The price of RAM is currently falling rapidly and the sector has seen a price drop of almost 20% in the past month.
This is evident from a report by The Electric (a Korean tech site) citing figures from DRAMeXchange (the memory division of analyst firm TrendForce).
We’re told that DRAM and NAND prices fell quite sharply in September, and 8GB DDR4 memory modules fell 17% compared to August, which is a pretty big drop in the space of a month.
RAM has been rising in price since late 2023, but that situation suddenly reversed in August, when prices fell 2% – followed by this much bigger drop last month.
As noted, this refers to DDR4 RAM – which still represents the majority of memory sold – rather than newer DDR5, faster RAM sticks that still command a hefty premium.
Analysis: Domino effect of slower-than-expected PC growth
Assuming the report is correct, the reason given for this price drop is that PC manufacturers have a high amount of (mostly DDR4) RAM inventory and are thus buying less. That means they’re selling fewer PCs than they expected.
As the report explains, while PC shipments were up 4.4% in the third quarter of 2024 (and in the second quarter), that was lower than the forecast increase, which has had a knock-on effect on the demand for RAM – and the price.
These are industry (PC manufacturer) prices, but of course the broader consumer market will also reflect this drop in the cost of DDR4 – it will just take a little longer for the correction to filter through.
So we can expect DDR4 RAM stick prices to drop soon enough – if they haven’t already (it might be worth waiting another week or two to see the full realization of the drop in RAM on the shelves, as it were).
Moreover, it will be interesting to see if this downward trend continues. However, with a huge drop like this in September, we can fully expect that this is simply a correction to a price overshoot, and will level off when the October verdict on memory prices comes out.
You might still see better deals when Black Friday rolls around in November – as always, we don’t have a crystal ball – but there should be some good bargains to be had this month – just in time for Prime Big Deal Days, the second of Amazon. Prime Day sales event taking place October 8-9.
Looking more into the future, low price levels for RAM are unlikely to last. For example, sales of AI PCs will skyrocket next year (if predictions are to be believed), and they will need more RAM to cope. with those AI tasks (and spicy NPUs).
Via Wccftech