A graph showing how much memory prices have risen, with prices increasing by more than three times in just a few months, affecting both home-built PCs and pre-made products
Large-scale data centers are being built one after another for the development of AI, and the demand for hardware such as GPUs and memory is exploding. This has led to an incredible rise in the price of PC memory. Checking
Memory Price Trends - PCPartPicker
https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/
The increasing demand for memory in AI data centers has been pointed out for some time, and in October 2025, it was predicted that 'SSD and memory prices will rise and supply shortages will continue for the next 10 years.'
Market forecast predicts that SSD and memory prices will rise and supply shortages will continue for 10 years, so buy while they're cheap - GIGAZINE
PCPartPicker has compiled price trends for each memory type from June 2024 to December 2025. For a set of two 16GB DDR4-3600 cards (32GB total), the price will start to rise around June 2025, and by December 2025, it will be about three times the price before the price increase.
The same trend was seen for two 32GB DDR4-3600 cards (64GB total). After a sudden price increase in June 2025, prices continued to rise gradually, but from October 2025, prices began to rise again rapidly.
DDR5 is also experiencing price increases. The price of two 16GB DDR5-5600 cards (32GB total) remained the same until September 2025, but as of December 2025, the price has more than tripled.
The price of two 32GB DDR5-5600 cards (64GB total) has also increased.
On December 3, 2025, memory giant Micron announced that it would withdraw from the consumer memory and storage business. This will mean that shipments of Crucial-branded memory, which was a staple product, will end in February 2026. This is likely to have an impact on future price trends.
Micron to withdraw from consumer memory storage business, Crucial brand memory and SSD shipments to be halted in February 2026 - GIGAZINE
Incidentally, there are rumors of a cartel in the memory industry, and in 2021 , a class action lawsuit was filed against Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix for 'fixing DRAM prices.' Some have also pointed out that the rise in memory prices that has been occurring since the second half of 2025 is the result of price manipulation by memory manufacturers.
Industry companies blame rising DRAM prices on AI demand, but some see price manipulation as a real problem.
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in Hardware, Posted by log1o_hf