- 64GB DDR5 RAM kits that cost $200 not too long ago are now more than $1000
- The rise in the price of RAM has turned routine PC upgrades into luxury purchases
- AI demand is partly to blame for the ongoing RAM crisis, but it’s not the only reason
It’s not a good time to be a PC builder right now. Buying RAM used to be something you did without much thought, now you have to think not only about how much memory you need, but how much you can actually afford.
If you’re looking for some DDR5 RAM, you need deep pockets PCPartPicker shows 64GB DDR5 kits breaking the $1000 mark.
Not so long ago, the same capability would have been treated as a sensible upgrade rather than a luxury purchase. For context, if you had gone shopping in August 2025, you would expect to pay under $250 for 64GB of DDR5.
Still on the way up
Even a month ago, the average was closer to the $600 to $700 range, already uncomfortable but nowhere near four figures.
In a matter of weeks, prices cleared $800, continued to rise, and shot past $1000, turning what used to be incremental increases into a nearly vertical climb.
That pace distorts what the data itself looks like. On some PCPartPicker price tracking graphs, long stretches of flat, stable RAM prices are visually compressed to make way for the sharp rise on the right edge.
Years of calm RAM history are compressed into a thin ribbon, so the latest tip can even fit on the screen.
While it’s easy to point the finger at AI’s unquenchable memory thirst for the current crisis, that’s not the only reason.
DRAM production has not kept up with demand. Older memory types are being phased out, newer ones are being steered toward higher margin customers, and consumer RAM is being left exposed as supply tightens.
RAM is now so expensive that memory sticks are being stolen from monitor PCs, warehouses, returned systems and even offices – something that would have sounded absurd when 64GB cost a fraction of today’s prices.
For builders and buyers, the message is hard to ignore. Although some types of memory rise more slowly than others, it will take a while for things to stabilize, and even longer for prices to come close to feeling “normal” again.
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