According to analysts, the price of both DDR4 and especially DDR5 will rise during Q4 2023
A month ago, we published a report here that prices of SSDs (or NAND memory, which is their main component) have stopped their previous price fall and instead, their prices have started to climb up. Unfortunately, it seems that we have to follow with the news that the the pricing of the second key type of memory for computers, which is DRAM, is taking a turn for the worse as well and DDR5 and DDR4 modules will get more expensive too.
As with NAND, DRAM prices are being tracked by the analyst outfit TrendForce, which has now issued a report saying it expects prices for both DDR4 and DDR5, as well as mobile LPDDR memory for laptops, to increase in the current fourth quarter of the year. Higher prices are also expected for graphics memory. This may theoretically lead to more expensive graphics cards, but competition may force GPU and card manufacturers to absorb this cost increase at the expense of their margins.
DDR5 prices to go up more than DDR4
According to TrendForce, PC RAM prices are expected to go up by about 3–8% during Q4 2023 (i.e. when comparing the the prices by end of December compared to the end of September), while they kept declining slightly on average (by 0–5%) each quarter until Q3 2023. Manufacturers (e.g. Samsung) have apparently decreased production as they approached negative margins, as they did with NAND Flash memory.
The price increase is expected to be higher for DDR5 memory, which is due to the fact that they are increasingly replacing DDR4, their share in PCs is growing and thus the demand for them is growing. In fact, DDR5 prices actually started to rise (by 0–5%) in Q3 already. In Q4, DDR5 prices are expected to continue to rise by an average of 3–8%. This is still just an estimate, as there is of course no real data for the whole quarter yet.
DDR4 memory, which saw a 3–8% decrease in price in the third quarter, is expected to reverse its trend in Q4 and climb to higher prices in the fourth quarter, with prices rising by 0–5% on average. Apparently the price bumps won’t be drastic yet, but it’s possible that similarly to what we have seen with SSDs, when you’ll look into the rear-view mirror in some time, you’ll see that the ideal time to buy a new memory or upgrade your capacity (if you’ve been holding back and waiting for the ideal opportunity to do that), might have been now.
According to TrendForce, GDDR-type graphics memory will also increase in price in Q4 2023 (by 3–8%), and LPPDR memory for laptops and mobile phones is expected to increase by similar numbers. LPDDR4X price will go up by 3–8%, newer LPDDR5 and LPDDR5X by 5–10%. Only server products (i.e. also DDR4 and DDR5, but in server modules) are to remain roughly unchanged or get cheaper by 0–5%. But apparently this will not last, Samsung has reportedly reduced production of server DDR4 recently, so there may soon be an undersupply situation.
According to TrendForce, this increase doesn’t have to be the beginning of a longer cycle that will result in significantly worse prices, yet. Whether manufacturers will be able to “stabilize” prices and raise them to more profitable levels is not yet certain and will depend on whether they keep production volumes down and whether demand for PCs recovers. Also, according to analysts, much will depend on demand for servers and server memory, which can generate high demand for DDR4 and DDR5 memory because servers are usually provisioned with high RAM capacity. So there are no signs yet that a we’ll see the infamous roller coaster ride cycle (that has happened a couple of times in the past decade) again in which RAM prices would gradually rack up large price increases over several quarters.
Sources: ComputerBase, TrendForce
English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš
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