Fresh RAM woes emerge in the form of a rumor that Samsung has doubled the cost of DDR5

• Samsung has reportedly doubled the cost of DDR5 RAM
• This is the contract price for DDR5 charged to RAM manufacturers
• As ever, though, price rises in the supply chain will be passed on to consumers – if this rumor is correct, of course

There's yet more worrying news on the cost of RAM, as Samsung is rumored to be seriously increasing the price of DDR5 memory (and DDR4 pricing is still rising, too).

Notebookcheck.net spotted that leaker Jukan on X posted an article from a Taiwanese tech news site (Technowvoice.com), which claims Samsung has just ramped up the contract price of the DDR5 chips it supplies to memory manufacturers.

Obviously, take this with some skepticism, but the claim is that Samsung is now charging a contract price of $19.50 (per 2GB memory chip) for 16GB of DDR5, which is more than double what it was previously when this rise came in at the end of November, we're told.

Let that sink in – pricing has more than doubled (it was $9), and while this is for the cost in the supply chain, as ever, this hike will be passed on to consumers who will foot the bill in the end.

Technowvoice describes the RAM industry as being in a state of "structural disruption" and that, regarding this latest price rise, Samsung simply told its downstream customers that there's simply "no stock!" (although note that the article is translated from Chinese, so some nuances may be lost in terms of the original meaning).

The report further notes that last-gen DDR4 RAM has quadrupled in price following the withdrawal of Samsung and most of the other major players from the market, and the contract price for this slower memory has also risen to $18 as of the end of last month.

Analysis: no sign of a predicted stall in price rises

It's clear a severe disruption is underway, of course, as we've seen in the ridiculously steep – indeed near-vertical – rise in the price of RAM sticks at retail since late September. I don't think I've ever witnessed such a fast rise in pricing for any type of PC components (except for maybe the most high-end GPUs when stock was short during the crypto craze).

This report from Technowvoice further observes that the hope was that in December 2025, RAM price hikes might start to calm down, and that we could have seen the worst of the increases throughout October and November. However, that isn't happening; instead, we're getting even more pronounced spikes in pricing.

The report also notes that memory makers have nowhere to turn, as whether they are manufacturing DDR4 or DDR5 RAM, the prices have gone sky-high.

In short, the likelihood is that system RAM is going to get even more expensive – as if it wasn't already pricey enough – and storage is suffering a similar fate, to boot.

If you're thinking of buying DDR4 or DDR5 RAM, the best advice for now is seemingly to wait and hope that some of the more pessimistic forecasts – claiming these price increases could last through until 2027, or maybe even longer – turn out wrong. But system memory is priced at crazy levels right now already, so buying seems a foolish move unless you can somehow find a reasonable deal out there. (Storage and SSDs are a different case, mind, particularly for budget drives – and you may want to move now, or quickly, on that front).

The trouble is that the cost of RAM isn't just affecting those building a new PC, or upgrading the memory in their existing computer – it's also going to have a major impact on the price of prebuilt devices, and notably laptops.

With this fresh bad news from Samsung, it seems the situation could be worse than we thought, and the price of RAM and laptops alike could be considerably inflated as next year rolls into town. I definitely wouldn't bet against that happening.

The best SSDs for all budgets

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