personal computing exists” is a bit of a death jump. PCs aren’t VHS players. A better comparison would be TVs....we didn’t stop watching them, they just evolved.

Also, “manufacturers abandoning PCs” isn't going to happen. Nvidia, AMD, and Intel aren’t walking away from consumer hardware....they’re expanding into AI and still shipping CPUs and GPUs because there’s still a massive market for them. Cloud didn’t replace personal computing, it just added another layer.

When money gets tight people delay upgrades, that’s been true forever and nothing new. That’s exactly why component pricing is cyclical. Demand dips, inventory builds, prices fall… then it swings back again.

Calling PCs the next VHS is like saying cars disappeared because Uber exists. Different use case, same underlying need.

This isn’t the end of DIY or personal computing, it's the same cycle wee have seen for decades.

There are none as blind as those who chose not to see...
every conspiracy so far in the last 5 years as come true, point out one that has not... please

That line only works if you ignore all the conspiracies that didn’t come true.

For every “see, I was right,” there were ten that quietly disappeared....mass blackouts that never happened, total economic collapse “by next month,” tech bans that were supposed to end entire industries overnight…none of that played out the way it was claimed.

It’s not that people are “blind,” it’s that you’re only counting the hits and ignoring the misses. That’s not insight, that’s selective memory.

If every conspiracy from the last 5 years actually came true, we wouldn’t be arguing on a forum right now.....we’d be living in a completely different world, one you wouldn't like!

The “you’re blind” argument, usually comes right before someone proves they’re only looking at one tiny tree without seeing the whole forest.

 

[trieste1s]

You mention Hormuz but you obviously don’t know oil prices today are LOWER than they were in 2008, and again in 2023, when Joe Biden was making good on his promise to “end the fossil fuel industry”. Even funniest is “green” Europeans setting monster taxes on oil and gas to reduce consumption, then whining like little girls over high prices.

Frankly the dependence on oil for the sake of gas guzzlers is tiresome. Oil is needed for pharma, plastics, lubricants, chemical synthesis, solvents, sure.. but to be burnt away in individual highly inefficient ICEs that only a select few can effortlessly afford?

 

[Watzupken]

Yep, I build around 15-30 computers a year. For friends, family and even friends of friends. This is the first time in 20 years that I dont do anything. Literally 0 computers so far. People always want to upgrade, add SSD, ram or a new CPU/GPU. Nothing this time. Even during the shortages... people bought computers and video cards. Stores had 1-3 cards in total and people still bought stuff somehow. Now? Everything is in stock, nobody is buying. Total disaster. Units sold also reflect that. Most stores here show the data on each product. Its VERY bad. we are April and they have sold a few cards only. Same for SSDs and RAM.

By pricing the product way above what we will commonly pay for, this effectively killed demand. And we are not even looking at a 2 or 3x increase. I generally feel that these RAM and NAND producers are artificially inflating prices despite their claims of astronomical demand, since this is not the first time these companies are caught rigging prices.

 

[Loadedaxe]

By pricing the product way above what we will commonly pay for, this effectively killed demand. And we are not even looking at a 2 or 3x increase. I generally feel that these RAM and NAND producers are artificially inflating prices despite their claims of astronomical demand, since this is not the first time these companies are caught rigging prices.

There’s some truth in that concern you have, I get it.

When RAM and NAND prices rise too far beyond what average consumers are willing to pay, demand naturally drops....that’s basic market behavior. If a 32 GB kit suddenly costs double or triple what people expect, many buyers simply delay upgrades, which makes it look like the market has died when really consumers are just pushing back on pricing.

That being said, price spikes aren’t automatically proof of artificial inflation. Memory pricing is notoriously volatile because it depends on production cuts, fab capacity, inventory levels, and global demand swings from sectors like phones, servers, and AI infrastructure.

Companies often reduce output intentionally when prices fall too low, which can tighten supply and push prices back up.

Your skepticism is fair, memory manufacturers have been caught in price fixing scandals before, so people are justified in questioning sudden coordinated increases. But not every high price cycle is collusion....sometimes it’s simply a reaction similarly to the same market pressures.

History gives people reason to be cautious...but proving manipulation is very different from noticing prices are painfully high due to what is being seen, Ai demand. I don’t think this is the same situation as the old collusion scandals.

 

[TheBigT42]

Meanwhile, 16GB DDR5 spot prices have dropped to $37.20, and this decline is already reflected in the retail prices of consumer DRAM kits across online marketplaces in the US

I need links!

 

[DEMinSoCal]

I think it is important to mention these are quotations for 16Gb memory chips (not 16GB), so 8 of these are needed for a 16GB RAM stick.
For the curious, you can check the dramexchange.com website

If it's $74 for one chip, and you need 8 then you're saying a 16GB DIMM or SODIMM is almost $600? Nah...RETAIL prices for an entire 16GB DIMM (chips plus module plus manufacturing plus margin) is around $100 for a DDR4 DIMM (on Amazon).

 

[DEMinSoCal]

We'll have no revisionist history here. The 2008 subprime crisis was caused by excessive government intervention in the housing market -- for the entire decade before, the federal government was literally suing banks who failed to issue enough subprime mortgages in high-risk areas, under the guise that it "adversely impacted minorities". Much more relevant is the fact that the crisis acted to *lower* oil prices, not raise them, and wasn't responsible for the record high oil prices that year.

Nor were the high oil prices in 2022 due to "the prior administration". In the US, the Biden Administration was canceling oil leases, slow-rolling new drilling permits, and enacting more than 50+ expensive new regulations on the oil industry...but the much larger factor was Europe in emergency mode, attempting to wean themselves off Russian oil and gas.

Was COVID demand (lack of, then a sudden surge) also a factor in high gas prices then?

High prices during COVID are always blamed on Biden when the entire world was experiencing inflation and high energy prices.

 

[Endymio]

Was COVID demand (lack of, then a sudden surge) also a factor in high gas prices then?

No. The month after Joe Biden took office, US oil production dropped 1.3M bbl/day; the second largest such drop in US history. Worse, it happened when post-Covid demand was surging, whereas other such drops were due to slack demand.

Why? Biden's first day in office, he issued a flurry of executive orders canceling leases, pausing permits, and issuing a raft of expensive new regulations on the industry -- and publicly promised to do much more. His administration largely stopped the war on oil after that, but the fears remained, and are why US oil production didn't reach pre-Covid levels until late 2023.

Honesty compels me though to note that this was only responsible for perhaps 30% of the insane prices in 2022....the remainder was Russian oil being taken off the European market.

High prices during COVID are always blamed on Biden when the entire world was experiencing inflation and high energy prices.

Nonsense. The *only* nations which saw high inflation post Covid were those that, like the US, engaged in massive deficit spending programs that grossly expanded their money supply. Nations like Switzerland, Japan, and others saw little to no inflation post Covid. In 2021, when the US was seeing 7% inflation, China's inflation rate was 0.98%.

Also, US inflation rose from 1.2% to a high of 9.1% ... by far the largest such increase among industrialized nations.

 

[DEMinSoCal]

No. The month after Joe Biden took office, US oil production dropped 1.3M bbl/day; the second largest such drop in US history. Worse, it happened when post-Covid demand was surging, whereas other such drops were due to slack demand.

Why? Biden's first day in office, he issued a flurry of executive orders canceling leases, pausing permits, and issuing a raft of expensive new regulations on the industry -- and publicly promised to do much more. His administration largely stopped the war on oil after that, but the fears remained, and are why US oil production didn't reach pre-Covid levels until late 2023.

Honesty compels me though to note that this was only responsible for perhaps 30% of the insane prices in 2022....the remainder was Russian oil being taken off the European market.


Nonsense. The *only* nations which saw high inflation post Covid were those that, like the US, engaged in massive deficit spending programs that grossly expanded their money supply. Nations like Switzerland, Japan, and others saw little to no inflation post Covid. In 2021, when the US was seeing 7% inflation, China's inflation rate was 0.98%.

Also, US inflation rose from 1.2% to a high of 9.1% ... by far the largest such increase among industrialized nations.

Interestingly, no mention of profiteering, price gouging and fixing prices by the oil companies to maximize their RECORD PROFITS during that time.

 

[Endymio]

Interestingly, no mention of profiteering, price gouging and fixing prices by the oil companies to maximize their RECORD PROFITS during that time.

Learn economics. Price is the mechanism by which supply equalizes with demand. When demand rises faster than supply can, either the price increases, or the pumps run dry and you walk to work. You also forget that all this works in reverse: when demand suddenly drops, prices crater, and (as they did in 2020) oil companies rack up RECORD LOSSES.

For one brief period in 2020, oil prices actually went negative ... producers were literally having to pay people to take oil from them.

 

[noblody]

If it's $74 for one chip, and you need 8 then you're saying a 16GB DIMM or SODIMM is almost $600? Nah...RETAIL prices for an entire 16GB DIMM (chips plus module plus manufacturing plus margin) is around $100 for a DDR4 DIMM (on Amazon).

Yes, these are prices on the spot market, not long term contracts. You can check dramexchange yourself. for the latest transaction session the for 16Gb ddr5 high/low/avg prices were 49.00/26.50/37.200. Again, these are spot prices, not long term prices and most of the manufacturers do not acquire memory chips from the spot market but are engaged in long term contracts.