PC gamers rejoice as RAM prices set to plunge to new lows

PC DRAM pricing has been all over the place for the last year and a half, but the latest reports from Trendforce suggest that PC RAM pricing could go down a further 15% in Spring 2023.

If you have tried to build a new PC over the past year or two, you might have noticed that one particular part appears to be pretty expensive: RAM. As gamers build new PCs equipped with DDR5 RAM, as supported by Intel’s Raptor Lake and AMD’s Ryzen 7000 CPUs, prices have come crashing down since the beginning of 2023.

Thanks to Trendforce (via TechPowerUp), demand for PC RAM has dropped significantly, with suppliers cutting the number of products in circulation. However, with many retailers left with stock, pricing has come crashing down since the beginning of 2023.

DDR4 pricing crashed by around 15-20%, and DDR5 pricing has plunged even further this year, by 18-23%. DDR5 pricing being cut is also due to a presumed increase in production, as the sticks were incredibly expensive when they first came to market.

RAM prices could fall even further

Now, Trendforce suggests that RAM pricing could fall even further in the second quarter of 2023. They estimate that DDR4 will drop by around 8-13%, with DDR5 modules down by 10-15%. This would be pretty staggering, as DDR5 has yet to come down to more accessible levels for consumers to purchase.

With this in mind, there’s no doubt that PC DDR5 RAM will be more accessible than ever. PC gamers should be used to the idea that 16GB of RAM really isn’t enough for most users anymore, and that 32GB is the new baseline for AAA gaming. Hopefully, the decrease in DDR5 RAM prices should ease this somewhat, even as demand for PC gaming parts seemingly slows.

Interestingly, Graphics DRAM pricing has also suffered the same fate, with the report stating that the graphics DRAM industry is quietly shifting to primarily using 16GB modules as VRAM demands in AAA gaming increase. However, the report also notes that the advent of artificial intelligence has failed to make too much of a dent when it comes to sheer sales volume, despite Nvidia shipping over 30,000 GPUs to ChatGPT creators OpenAI.

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