DRAM prices facing sharpest decline since 2011

[Shawn Knight]

The big picture: The downturn likely won’t have much of an impact on major players over the long-term. SK Hynix recently announced plans to build four new fabs as part of a $107 billion investment and Micron is doubling down on an IC testing and packaging facility in Taiwan. Samsung, meanwhile, is working on a second fab in Pyeongtaek.

First quarter DRAM contract prices are expected to decline by nearly 30 percent this quarter, the sharpest single-season decline since 2011, according to a recent report from DRAMeXchange, a division of market intelligence firm TrendForce.

The most recent market observations show that inventory levels have continued to climb ever since contract prices dropped in the fourth quarter of 2018. As a result, most DRAM suppliers are now holding about six weeks’ worth of inventory.

Intel’s supply shortage, which is expected to run through the end of the third quarter, is primarily to blame. The slowdown means that PC OEMs aren’t able to consume as much DRAM as they normally would, thus pushing the market into freefall.

If demand doesn’t make a strong comeback, high inventory will continue to cause down-corrections in prices. That’s not much consolation, however, as even large reductions in prices won’t be effective in driving sales.

DRAMeXchange predicted this exact scenario last fall.

Lead image courtesy Unkas Photo via Shutterstock

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/79081-dram-prices-facing-sharpest-decline-since-2011.html

 

[pcnthuziast]

The sets people actually want, ie 32gb kits (16x2), high speed, low latency, etc are still way overpriced everywhere.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

DDR3 and DDR4 prices have dropped significantly, but it's SSD prices I'm most interested in.

1TB SSD is now between $100 and $150 (Inland, Samsung, Crucial, PNY, etc).

I'm always hunting for storage upgrades. My Desktop can hold up to 10 SSD + the M.2 main OS drive.

I can't use more than 64GB of DDR4, and I already have 32GB. Any more RAM is a waste for my needs.

 

[Dimitrios]

Companies will recoup with DDR5 high prices probably. The cow is somewhere out there and the milking will resume as usual.

 

[toooooot]

I bought 16gb of corsair dominator platinum before the price hike for 130. Now I wanna add 16gb more but I cant finds it used for less than 140 :"(

 

[QuantumPhysics]

Companies will recoup with DDR5 high prices probably. The cow is somewhere out there and the milking will resume as usual.

I hear a lot of people claiming DDR5 will be sky high.

I don't think so.

Manufacturing costs are down.
There are more competitors now as compared to years ago when DDR4 launched.
The Cryptocurrency craze is DEAD and it shows no signs of coming back.

I think we'll need "less DDR5 " to get the same performance of DDR4.

I run 32GB of DDR4 just because I like having lots of overhead for video editing and gaming.

I'm thinking - the way these games are moving along - I won't even need 16GB of DDR5.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

Companies will recoup with DDR5 high prices probably. The cow is somewhere out there and the milking will resume as usual.

The Crypto craze is dead.

There are more manufacturers competing.

I'd say DDR5 won't be very high for very long. In fact, you'll probably need less DDR5 to do the equivalent job of your DDR4 rig.

 

[pcnthuziast]

DDR5 prices will be high, guaranteed. Whatever the market will bear and they will push that extent. We're being conditioned everyday to not flinch at ever increasing prices and what they lose in volume they will make up for with premiums, as per usual.

 

[Zorak]

Companies will recoup with DDR5 high prices probably. The cow is somewhere out there and the milking will resume as usual.

The Crypto craze is dead.

There are more manufacturers competing.

I'd say DDR5 won't be very high for very long. In fact, you'll probably need less DDR5 to do the equivalent job of your DDR4 rig.

As much as I agree with Crypto being dead and prices not being sky-high on DDR5's launch I have a question - how is that "less" RAM will do the equivalent job of the previous generation? When I'm working with 3d rendering or databases I still need to pack XX GB of data into memory. Is there a new magic trick or something? Honestly curious.

 

[xxLCxx]

Amazing! Almost as if somebody hit'em with a (row) hammer.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

As much as I agree with Crypto being dead and prices not being sky-high on DDR5's launch I have a question - how is that "less" RAM will do the equivalent job of the previous generation? When I'm working with 3d rendering or databases I still need to pack XX GB of data into memory. Is there a new magic trick or something? Honestly curious.

The next generation RAM tends to always be more efficient and outperform the last.

 

[mbrowne5061]

As much as I agree with Crypto being dead and prices not being sky-high on DDR5's launch I have a question - how is that "less" RAM will do the equivalent job of the previous generation? When I'm working with 3d rendering or databases I still need to pack XX GB of data into memory. Is there a new magic trick or something? Honestly curious.

The next generation RAM tends to always be more efficient and outperform the last.

In through-put, sure. But it doesn't magically make working memory requirements smaller. I have some PSD files that blow up to 50GB in working size when opened. With 32GB of RAM and an SSD scratch disk, yeah, DDR4 and DDR5 will behave nearly identical because the SSD is the bottleneck. But with 64GB of RAM, you can store the whole thing in working memory and a scratch drive becomes irrelevant; the difference between DDR5 and DDR4 will be significant in this case.

RAM amounts won't magically become irrelevant because they got faster or now have more bandwidth.

 

[TheBigFatClown]

"If demand doesn’t make a strong comeback, high inventory will continue to cause down-corrections in prices. That’s not much consolation, however, as even large reductions in prices won’t be effective in driving sales."

I assume you mean "most people" won't upgrade their memory configurations because of lower prices? I know I am very tempted to buy 16GB of 3200 DDR4 memory. I bought a 16GB kit of 2800MHz for $99 about 6 months ago. Now I can get 3200MHz for about the same or just a bit more depending on the brand I buy.

But if the article is correct, a 16GB kit of 3200MHz will drop even more through most of 2019? That's almost unimaginable. Should I wait then?

 

[mrtraver]

"If demand doesn’t make a strong comeback, high inventory will continue to cause down-corrections in prices. That’s not much consolation, however, as even large reductions in prices won’t be effective in driving sales."

I assume you mean "most people" won't upgrade their memory configurations because of lower prices? I know I am very tempted to buy 16GB of 3200 DDR4 memory. I bought a 16GB kit of 2800MHz for $99 about 6 months ago. Now I can get 3200MHz for about the same or just a bit more depending on the brand I buy.

But if the article is correct, a 16GB kit of 3200MHz will drop even more through most of 2019? That's almost unimaginable. Should I wait then?

I'd wait a little longer if you can. Prices have been lower in the past. For instance, in August 2016 I paid $62 for GeIL EVO POTENZA 2 x 8GB DDR4 2400. That same kit on the same site is on sale today for $80 (although it was &130 not long ago).

 

[Knot Schure]

DDR3 and DDR4 prices have dropped significantly, but it's SSD prices I'm most interested in.

1TB SSD is now between $100 and $150 (Inland, Samsung, Crucial, PNY, etc).

I'm always hunting for storage upgrades. My Desktop can hold up to 10 SSD + the M.2 main OS drive.

I can't use more than 64GB of DDR4, and I already have 32GB. Any more RAM is a waste for my needs.

$100 / 1TB SSDs, well if that works for you, more power to ya.

Personally, I'm not sticking my data on anything less than a 'Pro' or 'Enterprise' grade, SSD.

Cost be damned.