DDR5 RAM hits painful new high in pricing — and it looks like the relentless price-hike misery will continue | Tech Radar
Overview
DDR5 RAM hits painful new high in pricing — and it looks like the relentless price-hike misery will continue
Bots aren't helping as scalpers pile in to take advantage
Details
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Even the cheapest 32GB kits can't be had for less than $360
That's 20% more than two months ago, as system RAM keeps getting more expensive despite previous signs that the crisis was abating
RAM pricing continues to prove seriously painful with DDR5 modules, and the situation at US retailers is so bad that you can't get a basic (entry-level) 32GB kit for anything less than $350 now.
Tom's Hardware highlighted pricing on Amazon in the US observing that some common lower-end 32GB kits – which comprise of two 16GB DDR5 sticks – are now
Indeed, looking at Newegg and Amazon now, I can't see anything below
RAM crisis gets worse as DDR5 hits a new high and worrying trend creeps in
Amazon 'flash deal' for DDR5 RAM costs 2.5x what it did just 4 months ago
64GB of DDR5 RAM now costs more than a Mac Book Air - memory prices have surged 300% in just six months
What this shows is that despite some signs of a pullback in RAM price rises – which had been observed in some regions last month – the overall direction is still upwards, albeit not at nearly the steepness of the hikes we saw at the end of 2025.
As one Redditor observes in the reaction to this finding: "RAM prices are genuinely insane now. I bought a new RAM kit at the beginning of September, and if I were to buy the same kit now it would cost more than my graphics card. I have an RTX 4090, so that is absolutely absurd."
Analysis: blame the bots – a double whammy of AI misery
We're looking at a roughly 20% rise in prices over the past couple of months for DDR5, then, and as Tom's notes, the situation is made worse because bots are now being brought in by scalpers.
Price gougers are snapping up RAM kits that arrive at more affordable prices – and that's very much a relative term now – using said AI-powered bots. Of course, it's the demand for RAM in terms of the AI explosion – that and issues around memory chip makers cutting production levels in the past, when there was a glut of supply – which has caused the current RAM crisis.
There's been further bad news from Framework (via Video Cardz), with the laptop and desktop PC maker having to put up the pricing on its DDR5 modules to
The storm around RAM pricing shows no signs of calming down for the time being, then, and the outlook remains gloomy. (Of course, you can still get sporadic deals on high-end RAM, albeit the savings made are only relative to the huge price hikes, and the outlay is still a painful one).
The alternatives to buying new RAM are to look at used memory on auction sites – although there's no guarantee with the quality therein – or to get yourself a bundle deal (such as a motherboard with RAM included, or maybe a three-in-one CPU plus RAM and motherboard package). Those kind of deals are likely the best route if you're looking to build a PC, but obviously they won't be of much use to anyone simply wanting to upgrade their current system memory.
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Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for Tech Radar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).
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Key Takeaways
-
DDR5 RAM hits painful new high in pricing — and it looks like the relentless price-hike misery will continue
-
Bots aren't helping as scalpers pile in to take advantage
-
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission
-
Even the cheapest 32GB kits can't be had for less than $360
-
That's 20% more than two months ago, as system RAM keeps getting more expensive despite previous signs that the crisis was abating
