PC memory prices reach lowest levels in years

Shawn Knight

Shawn Knight

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In brief: With the pre-summer PC upgrade season looming and Intel’s continued supply shortage, it’s possible that prices could fall even further. That said, there’s no guarantee as timing any market for the absolutely best deal is always a risk.

DRAMeXchange’s prediction of a memory market in freefall has come to fruition.

Also read: Why Building a Gaming PC Right Now is a Good Idea

As TechPowerUp highlights, prices on DDR4 memory have reached the lowest levels we’ve seen in years. An 8GB (2 x 4GB) kit of GeIL EVO SPEAR DDR4 2400 memory is currently going for $39.99 over on Newegg. If you need a bit more capacity, 16GB kits (2 x 8GB) of DDR4 3000 can be had for under $80. Optionally, you can grab 32GB (2 x 16GB) of G.SKILL Aegis DDR4 2400 for less than $150.

These are all brand-name kits albeit lower-end variants. Those in the market for faster speeds or kits with bells and whistles like RGB lighting can expect to pay a little more. A 32GB kit of Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR 3000 runs just $172.99 while the G.SKILL TridentZ RGB Series (2 x 16GB) DDR3 2400 bundle can be yours for $179.99.

Similar offers can also be found on Amazon and other retailers; just shop around a bit before pulling the trigger.

Update: Here are a few other examples of attractive kits and two CamelCamelCamel graphs to paint the pretty picture...

Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB kit DDR4 3200MHz is $105 on Amazon, way lower than its peak of $220 about a year ago:

G.SKILL TridentZ RGB 16GB kit (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 memory is $130 on Amazon today, versus $273 at its peak on December 2017.

Lead image courtesy veerapong takonok via Shutterstock

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/79495-pc-memory-prices-reach-lowest-levels-years.html

 
The only cheap sets I've seen are the ones nobody wants. 2400 and slower, high latency, 8gb singles, 2x4gb kits, 2x8gb kits, etc. The sets people actually want ie 3000+, c16 or better, 2x16gb kits, are still astronomically high. This hobby isn't getting any cheaper and I see prices reaching all time highs before this year is over. Consumer gouging is exactly what the market will bear and as such, the trend will absolutely continue and has already become the standard.
 
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You're not gonna find a cheap speedy set, which is arguably a necessity for Ryzen.
I recently got G.Skill 3200 CL14 2x16GB... Paid $350. It's $25 cheaper now, but it's still far from being cheap, and almost double the price of the kit mentioned in the article.
 
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Why is techspot burying the links into some 3rd party website redirection links? That is pretty shady.

Last article I read about memory for gaming is 16GB was still more than plenty. My 2x8GB Corsair Vengeance LPX from 2015 is still fast... four years later? I paid $125 and it's only $20 cheaper than what I bought it for? I don't really see deals here.
 
Last edited:
It does not seem worth it to spend big cash on "fast" memory.

I was not able to find any articles comparing memory speed benchmarks here on techspot, but there are others. Gamers tend to worry so much and spend a lot for bigger ram numbers, but it does very little difference that I have read. Not worth the extra cash to get that "high end" memory. Same as 32GB is not needed. We need to spend our money elsewhere.

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/...33-mhz-vs-ddr4-3000-mhz-core-i7-6700k.231776/
https://www.wepc.com/tips/ram-speed/
https://www.velocitymicro.com/blog/important-ram-speed/
 
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Is your ram upgrade really an upgrade? From Crucial...
https://www.crucial.com/usa/en/memory-performance-speed-latency

"The true definition of latency and the latency equation
At a basic level, latency refers to the time delay between when a command is entered and executed. It's the gap between the two. Because latency is all about this gap, it's important to understand what happens after a command is issued. When the memory controller tells the RAM to access a particular location, the data must go through a number of clock cycles in the Column Address Strobe in order to get to its desired location and “complete” the command. With this in mind, there are two variables that determine a module's latency:

The total number of clock cycles the data must go through (measured in CAS Latency, or CL, on data sheets)
The duration of each clock cycle (measured in nanoseconds)

Combining these two variables gives us the latency equation:


true latency (ns) = clock cycle time (ns) x number of clock cycles (CL)"
 
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Lots of re-directions / third party websites (one seems to be kqzyfj.com, whatever that is!)) which seems to redirect to Newegg to are being blocked by my UblockOrigin.
 
CORSAIR Dominator Platinum 32GB DDR4 3000 (2 x 16GB) I bought when I built my new PC on black Friday 2017 for $450 dollars now I can get them for about half the price... $239.
 
pcnthuziast said:
The only cheap sets I've seen are the ones nobody wants. 2400 and slower, high latency, 8gb singles, 2x4gb kits, 2x8gb kits, etc. The sets people actually want ie 3000+, c16 or better, 2x16gb kits, are still astronomically high. This hobby isn't getting any cheaper and I see prices reaching all time highs before this year is over. Consumer gouging is exactly what the market will bear and as such, the trend will absolutely continue and has already become the standard.
Click to expand...

I was just coming to say something similar. Only the cheap, low speed kits are really low in price. The 3000mhz+ 16GB kits are definitely lower than they were last year or even six months ago, but they are definitely not at record levels. My 16GB G.Skill kit was like 90 bucks in 2015. Same kit right now is like 125 bucks, so it's not across the board. It's just the low end stuff that isn't really selling to the enthusiast crowd anyhow. If you want decent sticks, you're still going to pay a premium for them. When 3000mhz+ 16GB kits drop below 100 bucks, then we can start talking about it more seriously.
 
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ShagnWagn said:
It does not seem worth it to spend big cash on "fast" memory.

I was not able to find any articles comparing memory speed benchmarks here on techspot, but there are others. Gamers tend to worry so much and spend a lot for bigger ram numbers, but it does very little difference that I have read. Not worth the extra cash to get that "high end" memory. Same as 32GB is not needed. We need to spend our money elsewhere.

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/...33-mhz-vs-ddr4-3000-mhz-core-i7-6700k.231776/
https://www.wepc.com/tips/ram-speed/
https://www.velocitymicro.com/blog/important-ram-speed/
Click to expand...

Try to use high refresh monitors and then see the difference yourself. I will give an example. On quake champions, going from 2666mhz 12-14-14 ram to 3200 14-16-16 means you go from 150fps to 200fps with the same cpu (i7 9700k).

Now you ask why 200fps, but I have a 240hz monitor.
 
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Besides which, not everybody is using their system for gaming. I realize that gamers account for a large portion of the aftermarket hardware market, but they are certainly not the ONLY segment of it. That fast memory is definitely worth it when you're running 3D or scientific applications. And not only does the speed matter, but the capacity absolutely matters to those of us who are running VMs, CAD software, high end rendering applications, etc.

People need to realize the whole world doesn't exist explicitly for gamers, there are a lot of other, probably more fundamental reasons for high end hardware than just gaming. I game, but I do a lot of other stuff as well.
 
ShagnWagn said:
It does not seem worth it to spend big cash on "fast" memory.

I was not able to find any articles comparing memory speed benchmarks here on techspot, but there are others. Gamers tend to worry so much and spend a lot for bigger ram numbers, but it does very little difference that I have read. Not worth the extra cash to get that "high end" memory. Same as 32GB is not needed. We need to spend our money elsewhere.

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/...33-mhz-vs-ddr4-3000-mhz-core-i7-6700k.231776/
https://www.wepc.com/tips/ram-speed/
https://www.velocitymicro.com/blog/important-ram-speed/
Click to expand...
true
 
RGB unnecessarily increases the price of RAM modules.

Other than that, the average cost of 16GB of DDR4 is still between $120 and $150 depending on your region.

I am happy to see RAM and SSD come down in price. Most people don't need more than 16GB of RAM (I have 32 in all my computers as a minimum), but SSD storage is of the utmost priority.
 
imdarkbreeze said:
Besides which, not everybody is using their system for gaming.
Click to expand...
It's generally known that gamers have been the reason why technology has been evolving and getting faster and faster. It's been that way for years. Oh... and content creators too be it video editing/encoding along with rendering as well.
 
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I've seen only a slight drop (maybe a couple bucks) for my G-Skill FlareX 3200 (14-14-14-34) modules (F4-3200C14Q-32GFX) in the last 6 months. As everyone as is stating, crappy memory is dropping while premium memory prices haven't changed much.
 
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