Why RAM Prices Have Gone Insane – And When They Might Come Back Down

RAM prices in 2026 have gone off the rails. DDR5 kits that cost £95 in May 2025 are pushing £400 today. DDR4 – supposed to be the cheaper safe option – has more than doubled. If you’ve priced up a build recently and done a double take, this post explains exactly what’s happening, what it means for anyone buying or building a PC right now, and what the next two years look like.

RAM Prices 2026 – How Bad Is It?

To understand the scale of this, here’s what the same memory kits were selling for in May 2025 versus December 2025, based on PCPartPicker price tracking data:

• DDR4 32GB (2x16GB): ~£70 in May 2025. Over £180 by December.
• DDR5-6000 32GB: ~£95 in May 2025. Over £350 by December.
• DDR5-6000 64GB: ~£170 in May 2025. Pushing £650 by December.

At component level it’s even starker. In September 2025, 16GB DDR5 chips were trading at approximately $6.84. By late December, the price had surged to $27.20 per chip – a rise of roughly 298% in just three months.

This isn’t a gradual drift upward. It’s a cliff edge. A 32GB DDR4 kit that commonly sold for between $60 and $90 in October 2025 could cost anywhere between $150 and $180 by January 2026 – so DDR4 isn’t a safe haven either.

What’s Driving RAM Prices So High in 2026

The short answer is AI. The longer answer involves understanding how the global memory market actually works – and why it’s so vulnerable to this kind of shock.

AI Is Eating the Memory Market

The three companies that manufacture the vast majority of the world’s DRAM – Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron – have pivoted enormous portions of their production capacity toward High Bandwidth Memory (HBM). HBM is the specialist memory used in AI accelerators like NVIDIA’s H100 and H200 data centre chips. It generates far higher margins than standard consumer DDR5, and demand from hyperscalers (Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta) is essentially unlimited right now.

The problem is that wafer capacity is finite. Every wafer going toward HBM for an AI data centre is a wafer not going toward the DDR5 kit you want for your gaming PC. Production under long-term agreements with AI data centres is tightly controlled and sector-specific, offering no relief to shortages faced by general consumers or small-scale PC assemblers.

The Phase-Out of DDR4

At the same time, manufacturers have been deliberately winding down DDR4 production to push the market toward DDR5 adoption. This has backfired badly from a consumer perspective. Rather than DDR4 becoming cheaply available as a legacy option, it’s become scarce because manufacturers stopped making as much of it – right as DDR5 got expensive. By choking off DDR4 supply, manufacturers nudge the market toward DDR5, since eventually customers have no choice but to transition. For consumers, it means older memory may not get cheap again – it’s being phased out rather than kept as a low-cost alternative.

Inventory at Crisis Levels

The industry normally operates comfortably with 13-17 weeks of DRAM inventory. In October 2025, Japanese electronics chains reported only 2-4 weeks of DRAM supply on hand – sub-one-month levels, which is crisis territory. Some retailers began imposing purchase limits, and some memory module makers suspended new orders entirely to reassess their position.

Everything Is Affected at Once

Normally when one type of memory gets expensive, builders shift to alternatives. This time there’s nowhere to go. This is the first time all three major memory and storage categories – DRAM, NAND flash, and hard drives – have been constrained simultaneously. SSDs are following the same trajectory. Kingston’s Datacenter SSD Business Manager, who has worked at the company for 29 years, reported seeing a 246% increase in NAND pricing compared to Q1 2025 – the fastest spike he has ever seen.

What Rising RAM Prices Mean for PC Builders in 2026

A few practical realities if you’re building or upgrading in 2026:

Build costs are up significantly. A mid-range gaming build that would have cost around £1,000 for parts in early 2025 will cost meaningfully more today just because of memory pricing. On a £1,200 build, the RAM alone may have increased by £100-£150 compared to twelve months ago.

DDR4 is not the escape route it used to be. If you’re upgrading an older system and hoping to just add more DDR4, expect to pay double what you would have a year ago. The price gap between DDR4 and DDR5 has narrowed significantly, which changes the calculus on whether it’s worth upgrading the whole platform.

Timing a purchase is harder than ever. Prices are fluctuating week to week rather than month to month. Waiting for prices to drop has historically been good advice for RAM – right now it isn’t. Prices are still climbing in 2026, and the actual peak is expected sometime around mid-2026. Buying now is likely better than waiting six months.

Stock comes and goes quickly. Scalpers and automated bots are active in the memory market, much like the GPU shortage of 2021. When a kit appears at a reasonable price, it doesn’t last long.

32GB remains the practical minimum for a new build. With AI features being baked into Windows 11 and modern games pushing memory use higher, 16GB is increasingly tight. The jump from 16GB to 32GB costs more than it did a year ago, but skimping now means paying again sooner.

RAM Price Outlook: The Next 24 Months

This is where the honest answer gets uncomfortable.

2026 – prices stay high, possibly peak mid-year. The first half of 2026 will see prices climb further as HBM mass production begins in earnest, tightening the grip on global wafer production and leaving standard DDR5 buyers with very few options. Analysts at TrendForce and DigiTimes forecast quarterly DDR5 price increases of 30-50% through H1 2026. The peak is expected somewhere around mid-2026.

Late 2026 into 2027 – slow stabilisation. Samsung’s P4 facility in Pyeongtaek and SK Hynix’s M15X fab are both expected to ramp production through 2026. This new capacity won’t hit consumer channels immediately, but should begin applying downward pressure to prices in the second half of 2026 at the earliest. A significant downward correction is unlikely to manifest until late 2027.

2027-2028 – gradual normalisation, but not back to 2025 lows. Memory shortages are expected to persist through at least Q4 2027, with prices remaining elevated throughout 2026 and 2027. Some analysts suggest the AI-driven supercycle could extend further, potentially into 2028-2029. When prices do fall, they’re unlikely to return to the lows of early 2025 – those were unusually competitive, and manufacturers have little incentive to go back there.

What Mat Recommends Given Current RAM Prices

For anyone building or upgrading in the current market:

• If you need a new build now, build it now. Waiting for RAM prices to recover is a two-year wait at minimum. The opportunity cost of not having the machine outweighs the savings.
• Go for 32GB as a baseline. With current pricing the gap between 16GB and 32GB kits is less proportionally significant than it used to be. 32GB is future-proof in a way 16GB isn’t right now.
• Stick to reputable brands. Corsair, G.Skill, Kingston, Crucial, TeamGroup. The shortage has brought counterfeit and low-quality kits to market. Some retailers are selling kits with one fake RAM stick alongside a real one to create a performance illusion. Buy from legitimate retailers and check reviews on Tom’s Hardware before purchasing.
• Track prices before you buy. Use CamelCamelCamel to track Amazon price history on specific kits. RAM prices 2026 are volatile week to week – a kit that spiked last week may dip briefly before climbing again.
• Consider Klarna for a build. Spreading the cost over three interest-free payments makes more sense when component costs are at a peak. It also means you can build now rather than waiting and potentially paying more.

If you’re planning a build and want honest advice on the best spec for your budget given current RAM prices in 2026, get in touch with Mat directly. Or put a spec together with the PC Builder Tool and get a quote that reflects what components actually cost right now.

Further reading: How to Choose a PSU – another component category where quality matters more than the headline price.