- DDR5 RAM prices have hit new highs in the US
- Even the cheapest 32GB kits can’t be had for less than $360
- That’s up 20% from two months ago, as system RAM continues to get more expensive despite earlier signs that the crisis was abating
RAM prices continue to prove seriously painful with DDR5 modules, and the situation at US retailers is so bad that you can’t get a basic (entry-level) 32GB kit for anything less than $350 now.
Highlighting the prices on Amazon in the US, Tom’s Hardware observed that some common lower-end 32GB kits – which consist of two 16GB DDR5 sticks – are now $360. Just a few months ago, the same sets were priced at around $290 to $325, showing that prices are continuing their seemingly inexorable rise.
Looking at Newegg and Amazon now, I can’t actually see anything under $360, except for an offer on a Kingbank 32GB kit for $350 on Newegg – note that this is a Chinese brand and there are caveats to this (even if the product is sold directly by Newegg, I’d rather buy from one of the trusted RAM manufacturers that we typically only recommend that we save here).
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What this shows is that despite some signs of a rebound in RAM price increases – which had been observed in some regions last month – the overall direction is still upward, albeit nowhere near the steep rise we saw at the end of 2025.
As one Redditor notes in reaction to this find: “RAM prices are really insane now. I bought a new RAM kit at the beginning of September, and if I were to buy the same kit now, it would cost more than my graphics card. I have an RTX 4090, so this is completely absurd.”
Analysis: Blame the bots – a double whammy of AI misery
So we’re looking at about a 20% increase in prices over the last few months for DDR5, and as Toms notes, the situation is getting worse because bots are now being brought in by scalpers.
Price-savvy people buy RAM kits that come at more affordable prices – and that’s very much a relative term now – using the aforementioned AI-powered bots. Of course, it’s the demand for RAM in the form of the AI explosion—that, and issues surrounding memory chip manufacturers lowering production levels in the past when there was an abundance of supply—that has caused the current RAM crisis.
There’s been further bad news from Framework (via VideoCardz ), with the notebook and desktop PC maker having to bump the price of its DDR5 modules up to $13 to $18 a piece. Gigabytes (GB). To put it in perspective, at the end of last year the price was $10 per GB, with an increase to $12 to $16 last month.
The storm surrounding RAM prices therefore shows no signs of calming down for the time being, and the outlook remains grim. (Of course, you can still get sporadic deals on high-end RAM, though the savings achieved are only relative to the huge price increases, and the expense is still painful).
The alternatives to buying new RAM are to look at used memory on auction sites – although there is no guarantee of quality there – or to get yourself a package deal (such as a motherboard with RAM included, or perhaps a three-in-one CPU plus RAM and motherboard package). Those kinds of deals are probably the best way to go if you’re looking to build a PC, but obviously they won’t be of much use to someone just looking to upgrade their current system memory.
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