WATCH OUT FOR RAM PRICES!

Scannerman · Aug 21, 2026

lol I just had this comic vision of some animated chicken running around screaming, "The stock market is falling!"

Frankly, I don't see it happening any time soon, but it could. RAM is indeed a commodity but its only one commodity.
What would really make the market drop is is if a cheap replacement for silicon were discovered. IF it could work more efficiently than silicon and could easily be mass produced prices would crash. That is, if the manufacturers could dodge the cartels.

Wolfzz · Aug 21, 2026

DDR5 scalper bots now outnumber shoppers 10 to 1 — automated scraping hits listings every 6.5 seconds as 32GB kits surge from $72 to $392, DataDome researcher says

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ddr5/scalper-bots-now-outnumber-human-shoppers-10-to-1-on-one-retailers-ddr5-pages

Scannerman · Aug 21, 2026

Who needs War of the Worlds when machines do a more thorough job? (And do it with such finesse!) 6.5 seconds is slow compared to the Stock Market bots. Those scalper bots need to get with the program. :lmao:

Wolfzz · Sep 16, 2026

DDR5 RAM pricing appears to be spiralling out of control even more — it's 5.5x pricier than before the memory crisis, and 2027 could get worse

https://www.techradar.com/computing/memory/ddr5-ram-pricing-appears-to-be-spiralling-out-of-control-even-more-its-5-5x-pricier-than-before-the-memory-crisis-and-2027-could-get-worse

TraderGary · Sep 16, 2026

Wolfzz said:
DDR5 RAM pricing appears to be spiralling out of control even more — it's 5.5x pricier than before the memory crisis, and 2027 could get worse

https://www.techradar.com/computing/memory/ddr5-ram-pricing-appears-to-be-spiralling-out-of-control-even-more-its-5-5x-pricier-than-before-the-memory-crisis-and-2027-could-get-worse

I make my nightly Macrium Reflect X images alternating on two Samsung T9 4TB portable SSD drives. My original price on Amazon for these two drives was USD $329.99 each. I just now checked the current price on Amazon for a Samsung T9 4TB Portable SSD drive. $999.99. :scream:

Scannerman · Sep 17, 2026

yup. silicon. Good thing I have enough of the stuff.

IownAmoneyPit · Sep 17, 2026

TraderGary said:
I make my nightly Macrium Reflect X images alternating on two Samsung T9 4TB portable SSD drives. My original price on Amazon for these two drives was USD $329.99 each. I just now checked the current price on Amazon for a Samsung T9 4TB Portable SSD drive. $999.99.

Meanwhile in Canada Land prices range from $1,500 for an older T7 4TB to $1,900 for the newest Samsung 9100 Pro 4TB (With heat sink}.

The 3 Samsung 980 Pro 4TB I use for backups cost me $399 on sale and last one was in early 2025, Also the reason I use 3 drives is because I have lost a backup partition (Unallocated Raw) sometimes simply by restarting or changing PC and the drive is still healthy so then I will just Format and recreate the partitions of the affected drive and copy data from one of the other 2 reliable working drives.

Also I got lucky and scored some 980 Series - 250GB drives for about $90 ( $50 original ) from overseas after they were no longer for sale in Canada and a couple or three years ago I scored a Samsung 980 1TB for $69 during Black Friday.

AK6DN · 2026-09-30T23:33:30-0400

And so it goes ...

RAM supply set to worsen, says Micron, as CEO celebrates ‘much higher’ prices

Posts huge leaps in revenue, profit, and margin, with more to come

www.theregister.com

I'm glad I updated all my systems to 128GB of RAM years ago when DRAM pricing was reasonable...

XxXxX · 2026-10-01T01:23:43-0400

AK6DN said:
And so it goes ...

RAM supply set to worsen, says Micron, as CEO celebrates ‘much higher’ prices

Posts huge leaps in revenue, profit, and margin, with more to come

www.theregister.com

it looks like the big boys are making hay while the sun shines and the little guy is out in the cold.
i will just have to make my 64GB of DDR4 3200 and 3x 1TB SSD's last as long as i can

mind you i am not looking at upgrading my systems anytime soon
i managed to buy them and upgrade them to the max before all this AI data centre malarkey kicked off
that was more by luck then any type of sound judgement.

best of luck Steve ..

Scannerman · 2026-10-01T04:56:27-0400

XxXxX said:
it looks like the big boys are making hay while the sun shines and the little guy is out in the cold.
i will just have to make my 64GB of DDR4 3200 and 3x 1TB SSD's last as long as i can

mind you i am not looking at upgrading my systems anytime soon
i managed to buy them and upgrade them to the max before all this AI data centre malarkey kicked off
that was more by luck then any type of sound judgement.

best of luck Steve ..

DDR4 is enough for me. I'm already giving my higher performance hardware to my daughters. To the best of my knowledge I only own one unit that uses DDR5 system RAM and I have to say I'm not exactly impressed. Be that as it may, it's a lap top so I can't exactly expect much despite the quad-core status.

I maxed out the X299 with 128GB of Micron DDR4 3200 just before the fever struck and I did it on a hunch. Finding a 4TB stick of NVMe (barely used) in the pile of stuff I recently inherited was a bit of a treat. I seriously have enough to keep my busy for the remainder of my life... and likely then some. Still not sure what to do with this WD 22TB spinner. I have little doubt it's SMR. Perhaps I'll make it an aux drive for the X299 build. I've already come into over an extra 100 TB of storage drives and I still haven't looked into what all those other units are running for storage. Some of them are quite nice looking. Yeah, I'm set. I feel bad for the next generation of PC builders but perhaps it is become a dying art? A hobbyist thing? A very expensive hobbyist thing??

Catnip · 2026-10-01T08:38:09-0400

I attribute RAM prices to corporate greed. This is no different than the inflation of normal electronic components during the COVID mess, with components rising 500 to 600%, sometimes even 1000%. It's ridiculous, and simple greed.

Especially when some memory manufacturer CEO gloats about how much profit they are making. A little tone deaf maybe? I now refuse to buy Micron products at work and at home if I can. I know it doesn't mean much in the big scheme of things, but it's no different then refusing to buy goods from a certain country. If enough people do it, people notice most of the time. Money talks. Except to the stupid.

gunrunnerjohn · 2026-10-01T10:52:51-0400

I updated my computers in the spring of last year, if I did the same upgrades today, it would be close to triple the price!

I'll be waiting until sanity returns to do any future upgrades. I have more than enough processor, memory, and storage for the foreseeable future.

AK6DN · 2026-10-01T15:11:14-0400

Catnip said:
I attribute RAM prices to corporate greed. This is no different than the inflation of normal electronic components during the COVID mess, with components rising 500 to 600%, sometimes even 1000%. It's ridiculous, and simple greed.

Especially when some memory manufacturer CEO gloats about how much profit they are making. A little tone deaf maybe? I now refuse to buy Micron products at work and at home if I can. I know it doesn't mean much in the big scheme of things, but it's no different then refusing to buy goods from a certain country. If enough people do it, people notice most of the time. Money talks. Except to the stupid.

Supply and demand. The supply is relatively fixed, not many new DRAM fabs coming online these days, and the existing ones are running 24/7.
But demand due to AI datacenter builds is off the charts, and they want the DRAM, and are willing to pay for it (with borrowed money).
So the price rises to what the demand presents.
Corporate greed IDK. Capitalism, for sure. Micron and others would certainly reduce their prices if the demand suddenly evaporated.
But it appears locked in for 2026/2027 for now.
So either the bubble bursts next year or wait until 2028/2029 for prices to come down. Maybe. Who knows.

wordsworth · 2026-10-01T15:32:40-0400

AK6DN said:
And so it goes ...

RAM supply set to worsen, says Micron, as CEO celebrates ‘much higher’ prices

Posts huge leaps in revenue, profit, and margin, with more to come

www.theregister.com

I'm glad I updated all my systems to 128GB of RAM years ago when DRAM pricing was reasonable...

Same here. My main machine for video editing has 128 GB and the other two have 32 GB which is all they need and will ever have even if prices were to drop, which I certainly won't hold my breath on.

cheaterslick · 2026-10-01T16:55:35-0400

I'm in fairly decent shape. I was planing on upgrading from a 1TB to a 2TB SSD on my Dell but it looks like that's off for now. Currently I have a Surface Pro with 32GB of RAM and the Dell that has 64GB of DDR5 RAM.

My other two Dells are 16GB with 1TB SSD Windows 10 Pros and are maxed out, anyway.

WATCH OUT FOR RAM PRICES!

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DDR5 scalper bots now outnumber shoppers 10 to 1 — automated scraping hits listings every 6.5 seconds as 32GB kits surge from $72 to $392, DataDome researcher says​

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DDR5 RAM pricing appears to be spiralling out of control even more — it's 5.5x pricier than before the memory crisis, and 2027 could get worse​

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DDR5 scalper bots now outnumber shoppers 10 to 1 — automated scraping hits listings every 6.5 seconds as 32GB kits surge from $72 to $392, DataDome researcher says

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DDR5 RAM pricing appears to be spiralling out of control even more — it's 5.5x pricier than before the memory crisis, and 2027 could get worse

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DDR5 RAM pricing appears to be spiralling out of control even more — it's 5.5x pricier than before the memory crisis, and 2027 could get worse

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