Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by chromas on Monday July 01 2019, @05:55AM   Printer-friendly
from the sales dept.

RAM has never been cheaper, but are the historic prices here to stay?

RAM prices are at historic lows. But it hasn't always been that way. If you upgraded your PC's memory in 2018, you might be kicking yourself right now. This writer certainly is. I upgraded from an old, faithful 16GB of 1,600MHz DDR3 to a 16GB kit of Corsair Vengeance RGB 3,000MHz DDR4. It cost me the equivalent of $200 at the time. That same kit today is just $75. What the hell happened? As of mid-2019, prices have finally gotten under control and are currently at an all-time low, making this a great time to upgrade. But is it here to stay?

[...] Ben Miles, managing director of award-winning British system builder Chillblast, explained that "more and more memory foundries [are focusing] on flash type memory to feed the insatiable smart device and mobile phone industries. Turning a DRAM factory into a flash factory or vice versa takes many weeks, so when companies have chosen their path, its[sic] non-trivial to turn it back. When demand outstrips supply, module vendors are forced to stockpile DRAM chips and offer more money to secure stock, driving up prices."

All of this led to a huge increase in RAM prices between 2016 and 2018. Gamers Nexus put together an in-depth report on this at the start of 2018 and showed the near 200 percent increases in price for some modules, both DDR3 and DDR4. Looking at PCPartPicker's historic trend graphs, we can see that early-2018 was the peak for RAM pricing, but that many speeds and kits took many months to even approach a noticeable fall in price throughout the year, only really falling hard in 2019.

[...] "We don't see the current low price of memory being the new normal," Ben Miles of Chillblast said. "As profits fall in DRAM due to abundance, factories switch focus back to flash, so we can expect peak demand in Q4 to see rising prices once again." [Corsair's public relations manager Justin Ocbina] was a little more hesitant to forecast price rises, but he did suggest that other industries were beginning to pick up the slack for the slowing smartphone market. That could lead to rising prices at some point in the near future.

There's also DDR5 to consider. We've heard a lot about the potential capabilities of this next-generation memory for years, and that's something that Corsair will be switching its attention to in the years to come. Ocbina said that from the get-go, it is expected to dethrone DDR4 from its premium, performance spot. That gap will only widen as more kits are launched following the new standard's debut.

"Historic" low prices (that are about the same per GB as in 2012 or 2015)? Nothing DDR5 and a flood, power outage, or nitrogen leak can't fix.

See also: Micron's DRAM Update: More Capacity, Four More 10nm-Class Nodes, EUV, 64 GB DIMMs

Previously: Expect 20-30% Cheaper NAND in Late 2018
Weak Demand for DRAM Could Lead to Price Decreases in 2019
DRAM Prices Will Continue to Decline in Q1/Q2 2019
Huawei Blacklisting Predicted to Cause DRAM Prices to Drop 15%

Related: Manufacturing Memory Means Scribing Silicon in a Sea of Sensors


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday July 01 2019, @12:32PM (2 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday July 01 2019, @12:32PM (#861886) Journal

    It's not cheaper. The price per GB stopped dropping several years ago. But the amount people treat as the "minimum" is up. Games and (some) applications use more, devices and phones have more, servers use more.

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by isostatic on Tuesday July 02 2019, @11:30AM (1 child)

    by isostatic (365) on Tuesday July 02 2019, @11:30AM (#862339) Journal

    Not falling as fast as it used to, but still falling

    July 2009 - 4GB for $45 - $11.25/gb
    July 2014 - 8GB for $70 - $8.70/gb
    July 2019 - 16GB for $61 - $3.80/gb

    https://jcmit.net/memoryprice.htm [jcmit.net]

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday July 02 2019, @04:35PM

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday July 02 2019, @04:35PM (#862444) Journal

      Not really, for the last 7 years:

      https://jcmit.net/memoryprice.htm [jcmit.net]

      Nov. 2012 - 8 GB for $30 - $3.75/GB
      Sep. 2013 - 8 GB for $53 - $6.63/GB
      June 2014 - 8 GB for $65 - $8.13/GB
      May. 2015 - 16 GB for $92 - $5.75/GB
      Nov. 2015 - 16 GB for $63 - $3.94/GB
      May. 2016 - 16 GB for $49 - $3.06/GB
      June 2016 - 16 GB for $45 - $2.81/GB
      July 2016 - 16 GB for $50 - $3.13/GB
      June 2017 - 16 GB for $90 - $5.63/GB
      Apr. 2019 - 16 GB for $61 - $3.81/GB

      They have a linked chart [jcmit.net] that makes it more apparent.

      Keeping in mind that is is logarithmic, you can see prices hit a floor in late 2012, creep up to peak at mid-2014, hit a slightly deeper floor in mid-2016, shoot up again, and then drop to today's prices. 2012 to 2019 is 7 years, during which $/GB barely improved and there are notable spikes in the prices compared to previous decades. The chart is pretty flat from 2002 to 2006 but without the spikes. Some of the other 7 year periods show roughly an order of magnitude decrease in $/GB.

      We might get a little cheaper than before in 2019, before we get the next spike. The jagged line trend could continue from 7 to 10 years. During this period, the absolute minimum amount of RAM demanded by Windows, Linux, Android, ChromeOS, etc. has not climbed much, but ordinary users/gamers are shooting for 16-32 GB instead of 4-8 GB (and flagship smartphones are packing 6-12 GB), and there's software that can use up all of it. Core counts are massively increasing with the likes of Ryzen/Threadripper, and some users shoot for 2-4 GB per thread (e.g. up to 512 GB for an upcoming 64-core Threadripper). If you grabbed your RAM during one of the troughs, you saved some money. But it would have been a lot better if you had seen RAM decline to below $1/GB by now.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]