DRAM contract prices surged 171.8% year-over-year as of the third quarter of 2025. The increase now exceeds the rate at which gold prices have climbed. ADATA chairman Chen Libai stated that the fourth quarter of 2025 will mark the beginning of a major DRAM bull market. He expects severe shortages to materialize in 2026.
Memory manufacturers have shifted production priorities toward datacenter-focused memory types like RDIMM and HBM. Consumer DDR5 production has declined as a result. A Corsair Vengeance RGB dual-channel DDR5 kit that sold for $91 dollars in July now costs a $183 dollars on Newegg. The pricing trend extends to NAND flash and hard drives. Analysts project the increases will persist for at least four years, matching the duration of supply contracts that some companies have signed with Samsung and SK Hynix.
I just had a mishap that resulted in a system booting unexpectedly whilst a stick of RAM wasnt seated properly. The stick is dead as a dodo.
It was a Corsair 16GB 3000MHz DDR4 and the price to replace it is slightly more than I paid for a pair of them last year.
Luckily its a bit surplus right now as my NAS rebuild is only 2666MHz max so I can replace it with 2 stick of cheaper used RAM for 2/3 the price of the one replacement.
Prices are nuts right now.
I’ve put down the cash for ECC for my main NAS, but can’t justify it for the offsite backup I’m putting together.