After RAM has recently become more and more expensive, the U-turn is now to come. It would come in time for the business quarters with the highest turnover in the industry with various new products including the market launch of Windows 11, which is intended to further boost PC sales. Prices have already fallen in retail.
The warehouses of many OEMs are well filled
The market researchers from TrendForce are forecasting an average price increase of five percent for the current third quarter, but in the fourth quarter at the latest, the trend should turn into the opposite. Average prices were up by around 25 percent in the second quarter.
DDR4-3200 CL16 in price history (picture: price comparison) According to TrendForce, OEMs have full inventories as they bought more given the expected continued price hikes. The demand for RAM is currently lower, so that the spot price on the memory exchange has even fallen by over 30 percent in the past few weeks. The so-called spot price on the stock exchange is this year for the first time below the contract prices, which had apparently reached a level that was apparently too high due to the high demand in the second quarter. According to the contract, the contractual partners now have to pay more than the price at which the chips are currently being traded on the market, which, together with the already high inventory of eight, ten or even twelve weeks, could ultimately lower the price further.
The contracts of the large OEMs could ultimately be the advantage of the small PC screwdriver. These modules align themselves more quickly with the current market price, while many OEMs charge the same high price for RAM upgrades for months or even years.
The prices for end customers are already falling
A look at retail shows that the prices of modules for end customers are already falling sharply, as can be seen in the example kit from G.Skill (16 GB DDR4-3200 CL16): Here the price curve goes from 57 euros in November 2019, 78 EUR in spring 2020, EUR 47 in September, over EUR 70 in January to just under EUR 83 in May 2021 and now back to EUR 66.
The game continues in the top division. The prices have also fallen there, and the steadily growing variety has meanwhile also ensured competition in this segment. Even faster memory kits according to the DDR4-4133 and DDR4-4266 standard are an interesting offer with the lower prices in the lower range of 100 to 120 euros. 4600 from G.Skill for 115 euros. Other DDR4-4400s are also available for less than 115 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.