Memory prices have become divorced from reality, with prices for some kits increasing by 500 per cent.
According to Tom’s Hardware A 128GB DDR5-6400 kit is now selling for $3,399, compared with a lowest-ever tracked price of $329.
That is more than 10 times the previous low, which makes premium memory look less like a component and more like jewellery with heat spreaders. Even supposedly ordinary DDR5 kits have wandered into silly money territory.
A DDR5-6000 32GB kit now costs $392, down from just $72 last year. A 64GB DDR5-6000 kit is $849, while a 96GB kit has staggered up to $1,799.
PCPartPicker data shows the same horror show across the market. A 4800 MT/s 2x16GB DDR5 kit averaged $90 in August 2025 and now sits around $425.
A 6000 MT/s 2x16GB DDR5 kit climbed from $108 to $572 in the same period. That is a 429 per cent increase, because apparently RAM now wants to cosplay as beachfront property.
Higher-capacity kits are even more daft. A 5600 MT/s 2x32GB DDR5 kit rose from $191 to $1,118, while a 6000 MT/s version jumped from $222 to $1,272.
That puts year-on-year increases close to 500 per cent for some bigger kits.
Those hoping to hide on older DDR4 platforms are not getting much mercy either. With DDR5 prices in orbit, buyers have piled into older kit and dragged DDR4 prices up with them.
A 3200 MT/s 2x8GB DDR4 kit rose from $63 to $163, while a 3600 MT/s 2x32GB kit climbed from $300 to $789. That is not as grotesque as DDR5, but it still stings.
German tech site ComputerBase found average RAM prices in Europe had jumped 345 per cent compared with September 2025.
The squeeze is leaking into storage too. ComputerBase said hard drive and SSD prices had both climbed more than 125 per cent over the same period.
The culprit is the AI gold rush, which continues to chew through memory supply like a hungry hippo in a server room. Hyperscale buyers have reportedly locked down almost all global DRAM production capacity for 2027.
Those buyers are handing over advance deposits to secure supply, leaving PC and smartphone makers squabbling over what is left. Mainstream DRAM chips are now worth more than half as much per kilogram as solid gold, which is ridiculous and somehow still believable.
High Bandwidth Memory makes the mess worse because it uses stacks of DRAM layers. The more HBM the AI crowd demands, the fewer standard memory chips are available for normal humans.
Memory vendors are having a lovely time, naturally. SK hynix, Samsung, Micron and China’s CXMT have seen revenues surge by double, triple or worse in the space of a year.
For consumer prices to fall, the AI market would need to cool sharply. That would probably mean a nasty correction across financial markets, which is not exactly the cheerful upgrade path anyone wanted.
SK hynix CEO Kwak Noh-jung has warned that 2027 could be the worst year for memory supply in the industry’s history. He expects demand to beat production capacity well into 2030. ADATA chairman Simon Chen was gloomier still. He suggested the DRAM crisis could last another 10 years and dismissed the idea that an “AI bubble” would burst soon.
