RAM prices continue to explode, manufacturers are hoarding
PC self-builders have little to laugh about. Memory prices are rising rapidly – 16 GB is practically no longer available for under 100 Euros.
(Image: heise medien)
Prices for RAM have been rising at a record pace for weeks. DDR5 kits with 16 GB, which were around 50 Euros in the summer, now cost almost all over 100 Euros from reputable retailers. Cheaper offers are available almost exclusively from unknown shops on the Amazon Marketplace and on eBay. The price increases began in early November already.
Two exceptions are a Kingston kit at Proshop (starting from 175,90 €) and a single 16 GB stick from Lexar at Amazon directly (starting from 213,98 €). However, both offers are not immediately available.
32 GB kits with so-called DDR5-UDIMMs (Unbuffered Dual Inline Memory Modules) for desktop PCs that are available at short notice cost at least 200 Euros – with a tendency to rise significantly. Apart from the cheapest listings, often from disreputable shops or on Amazon with months of waiting time, prices quickly increase by hundreds of Euros.
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Hoarding
Manufacturers of desktop PCs, laptops, and servers are currently hoarding memory. Lenovo's CFO Winston Cheng said in an interview with Bloomberg that the company has increased its inventory of "critical components" by 50 percent above normal levels.
According to the news agency Digitimes from Taiwan, all Taiwanese manufacturers are currently trying to hoard. This includes PC manufacturers such as Asus and MSI. However, memory module manufacturers are also apparently struggling to obtain memory chips for their production.
According to Digitimes, executives from several Taiwanese companies are traveling to world leaders Samsung and SK Hynix in South Korea to secure memory supply capacities. Samsung and SK Hynix, along with Micron from the USA, hold a dominant market position. They account for more than 90 percent of the global revenue from DRAM chips for RAM.
PC self-builders are at the bottom of the food chain and therefore face particularly high prices.
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AI hype is causing memory shortages
Memory is scarce due to the ongoing AI hype. Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron have recently converted numerous production lines to so-called High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM), which is used in many AI accelerators. This is reducing the availability of DDR5 memory, for example. Some AI servers also use large amounts of energy-saving LPDDR5X RAM, which is actually intended for smartphones and notebooks.
At the same time, the end of Windows 10 support is increasing demand for regular DDR5 memory for desktop PCs and mini-PCs, as well as for LPDDR5X for slim notebooks.
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(mma)
