Question Is the cost of RAM going up everywhere?

[iCyborg]

nVME's have started going up in price.

It seems everything and anything related to PC's except keyboards and mouse is going up.

Were really in for dark times now.

They started later but catching up fast - WD 8100 4TB drive I bought for $560 (CAD) in late Nobember is now $1610 in the same store, and it's >1500 everywhere.
Samsung ones increased "only" 50%-100% range, but I'm sure they will follow soon too.

 

[DavidC1]

But how much will that really affect prices? They're somewhat interchangeable jellybean parts so just spitballing, suppose about 8 transistors in a modern independently regulated PC PSU (besides a few little 3 cent ones) at about 40 cents each in volume at today's prices, would be $3.20.

That's bill of material. Prices sold to you needs to be much higher. Also the higher end datacenter parts are more expensive. I was shopping around on pricing, and what would have been $6 BoM 12 months ago is now close to $10. It sure does have an impact, when you can't even find some parts anymore.

If it costs $10 to make, will you sell it for $10? No, because you'll lose massive amounts of money, and you get zero for your work and labor. A $10 device needs to be $20, if high volume. If not, it may need to be $30 or $40. Then you need to pay taxes to your mother government and support fees for your customers, and something else for if they return your stuff, and shipping on top of that. Also, how many spend the enormous amount of time and energy needed for an electronics device and expect to live like a homeless man?

Ten years ago Mcdonalds sold a $7 meal. It cost them $0.07 for a drink and maybe $0.6 for a burger, and $0.1 for fries. But you need to pay your employees, you need to have equipment, you need a building, and you need to maintain them.

You can't tell me they won't have an effect, when they are saying things like "we have too much GPUs now, just need more power". It's affecting electricity prices too.

 

[DZero]

That's bill of material. Prices sold to you needs to be much higher. Also the higher end datacenter parts are more expensive. I was shopping around on pricing, and what would have been $6 BoM 12 months ago is now close to $10. It sure does have an impact, when you can't even find some parts anymore.

If it costs $10 to make, will you sell it for $10? No, because you'll lose massive amounts of money, and you get zero for your work and labor. A $10 device needs to be $20, if high volume. If not, it may need to be $30 or $40. Then you need to pay taxes to your mother government and support fees for your customers, and something else for if they return your stuff, and shipping on top of that. Also, how many spend the enormous amount of time and energy needed for an electronics device and expect to live like a homeless man?

Ten years ago Mcdonalds sold a $7 meal. It cost them $0.07 for a drink and maybe $0.6 for a burger, and $0.1 for fries. But you need to pay your employees, you need to have equipment, you need a building, and you need to maintain them.

You can't tell me they won't have an effect, when they are saying things like "we have too much GPUs now, just need more power". It's affecting electricity prices too.

And water, the Datacenters needs sh*tloads of water...

 

[Schmide]

One of my ebayed memory sticks said it was delivered to my mailbox, but I didn't get it. It was only a 16gb stick at most worth $50.

 

[mindless1]

That's bill of material. Prices sold to you needs to be much higher.

Nope, not at all true. If BOM rises $3, that's the price increase in order to have a product that's competitively priced. Try to gouge and you're just losing sales.

It's still about profit margin, if they need to make $20 per unit and the BOM unit price goes up $3, then it's going to only be $3 more expensive.

This has been true *forever*. If anything manufacturers try to eat a little of that BOM increase to maintain a competitive value: price ratio.

That doesn't mean that there couldn't be multiple other component price increases that raise the price more than $3, but being an industry wide problem, there is still price competition at play to not try to put a product at a price disadvantage to comparable competitive products.

 

[marees]

100% cash prepay for long term contracts

https://twitter.com/x/status/2009434294511669543

 

[DavidC1]

Nope, not at all true. If BOM rises $3, that's the price increase in order to have a product that's competitively priced. Try to gouge and you're just losing sales.

That makes no sense. So if the BoM is $3, and the item is selling for $20, but the BoM rises to $300, they sell it for $300+17 or $317.

No, you also have to care about % margins. It's not gouging when everyone is doing it because of a fundamental supply chain issue.

 

[maddie]

But how much will that really affect prices? They're somewhat interchangeable jellybean parts so just spitballing, suppose about 8 transistors in a modern independently regulated PC PSU (besides a few little 3 cent ones) at about 40 cents each in volume at today's prices, would be $3.20.

The reason prices rise is a supply/demand imbalance. Translates into someone not having any or an insufficient supply. It's not that prices rise and everyone is still fully stocked as before.

 

[Golgatha]

I have no spare DDR5, so I guess this will be my only flex in 2026.

These are my spares for me and my immediate family. I have a 1200w Thermaltake GF3 power supply in storage as well. Probably not going to buy anything for at least 2-3 years while this AI apocalypse passes over us all.

 

[iCyborg]

These are my spares for me and my immediate family. I

 

[CakeMonster]

To the extent that I have spares, they are at least in use

 

[CakeMonster]

Some game releases lately are not as big as the massive ones from the last 5 years, also some publishers have actually shrunk their install sizes. With consoles having limited space and the next gen being delayed (not that they'd have gotten a ton of capacity if released today with current NAND prices anyway), I could see the sizes of games being more reasonable going forward at least. That seems more realistic than magically reducing VRAM load on current engines and hardware, and also more realistic than the meme in the gaming community that all games lack 'optimization' to easily unlock performance.

 

[Golgatha]

To the extent that I have spares, they are at least in use

The 4TB SN850X is in use occasionally, but could be installed in a PC if need be. The 2TB is left over from an upgrade to my gaming rig. The 2TB to 4TB upgrade wasn't immediately needed, but I moved it up. The 4TB Inland is straight up a panic buy to hedge against rising prices. The 512GB drive is a laptop pull and is so old I even forget where it came from.

 

[Markfw]

On 7/24/2024 I paid $130 for 2 x 16 gb 7200 cas 34 trident ram. Its now $520 !!!!! Thats just out of control.

 

[Steltek]

Make sure your DDR5 has good airflow, if you want it to last:

 

[mindless1]

That makes no sense. So if the BoM is $3, and the item is selling for $20, but the BoM rises to $300, they sell it for $300+17 or $317.

No, you also have to care about % margins. It's not gouging when everyone is doing it because of a fundamental supply chain issue.

No either I worded it poorly or you lack comprehending what I wrote.

For example if the BOM for the whole PSU is $80, and the cost of all transistors in it goes up $3, then the new BOM is $83 and to make the same profit, they only need to raise the MSRP by an additional $3, so if they were building at $80 and selling for $100 to make $20 per unit, then with the higher transistor cost they'd be selling at $103 to make the same $20 per unit. How is this not obvious?

 

[Golgatha]

On 7/24/2024 I paid $130 for 2 x 16 gb 7200 cas 34 trident ram. Its now $520 !!!!! Thats just out of control.

My dad's 32GB computer memory kit was $93 in late May 2025. It is now $650. My gaming rig's 64GB kit was $166 in Feb 2025 and is currently $790. So yes, insane.

To put this in perspective, I bought his whole upgrade of a motherboard, 32GB DDR5, and 8600F CPU for less than (right around $500 total with tax) what his RAM currently costs at $650.

 

[mindless1]

That's bill of material. Prices sold to you needs to be much higher. Also the higher end datacenter parts are more expensive.

Has nothing to do with anything. There is no "higher end datacenter" transistor, unless you just mean something capable of more current than a PC PSU needs, and then it's not even a relevant part.

I was shopping around on pricing, and what would have been $6 BoM 12 months ago is now close to $10.

Please list the exact components you're talking about. I bet it wasn't the same commodity grade transistors used in PSU. Some other irrelevant part rising in price is not applicable to this discussion, unless the electronics component industry is literally running out of equivalent, compatible transistors which isn't the case - it's becoming true for memory chips but PSU don't use them. Any reduction in supply is reflected by a slight increase in price as I've already mentioned. The discussion was solely about transistors and they are a small % of PC PSU total price.

It sure does have an impact, when you can't even find some parts anymore.

We're not talking about "some parts", we're talking about jellybean transistors used in PC PSU.

If it costs $10 to make, will you sell it for $10? No, because you'll lose massive amounts of money, and you get zero for your work and labor.

Nobody suggested that, were is this example coming from? I never suggested anything of the sort.

A $10 device needs to be $20, if high volume. If not, it may need to be $30 or $40.

Yes, and this changes nothing about what I wrote.

Then you need to pay taxes to your mother government and support fees for your customers,

again this changes nothing about what I wrote which was that a cost increase of a few inexpensive parts, will not by itself raise the total product price much at all.

and something else for if they return your stuff, and shipping on top of that.

again this is a regular cost of doing business and has nothing to do with what I wrote which was that all that taken into account, the total cost of making the PSU would only raise very few dollars and all the remaining costs will be the same, if only focusing on transistors which was the subtopic critera.

Also, how many spend the enormous amount of time and energy needed for an electronics device and expect to live like a homeless man?

Has nothing to do with this discussion.

Ten years ago Mcdonalds sold a $7 meal. It cost them $0.07 for a drink and maybe $0.6 for a burger, and $0.1 for fries. But you need to pay your employees, you need to have equipment, you need a building, and you need to maintain them.

Has nothing to do with this discussion which was only how (much) a transistor shortage could potentially raise the price of a PC PSU.

You can't tell me they won't have an effect, when they are saying things like "we have too much GPUs now, just need more power". It's affecting electricity prices too.

You've gone so far off the subject of discussion that it doesn't make sense any longer.

Let's restate it one more time:

If I can build a PSU for $80 in 2025, but now in 2026 it costs $3 more to build because the price of transistors went up, then whatever I was previously selling it for to make X amount of profit, I only need to sell it for $3 more to make the same X amount of profit.

 

[Schmide]

So I bought 2 Kingston ddr4 2666 laptop sticks. I put them on adapters and slotted them into a b550 motherboard with a 3600. Stock they errored. Well it would boot and get to the OS but I would get kernal panics and occt would throw errors. I backed the speed down to 2400 and they were rock solid. So for about $100 i got 32GB of slow memory. 10% off the speed.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

These are my spares for me and my immediate family. I have a 1200w Thermaltake GF3 power supply in storage as well.

I rotate backup hardware through the test bench. Don't like it to sit overly long unused. Play a game for a couple of hours, or run 3DMark stress tests, then back in storage.

MIcroslop admitted the hardware is sitting unused because they (in so many words) don't have private nuke plants yet. This timeline sucks.

 

[bigboxes]

I have no spare DDR5, so I guess this will be my only flex in 2026.

These are my spares for me and my immediate family. I have a 1200w Thermaltake GF3 power supply in storage as well. Probably not going to buy anything for at least 2-3 years while this AI apocalypse passes over us all.

View attachment 136447

 

[DZero]

Well, I managed to build a PC with 64 GB RAM, ironically I tought it as an step up for a 128 GB RAM PC, but for now I am OK.