Price Hikes
IF YOU HAVEN’T built or upgraded a machine recently, you might not realize that memory pricing has gone crazy over the last 12–16 months. Memory kits have seen their prices at least double during this period, with some almost trebling. That means that while, a year or two ago, the amount of memory you put in a system could be decided on a whim, it now has to be a carefully thought-out plan if you want to keep any machine up to date and capable of the workloads intended. But why have prices increased so much? And what are the chances of them coming back down to more reasonable levels?
The biggest problem for DRAM is that producing flash is far more lucrative. The reason for this is primarily down to one thing: smartphones. The specifications for these tiny powerhouses are constantly on the rise, so the amount of storage and RAM they ship with has risen sharply recently. As they are premium products, the amount of money being charged for them has gone through the roof.
You might be sitting there thinking that high-speed desktop DDR4 RAM has nothing to do with NAND flash, and in a sense you’d be right, but the plants that manufacturer NAND are also the ones responsible for our beloved DDR4. So, because it’s financially more advantageous to switch over to NAND, that’s exactly what has happened, and will probably keep happening for a while yet. It might be important to us, but desktop RAM is relatively low on the pecking order as far as manufacturers are concerned. There is another reason for the current high prices, though, and that’s down to market demand. We had some decent platform releases last year, which meant there has been a slew of people in the market looking to buy more RAM. Yes, it’s Ryzen’s fault. Well, not really, but the new platform has certainly not helped the situation.
If you’re looking to upgrade a system with more RAM, it could be worth hanging tight for a little longer, because the memory market has a history of righting itself once serious money is involved. If you’re looking to build a new system, your options aren’t as obvious, because the simple fact of the matter is that RAM is going to cost you. Buy wisely. And be ready to pounce when pricing does return to more reasonable levels.