For the coming third quarter, further increases in memory prices are forecast after things have been slowly but steadily increasing recently. There will be no drastic soaring, but memory is currently as expensive again as it has not been since 2019.
The increase has flattened out somewhat in retail in the last few weeks and was much more pronounced, especially in the fourth quarter of last year and first quarter of 2021. Nevertheless, the trend continues upwards, as can be seen in the example kit from G.Skill with 16 GB DDR4-3200 CL16. The curve goes the course 57 euros in November 2019, 78 euros in spring 2020, 47 euros in September over 70 euros in January to just under 83 euros. However, this price has been in place for a few days and weeks.
The game continues in the major league. Prices have risen slightly there, too, but the steadily growing variety is causing price wars among each other. And so there are above all faster memory kits according to the DDR4-4133 and DDR4-4266 standards, which are an ever more interesting offer with the increased prices in the lower range with 120 to 130 euros. Sometimes there are even bargains with an even higher clock rate, such as the current 16 GByte RipJaws V DDR4-4600 from G.Skill for 133 euros, and DDR4-4400 is also available for less than 140 euros. Since the memory can almost always be overclocked in the latest CPU generation at both AMD and Intel, a look into this league can be worthwhile for a small surcharge.
Price increases should continue
According to TrendForce, the slight price increase will continue. In the second quarter, DRAM prices were 18 to 23 percent higher across the industry than in the previous quarter; in the third quarter, prices are expected to continue to increase slightly with a plus of three to eight percent. Primarily it seems to be certain that there will hardly be any significant decline this year, driven primarily by RAM for servers, notebooks and smartphones. That rubs off on the classic PC market.
Given the steadily rising prices, the pricing of the first DDR5 bars should be interesting. These are expected in the third quarter. As a reminder: DDR4 cost around 50 percent more at the start and months later than DDR3 at the same rate.