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.