RAM Price Hikes Inbound; GPUs and DDR4 to Become More Expensive

Due to the high interest in electronics, memory prices are increasing. This is reflected in the increase in prices of DDR4 RAM, GPUs and smartphones.

Due to the ever-increasing demand for hardware components in the global market, we can see a constant increase in prices of electronics. This will also be the case with RAM, whose price is expected to change, unfortunately, for the worse, since the increases may reach, in the worst cases, even 20%. DDR3 memory is already sold at higher prices than not so long ago (about 10% increase). Fortunately, the cost of purchasing DDR4 has increased by only 5%. However, we should expect further increases in the coming months - by 15-20% for DDR3 and by 13-18% for DDR4 respectively.

According to Trendforce, DRAM prices increased by 3-8% in the first quarter of 2021, and this rate is expected to increase further in the following months to reach around 13-18% in the second quarter. The increases themselves are heavily segment-specific. The most affected are memories used in servers, as their prices will increase by up to 20%. Things look a little better in the case of mobile memory, because here the increase will be about 5-15%. Also GPUs will not avoid hikes due to the use of GDDR5 and GDDR6 memory, required for Nvidia's new GeForce RTX 3000 series chipsets and AMD's Radeon RX 6000. In this case, it will be a difference of 10-15%.

RAM Price Hikes Inbound; GPUs and DDR4 to Become More Expensive - picture #1

Things are expensive and they will be even more expensive. Source: Trendforce

Not only DRAM prices will increase in the near future, which will have a negative impact on DDR4 memories, GPUs and smartphones. Soon the increases will also affect SSDs and laptops. Overall, it seems like tough times are upon us - due to chip shortages we should expect prices to rise for virtually all electronics.