Bottom line: After several recent reports claiming it was going to happen, DRAM prices are finally starting to fall. With the cost of DDR4 expected to continue dropping, this holiday season might be the perfect time to finally upgrade your PC's memory.
Earlier this week, a report from DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce, revealed that major DRAM suppliers had completed most of their contract negotiations, which saw the contract prices of PC DRAM products "turn downward sharply" last month.
The average contract price of 4GB DRAM modules dropped 10.14 percent compared to last quarter, with prices falling from $34.50 to $31. 8GB DRAM modules experienced an even larger price drop, going from $68 to $61---a difference of 10.29 percent.
DRAMeXchange adds that since the market has entered oversupply, there could be further DRAM price declines over the coming months.
"As the indicator of the price trend in the contract market, spot prices have kept falling since the early 2018 and continued their downtrend from September," said Avril Wu, senior director of DRAMeXchange.
Falling prices are expected to continue into next year when the average selling price is predicted to drop by 20 percent year-over-year. "After reaching peak profit in 3Q18, DRAM suppliers are now optimizing their costs so that they will have a soft landing in 2019 as prices are marked down every quarter," writes the publication.
The price of DRAM had increased for nine consecutive quarters before finally starting to fall. September brought news that both DRAM and SSD prices will tumble as Intel's CPU shortage leads to an overstock of memory products, while the another DRAMeXchange report last month predicted falling DRAM and NAND flash prices. After paying so much for so long, it seems memory kits are at last becoming more affordable.