RAM price history: every published reading, period by period

RAM price history: frequently asked questions

How much have RAM prices risen since the shortage began?

The mainstream DDR4 1Gx8 chip spot price is up 249% from $12.18 in November 2025 to $42.45 in August 2026, which is a RAM price index of 349 on a November 2025 base of 100. Retail moved differently and over a different window: a 32GB DDR5 kit went from roughly $80 in mid-2025 to about $380 to $589 now. Both numbers are real, they measure different channels, and quoting one as the other is the most common error in this coverage.

What did RAM cost before the shortage?

A 32GB DDR5-6000 kit was around $80 in mid-2025 and a 32GB DDR5 kit sat near $95 for much of the preceding year. The DDR4 1Gx8 chip on the spot market was $12.18 as late as Nov 12, 2025. Framework, quoting its own module prices rather than an aggregator basket, published $10 per GB in December 2025 and a $12 to $16 per GB range by February 2026. Those vendor figures are the cleanest before-and-after in the whole dataset because they come from a manufacturer stating what it charges.

Why does official inflation data not show the RAM price increase?

Because the government indices are quality-adjusted and cover far broader baskets. Over the exact window the spot chip rose 249%, the semiconductor producer price index moved 0.2% and the computers consumer price index 3.6%. Hedonic adjustment treats a more capable part at the same price as a price decrease, and a memory module inside a finished laptop is a fraction of that laptop's index weight. The indices are not wrong, they are answering a different question, which is why a component tracker exists at all.

Is this the biggest DRAM price increase on record?

On the available free data it is the steepest sustained run this dataset covers, and no reading in it has gone down. What this page will not claim is an all-time record, because a free, continuous, methodologically consistent DRAM spot series going back through the 2017 to 2018 squeeze and the earlier cycles is not publicly available, and asserting a record without it would be a guess dressed as a fact. What is documented here is a 249% move across 13 published readings with no retracement.

Why are there no readings between December 2025 and April 2026?

Because TrendForce and DRAMeXchange publish spot snapshots into press releases and paid research rather than as a free continuous feed, and no free snapshot covering that window was published in a form this tracker could verify. The gap matters: 51% of the total dollar move happened inside it. Rather than interpolate a line through it, the chart on this page treats that period as one observed step between two published readings and labels it as unobserved.