PC RAM prices have fluctuated everywhere over the past year and a half, but recent Trendforce reports suggest that PC RAM prices may drop by another 15% in the spring of 2023.
If you’ve been trying to build a new PC for the last year or two, you might have noticed that one particular part seems quite expensive: RAM. As gamers build new PCs equipped with DDR5 RAM supported by Intel Raptor Lake and AMD Ryzen 7000 processors, prices have been falling since the beginning of 2023.
Thanks to Trendforce (via TechPowerUp), the demand for PC RAM has decreased significantly as vendors have reduced the number of products in circulation. However, since many retailers have stocks left, prices have collapsed since the beginning of 2023.
Prices for DDR4 have fallen by about 15-20%, and prices for DDR5 have fallen even more this year — by 18-23%. The decline in the price of DDR5 is also due to the expected increase in production, since flash drives were incredibly expensive when they first appeared on the market.
RAM prices may fall even further
Now Trendforce suggests that RAM prices may fall even further in the second quarter of 2023. According to their estimates, DDR4 will drop by about 8-13%, and DDR5 modules — by 10-15%. That would be pretty staggering, since DDR5 hasn’t sunk to more affordable levels for consumers yet.
With this in mind, there is no doubt that DDR5 RAM for PC will become more affordable than ever. PC gamers should get used to the idea that 16 GB of RAM is no longer enough for most users, and 32 GB is a new baseline for AAA games. We hope that the reduction in prices for DDR5 RAM should ease the situation somewhat, even though the demand for PC gaming components seems to be decreasing.
Interestingly, graphics DRAM prices have also suffered the same fate: the report says that the graphics DRAM industry is gradually switching to using mainly 16 GB modules, as VRAM requirements in AAA games are increasing. However, the report also notes that the advent of artificial intelligence did not significantly affect sales, despite the fact that Nvidia supplied more than 30,000 GPUs to the creators of ChatGPT OpenAI.
