- DDR4 RAM becomes more expensive
- AI partly involves this price increase, but it is also a natural process
- Price increases are likely to continue
The PC component market has taken something from a twist because the latest generation DDR4 memory is now much more expensive than the peak RAM DDR5 – or at least it’s largely true, and you can blame AI for this, in a diverted way.
Tom’s equipment has picked up a digitimate report on paid walls that break down prices in the supply chain for RAM PC sticks. Just keep in mind that this is an image for the entire RAM market (company and consumer), and I will come back to the reason why this is important shortly.
Digitimes observes that the pricing of memory (for RAM manufacturers) jumped in the second quarter of 2025 and has now stabilized at these high levels, but the DDR4 still slips. In August, we are told that the price of 16 GB of DDR4 memory increased by $ 7% to $ 9.17 per chip, while DDR5 went in the other direction, lowering from $ 3% to $ 5.99 for each chip.
In short, DDR4 kits are now more expensive at 50% than DDR5 (for the overall memory market). So why is it happening? As mentioned at the beginning, the problem is that the AI is all the rage, and therefore the major memory manufacturers – Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron – change to produce more DDR5 and HBM (high -band width memory) for ACC accelerators, because they are large profit spinners.
The need for this production is eating the capacity of the mounting channels for DDR4, and therefore there is less in the way these modules are produced, which negatively affects food, and therefore exerts ascending pressure on prices.
Do not expect this to change in the fourth quarter, because according to the Digitimes report, DDR4 pricing should go a little more in the last quarter of this year.
Analysis: with the old, inevitably …
It should be noted that Old Tech has been naturally rolled up in production, because it becomes more and more non -relevant, and this is the case with DDR4 now, as with older RAM standards before it. As everyone obtains new PCs with DDR5 support – and the price of this contemporary memory standard is declining – and PC manufacturers stop using DDR4, it goes to the door. It’s just that in this case, the AI market seems to speed up this departure.
Currently, however, while prices on certain DDR4 kits have clearly increased, it is not the case that all price labels go through the roof for DDR4. In fact, looking at 32 GB of RAM kits (a pair of 16 GB modules, which is the best way to configure this memory load), there is not much for the price of DDR5 and DDR4 kits at the low end, and the latter still has slightly cheaper options. (Based on the current state of play at Newegg in the United States, but there will probably be variations, of course, with different retailers and in other regions.)
So that doesn’t mean all DDR4 RAM is now much more expensive, but that is largely true on the entire market (including the corporate world, not only the retail sites of consumers, as I approached earlier). There are still exceptions to this rule, and you can see it quite clearly by looking at online prices (among large typical retailers intended for consumers).
However, with the trends that are directed as they are – and DDR4 inevitably when leaving – if you want an affordable RAM DDR4 upgrade for an existing PC, it is probably a good idea to buy now rather than waiting, and to grasp one of these low -cost kits always. We have also chosen the best RAM DDR5 for those looking for this, including budgetary options, because the current generation standard becomes cheaper and cheaper.
