- RAM prices are skyrocketing after a long period of relative stability
- DDR4 64GB kits have risen from nearly $150 to around $400 to $600
- DDR4 and DDR5 kits show huge increases across multiple capacities
RAM prices have been rising steadily at a pace that has become incredibly hard to ignore – and while some of the blame for the spike can be laid at the door of memory giants SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron prioritizing the needs of hyperscalers and AI companies over consumers, the situation is more complicated than that, as I wrote about recently.
If you’re hoping to build a new PC or upgrade an existing one, you’ll need to budget a lot more for RAM than you probably bargained for, especially if you need DDR4.
Memory trend charts from PCPartPicker show how much has changed in a relatively short time. For most of 2025, DDR4 prices were largely stable. A typical 32GB DDR4 kit typically hovered around $70 to $90, depending on speed and brand.
Sky high prices
Fast forward to today and the latest tracker data shows many 2x16GB DDR4 kits now pushing past $150, with higher prices heading towards or above $200.
The shift is much more pronounced at higher capacities. DDR4 2x32GB kits that spent much of the timeline averaging around $120 to $150 have risen dramatically and current averages have moved into the $350 to $400 range.
Individual ads at the top end are now close to $600.
These increases are large enough that older price history is visually compressed on some of the PCPartPicker’s graphs.
Long flat stretches of relatively stable pricing have been squeezed to accommodate the rapid rise near the right edge.
DDR5 prices are also moving higher, although that curve looks a little less steep.
Kits that used to average around $150 are now more commonly tracked in the $250 to $300 range.
This ongoing price increase will inevitably change how memory fits into the overall system budgets of many builders. RAM is no longer a predictable purchase that can be treated as a minor line item.
If the current direction holds, memory could soon rival CPUs and GPUs as one of the biggest single costs in a build. It would have been hard to imagine this time a year ago.
Not all memory-related components are affected in the same way. NAND-based storage prices are showing far less movement – at least for now.
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