- The spot price of a 16GB DDR4 chip has dropped by 5%
- This is the first time this price has fallen in over a year
- While this is obviously a good thing, there is still quite a storm left to weather with the RAM crisis
We’ve witnessed another hint that the RAM crisis is de-escalating – at least a touch – along with an interesting move by the Korean government to try to protect consumers from the worst excesses of PC component price hikes.
Tom’s Hardware reported a DigiTimes report that claims the spot price of a 16GB DDR4 chip has dropped by about 5% over the past month.
That might not sound like much, but it’s notable because it’s the first monthly drop for DDR4 prices in just over a year. (Although some of the recent increases have been small and prices have actually stayed flat – but we haven’t seen a drop so far).
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Don’t get carried away with optimism here though, as this has come on the back of a 2,200% increase in the price of a 16GB DDR4 module over the past year.
Tom’s Hardware also noted another development in Asia, with what could be an important step for Korean consumers — with perhaps some hope that other countries might adopt similar policies.
Based on a report by The Korea Herald, the government will recycle several of the PCs it decommissioned last year, increasing the number of these computers being recycled and donated to various organizations. It will also provide more PCs to vulnerable groups, we are told, and expand the scope of a grant scheme that gives money to low-income households who buy computers for students.
All of this is designed to take some of the sting out of PCs getting a lot more expensive, and there’s something else that’s more eye-opening, too. An additional report from No Cut News talks about the Korean government’s plans to “monitor the distribution and supply and demand conditions in the PC and notebook PC markets to prevent unfair practices.”
That apparently involves a few government agencies — including the Commerce Department — keeping a close eye on the PC market, as well as RAM sales, and investigating what might be considered illegal activity. “Strong measures” are promised if those selling components or PCs are found to be involved in opportunistic profiteering.
This should help keep prices down somewhat, or so the theory goes, although keep in mind that these aren’t official announcements, just reports in the Korean media at this point.
Analysis: hopeful signs – but let’s temper any optimism
We’ve recently seen reports that DDR5 prices have dropped across the globe, and significantly in China, where the price of 16GB modules of the high-end RAM has dropped by up to 30% (in terms of sales on e-commerce platforms in the country). Seeing DDR4 also topple is of course welcome, although not nearly to the same degree.
We can then hope for some price drops for DDR4 at retail, although that wouldn’t really be a surprise given the wallet-wrenching peaks in pricing that this RAM and DDR5 have reached. As I observed in my previous article on DDR5 prices falling, there is a point where prices become so high that an increasing number of consumers simply refuse to pay them – and when that filters through as a drop in demand, a price correction inevitably follows.
There are other possible reasons for these declines as well, including theories that OpenAI has scaled back its RAM-eating ambitions tremendously, leaving AI demand not quite as intense as it previously appeared. In addition, in the same spirit, we have Google’s TurboQuant. This technology aims to greatly reduce the memory usage of the AI - at least in some respects – although I think it’s a bit of a red herring, and I have a feature ready for release that explains why. (Watch for it soon).
Any relief we see now is certainly welcome, but don’t make the mistake of thinking we’re close to some tipping point with RAM prices. Many analyst firms are betting heavily against it, and for good reason, plus hardware manufacturers are singing similar tunes. Don’t underestimate the challenges the tech world faces here.
Given the seriousness of these price problems, can we expect governments elsewhere in the world to step in, as Korea apparently has? I doubt very much that we will see any big plans to monitor the reasonableness of the pricing of PCs or components, which is a seriously difficult area to consider. But schemes to help low-income students or families buy a laptop — or recycle old Windows 10 PCs — certainly seem like avenues to explore or expand on that have plenty of potential.
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