This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
My 5-year-old mainboard only supports DDR4. I'm just looking to increase my RAM and have two free slots available. But even the prices of DDR4 sticks have increased 100%-200% compared to a year ago.
They are more affordable than DDR5 sticks to be sure but still crazy.
A decent chunk of that is due to DDR4 production shutting down. If you look to the past you can see that DDR3 prices rose a while after the introduction of DDR4 too. In fact it got more expensive than DDR4, before vanishing completely.
Another thing driving up prices is tariffs and trade restrictions - usually when the main players like Micron, SK Hynix, or Samsung want to stop selling certain chips (say, DRAM at a certain binned frequency), they sell to Chinese manufacturers who are willing to sell slightly lower quality NAND for a lower profit margin.
But that's not happening - the Chinese companies aren't buying up the machines like they used to, because a tariff could easily wipe out their margins. It's not worth the risk.
Add AI to that (not that many are using DDR4), and it makes a bad situation worse.
The AI aspect may get better soon, but the top two won't. I don't think you'll be able to get new DDR4 for a good price at any point going ahead. Your best bet is to buy used if you see a reasonable deal.
Shits wild the same ram I bought over a year ago is 400% more for half the amount of GB.
Since nobody can afford memory, this means mainboards and cases will get cheaper, right?
Are you fucking kidding me? Holy fucking hell.
Damn I've bought a lot of crucial stuff over the years
I assume they're my current memory kit too since I pretty much always go with them
Oh man
Aww man :(
China might dominate the ram market if things go this way:
https://m.made-in-china.com/hot-china-products/Ram_Memory.html
