RAM prices could have already peaked, hints new data

It's good news of a sort… We're far from seeing RAM prices return to mid-2025 levels any time soon, but a new report suggests they have at least leveled off, giving hope that the memory price explosion that started at the end of last year could be over sooner than previously thought.

While this data still reinforces the fact that you're paying as much as quadruple the price you would have paid six months ago for the best gaming RAM, it does give us hope that there may not be further price rises in the near future. So, unless you absolutely need to upgrade now, you probably shouldn't be tempted to buy at the moment, and instead just wait a few months for prices to calm down again.

This RAM price data comes from German retailer 3DCenter, which has been running a RAMpocalypse report tracking the average price of graphics cards, storage, and various types of memory over the last few months.

Plain to see from this report is how prices for all types of RAM exploded from November 2025 onwards, particularly accelerating through December and peaking in January. However, data from February so far shows there has been no increase at all for DDR5 UDIMMs, which are the standard sticks of RAM used for gaming PCs.

The full significance of and reason for this leveling off of prices isn't clear yet. Supply of DDR5 could have improved - though we've seen no evidence of this elsewhere, we could have simply reached the natural upper price limit that any consumer is willing to pay for these products, or it could be a symptom of natural yearly purchasing cycles. While we're far from out of winter yet, the hangover of holiday season overspend and the steady lengthening of days means less time spent hunkering down indoors to play games and being tempted by PC upgrades. Whatever the reason, it's one of the first quantifiable positive signs we've seen during the RAMpocalypse.

There is some less good news in the report, though. Prices for DDR4 and DDR3 continued to rise significantly through February, as they did for SODIMM DDR5, which is the type of RAM used in laptops. Internal SSDs and HDDs also saw small price increases, though the total change compared to July last year still only stands at 190% and 162% respectively - a far cry from the 400%+ of DDR5.

Also only seeing modest price changes for this retailer over this period are graphics cards, which have risen just 20% since July 2025. However, the fact that GPU prices have seen huge increases over the past several years means they remain a pricey upgrade.

Still, we live in hope that the price trends revealed by this one German retailer are indicative of a course correction for the industry. While prices are likely to remain high for several months yet, maybe by July, they'll only be twice as high as they were 12 months before.