WTF?! Memory prices have gone through the roof recently. Nothing illustrates this more than someone trading a RAM kit for a brand new RTX 5070 Ti and it being called the worst deal of the century, given that the DRAM is worth around three times more than the graphics card.
As AI data centers grab more of the world's DRAM and prices for consumer kits skyrocket, we noted last month that 64GB of G.Skill Trident Z5 DDR5 6000 was selling for a stunning $599 – more than a PS5 or and RTX 5070.
So, it seems surprising that someone on Facebook Marketplace (via Olrak29) has swapped a 192GB Vengeance DDR5 kit for a PNY 5070 Ti graphics card.
That particular DRAM kit launched in 2023 with an MSRP of $725 (for the non-RGB version). That's the same MSRP as PNY's 5070 Ti, so it might appear that the RAM owner got a good deal. That may have been true a few months ago, but it isn't now.
The RAM crisis means that particular Corsair kit is listed on the company's official site for $2,201 – about three times what you'd currently pay for the graphics card.
The person agreeing to the swap writes that he had considered exchanging the kit for a 27-inch 240Hz QD-OLED monitor from Asus.
Also read: AI Is Eating All the DRAM. DDR5 Prices Just Doubled. GPUs Could Be Next
The mention of it being a 4th-gen monitor likely means he's referring to a 4K model that uses a 4th-gen panel. It sells for around $1,199, which means even if he swapped the RAM for the graphics card and the monitor, he would still have been worse off.
Stories like this have to be taken with a pinch of salt, of course, but it's easy to understand how some people won't realize just how stupidly expensive RAM has become in the AI era.
There's also the chance that the RAM owner actually wanted to swap the kit at the kind of price we used to see, not wishing to exploit the current state of the market. That does seem unlikely, and the fact the GPU owner was the one who made the offer suggests he knows what a bargain he's getting – maybe he'll sell it for a tidy profit.
There have been calls for gamers to boycott RAM in the hope of bringing about a changing in pricing. Sadly, that would almost certainly not work.