RAM for your PC could soon be much cheaper

By James On Aug 12, 2022

Memory for your PC could soon get a fair bit cheaper according to an analyst firm, which has just revised its predictions to suggest heavier drops in the price tags of RAM sticks.

TrendForce (opens in new tab) tells us that the DRAM market is witnessing Korean manufacturers dropping prices to stoke demand from customers in the midst of oversupply, and these reduced prices are going to lead to considerably cheaper memory modules going forward.

While TrendForce had previously estimated a fall in pricing for consumer RAM sticks to the tune of 8% to 13% in Q3, that has been revised to a predicted quarterly decline of at least 13%, or maybe up to 18% – which is almost a fifth cheaper.

That’s quite a hefty drop down, and it’s a trend which is apparently set to continue into Q4, the analyst firm observes, where a further 3% to 8% drop is forecast (again, more than the original prediction which was for pricing to only fall at 5% at the most, and in the best-case scenario, price tags would remain the same in Q4).

Beyond that, TrendForce believes that the “possibility of sustained decline cannot be ruled out”, meaning we could see further downward movement as 2023 rolls around.

Analysis: Play a waiting game for RAM, if you can

The upshot of all this is that if you’re thinking of buying new RAM, it might be worth waiting longer for some decent further price reductions – particularly if it’s more expensive system memory, or larger capacity modules, that you’ve got your eye on.

The caveat here is that while this is very likely the case for DDR4 memory, at least if the analyst firm is correct – and all the signs point that way – price tags for the newest standard, DDR5 RAM, may not come down to the same extent.

That said, as DDR5 matures it’ll become less expensive (and more performant) anyway, so it’s worth holding off for a while yet purely on that basis. As you may recall, DDR5 has already witnessed some big price drops in the last couple of months, and there’s no reason to believe that won’t continue.

So, if you’re mulling a RAM upgrade, our advice is to try to stay strong and hold out a bit longer. And even those building a new PC might want to play a waiting game, not just for slightly cheaper RAM prices, but likely some fair old drops with GPU pricing which are likely in the cards (so to speak) right now. Indeed, with Ryzen 7000 and Raptor Lake CPUs, as well as next-gen graphics cards all coming soon, it’s surely a good time to be patient, anyway.