RAM & SSDs are Stocks Now

I update the prices on this site every day. And lately, that job has started to feel less like maintaining a product catalogue and more like watching a trading screen.

A 2x8GB kit of RAM now costs what a 2x16GB kit cost four months ago. SSD prices have jumped alongside anything using NAND. The floor used to be the ceiling, and it doesn't look like it's coming back down. Prices fluctuate daily, seemingly at random, completely disconnected from consumer demand. Some retailers have stopped listing fixed prices entirely and moved to spot pricing. Computer components are being priced like commodities futures.

So what happened?

September 2025: The Floor Fell Out

In mid-2025, a decent 32GB DDR5 kit cost under £95. By October, it was closer to £184. By December, that same kit was pushing past £400. At the chip level, individual 16GB DDR5 chips went from roughly $6.84 in September to $27.20 (they quote in USD) by late December. So a near 300% increase in three months then.

DRAM contract prices surged over 170% year-on-year by Q3 2025. NAND flash contract prices jumped between 20% and 60% within a month. I'm tempted to compare it to a rug-pull, but it's more like one of those table cloth tricks.

And it wasn't driven by people buying PCs. Consumer demand for memory actually weakened through this period. The demand came from AI data centres, and the three companies who fabricate this stuff, Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, decided that's who they'd rather sell to.

All Three Made the Same Choice

Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron control the global memory supply. Between them they make, as near as makes no difference, all of it. And all three are now prioritising the same thing: high-bandwidth memory for AI accelerators, enterprise server contracts, and OEM deals. Consumer DRAM and NAND gets whatever's left over, even if that means literally nothing.

The fabrication capacity exists. It's just not pointed at you anymore. Every wafer allocated to an HBM stack for an AI GPU is a wafer that isn't becoming the DDR5 in your PC. IDC called it a "potentially permanent, strategic reallocation of the world's silicon wafer capacity." Sounds lovely.

If one company made this call, the others could fill the gap. But when all three do it simultaneously, individual buyers have no leverage and no alternatives. Every individual decision makes business sense. The collective result is a market failure.

OpenAI Wants 40% of Global DRAM Output

To put a number on how far this goes: OpenAI's Stargate project has signed preliminary agreements with Samsung and SK Hynix targeting 900,000 DRAM wafers per month. That figure could represent around 40% of total global DRAM production. For data centres that are still blueprints.

This is the demand that's eating your RAM budget. A handful of companies building AI infrastructure at a scale that treats the entire consumer memory market as a rounding error.

Then Micron Killed Crucial

On December 3rd 2025, Micron shut down Crucial, their consumer brand of 29 years. The usual corporate farewell letter went out. Thanks for your loyalty. We're moving on.

This didn't cause the price spike. Prices had already tripled before the announcement. I do believe it sealed the deal, though. One of only three major fabricators formally walked away from selling to individual people. They're still making memory. They just don't make it for you anymore.

The silicon goes where the margins are: HBM for AI, enterprise contracts, data centre deals. If you're not buying in bulk for a server farm, you're not the customer. Micron's own EVP said it plainly. They exited to "improve supply and support for our larger, strategic customers."

They Didn't Have to Do This

Micron will tell you they had to. Shareholders expect capital allocated where returns are highest. HBM margins dwarf consumer DRAM. It's just good business.

Sure.

Maintaining both a consumer and enterprise business isn't some impossible balancing act, though. It's called running a company. Negotiating the tension between short-term margin and long-term market diversity is literally the job of competent leadership. They didn't make a hard strategic call. They took the lazy high-margin AI play and called it a business strategy. Whatever makes that graph line stay green and point upward, I guess.

In 2026, practically everyone needs a computer. The message from these companies is straightforward: we can't be bothered with you anymore.

DDR4 Isn't a Safe Haven Either

If you're thinking of dodging this by sticking with DDR4, that door is closing too. 32GB DDR4 kits that sold for £60-90 in October 2025 hit £150-180 by January 2026. Samsung and SK Hynix are both winding down DDR4 production lines in favour of newer, higher-margin products. Legacy DRAM output is forecast to fall dramatically through 2026.

In some cases, DDR4 is now more expensive per gigabyte than DDR5 simply because nobody's making it anymore.

What This Means for You

If you're building or upgrading a PC right now, the honest answer is that nobody knows where prices are going. Not myself, not the analysts, Micron, Samsung, whatever. The normal rules of waiting for a sale or buying when prices dip don't really apply when the pricing isn't behaving like a product market anymore.

Industry analysts don't expect meaningful price relief until late 2027 at the earliest, and some are projecting this "supercycle" could extend into 2028. New fab capacity is being built, but semiconductor factories take years to come online, and even then, the new capacity is largely reserved for AI.

What I can tell you is what I see from working on this site: NAND flash is basically stocks now. The price today is not the price tomorrow. People usually avoid telling you what stocks to buy because it's volatile, now NAND is the same. Should you buy an SSD now? Maybe some RAM? I have no idea... Maybe?

Sources

• DDR5 chip pricing (Sep–Dec 2025): Unibetter IC, "When Will DDR5 Prices Drop? 2026 Memory Market Forecast"
• DRAM contract prices 171% YoY: Tom's Hardware, "DRAM prices skyrocket 171% year-over-year" (November 2025)
• NAND flash 20–60% monthly jump: Procurement Pro, "DRAM and NAND price rises tied to AI data-centre demand" (January 2026)
• IDC "potentially permanent reallocation" quote: IDC, "Global Memory Shortage Crisis: Market Analysis" (February 2026)
• OpenAI Stargate 900,000 wafers / 40% of global output: Tom's Hardware, citing Reuters (October 2025)
• Micron exits Crucial: Micron Technology press release (December 3, 2025)
• DDR4 price increases: Tom's Hardware RAM Price Tracking 2026
• Supercycle 2027–2028 projection: NAND Research, "Memory Market Supply Constraints and Rising Prices" (December 2025)
• Retailers moving to spot pricing: Resell Calendar, "The RAM Price Crisis is Getting Worse" (December 2025)
• Framework price increases: Framework, "Memory and storage pricing updates"