--- title: 'The Price of RAM Will Drop!' source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=HQFpaFx7jAY' video_id: 'HQFpaFx7jAY' date: 2026-07-28 duration_sec: 779 --- # The Price of RAM Will Drop! > Source: [The Price of RAM Will Drop!](https://youtube.com/watch?v=HQFpaFx7jAY) ## Summary The video explores the volatile pricing of DDR5 RAM, driven by market cycles, AI demand, and a recent breakthrough by Google that could drastically reduce memory requirements. It covers the initial high cost of DDR5, the price drops during the 2022-2023 slump, the AI-fueled surge in 2024-2025, and the potential for a significant price correction due to Google's new inference technology. ### Key Points - **DDR5 Launch and Initial Pricing** [00:26] — DDR5 launched in 2021 with minimal availability and absurd prices; a 32GB kit cost around $1000, while DDR4 was only $20-30. - **Market Collapse in 2022-2023** [02:19] — Post-pandemic demand fell, leading to negative gross margins for manufacturers. They cut production and sold inventory at a loss, causing DDR5 prices to plummet. - **AI Boom and Shift to HBM** [03:50] — The launch of GPT Chat in November 2022 sparked massive investment in AI, increasing demand for High Bandwidth Memory (HBM). Manufacturers redirected production from consumer RAM to more profitable HBM. - **Golden Age for PC Builders** [05:11] — From 2023 to early 2025, DDR5 32GB kits were priced around $70-90, making it an ideal time to build or upgrade a PC. - **Price Spike in 2025** [08:42] — AI demand caused RAM prices to more than double; Corsair raised prices by 62%, G.Skill by 81%, and Team Group by over 100%. Retailers limited purchases due to scarcity. - **Google's Breakthrough and Market Crash** [10:42] — On March 24, 2026, Google announced a technique that reduces RAM usage by up to 6x and increases inference speed by 8x. This caused a $450 billion drop in market cap of major RAM companies, and DDR5 prices fell 30% in China and over 20% on Amazon. - **Uncertain Future** [11:41] — Despite the drop, Micron warned that shortages could extend to 2028. The reduced RAM usage might paradoxically increase AI investment, keeping demand high. ### Conclusion While Google's innovation offers short-term relief for RAM prices, the long-term outlook remains uncertain as AI-driven demand could absorb the efficiency gains. Builders should monitor the market for further volatility. ## Transcript skyrocketed because of the data sensitivity upgrades. This even made Apple reduce succeeding, damn, imagine what we can do, right, man? But Google has come up with an ace up its sleeve that could change everything and normalize the price of RAM. Is just because of the joke or does it have to do with William Fil as well? That's what we're going to find out in this video. Let's go. [music] we're going to have to do a recap. Going back to the beginning of 2021. Besides the innovation for the market happened then: the launch of DDR5. Do you know what that is, man? It 's not a political party. The acronym DDR stands for double data rate. I'm Well, the name is quite simple, TD, but many people don't know what it is. So I'll explain it for those who are not fluent in English. Think of DDR, man, as a road between the processor and the memory. Each new generation of DDR is like doubling lanes. Man, the cars just kept getting faster with each new generation of DDR. And all RAM modules come with a little number: DDR3, DDR4, DDR5, meaning they have more capacity to deliver memory data to the processor with each new gets faster, this road keeps getting wider. And the generation changes based on what processor exists. The more advanced it is, the hungrier very hungry, send more information, understand? So you need more memory. The catch is that with each new generation, everything changes. The connector pin is different, the motherboard with a DDR4 socket will not accept DDR5. So [music], you already know, money disappears from your pocket instantly. So let's go back to our timeline. In 2021, DDR5 was released , but it came with minimal availability, man. An absurd price. Just so you have an idea, a DDR5 kit cost 1,000 [ __ ] dollars. The 32GB DDR4 kit was going for $2, most people stuck with DDR4, right? Why bother ? Why would I go for DDR5 at that price, with that absurd difference, right? What an opportunity course, right? guy had to change several components of the equipment, and with the world facing a global pandemic, the price of everything was sky- high, so it was only for those who care about that. But then things went wrong, the music market was collapsing in 2022, 2023, you know, when the world started to normalize again after the pandemic shopping boom and everyone was returning to their lives, the demand for PCs fell. If demand falls, the manufacturer is left with full inventory, and then the market begins to collapse. And it was during that time, man, that all the memory manufacturers operated with negative gross margins. What do you mean, PT? For example, the price the product costs is higher than the selling price. Do you realize this, man? The guys was made for, less than it was actually made for, and less than it was paid to be created for. The company starts losing money even before paying its fixed expenses. Why? She simply does spends even more than she earns on production. Logically, manufacturers technologies, but also deliberately cut production. For them, it makes more sense not to produce than to lose money. That makes sense, right? causing me losses? And keep this information in mind: they stopped manufacturing memory modules. They only sold what she already had, okay? So, it was in stock, it was n't in stock, it just sat there. Let's sell. We're only going to sell this much, right? We're not going to manufacture any more, boss. Manufacturing nothing is costing us money. We're just going to sell it and that's it. Let's stay quiet. Magically, DDR5 prices began to plummet throughout 2022. Why? Because far fewer people were looking for it and companies had stopped producing. So, my brother, we had to put DDR on the market. Nobody was buying. Lower the price. RAN period. So, whoever bought RAM during that window, damn, got a hell of a deal. It was a huge investment, if you have R at that time, bread, you sell it now, right? It was the historic floor, the historic floor of RAM. But then the market devourer was created, and things started to get even uglier. Pay attention. The creation of GPT chat. [music] Look, guys, I believe that the launch of GPT chat by Open will be in children's history books in the coming years. Your great-grandchildren will remember this, they won't even imagine that you were a part of it. It was future generations will use books, right? But you understood. In November 2022, man, the starting gun was fired for everyone to start investing in AI. As the IS absurd race, wasn't it? Like what's happening now. Metaversa was forgotten for a fraction of a metaverse was going to be a thing of the future and everyone was sure that it would dominate everything. It's funny to say that everyone was sure that AI was going to everyone was sure that AI was going to the launch of an AI, it was a paradigm shift, right? Changing our we are getting used to AI even today. Of course, in the beginning, man, directly. Almost no one predicted the impact we would have. It's impossible to imagine all of this, man. We knew , damn, it was something very recent, . But man, what's happening now is surreal, isn't it? started building data centers that we felt the impact we were going to get. The golden age for building PCs. Man, you could say that from 2023 until the beginning of 2025 was a perfect time for anyone wanting to build a PC. I do period, but I actually did. In Brazil, I assembled two PCs there. I remember parts, I didn't want to buy them all at once, but anyway, the guys wanted to assemble a PC, but a mature, man, its prices were the launch price of 000 I mentioned? Of course, it was already release, but during that period from 2023 to 2025, the price of a 32GB DDR5 kit was around $. Dude, it's what I told you, [music] dude. It's like a hadn't yet upgraded, who wanted to do a [music] upgrade in numbers, was hovering between 70 and 90, with price stability for years, and it manufacturing of the Chat GPT memory chips was setting the stage for a historic blow to the entire market, which we now know happened, but at the the old setup would be like with today's prices. Nobody would be Nobody, man. And dude, speaking of setup, there's no point in wanting to upgrade everything best performance for your PC, and studying programming like crazy, right? Using " ya" (a slang term for money) to earn more money while remaining seated in a barroom chair greatly harms your work. Where are you sitting? He's sitting right there, isn't he? But I'm chairs, man, we're talking about some of the most important things in your setup, in your life. isn't a mattress advertisement. Anyone who sits all day needs to prioritize getting a chair that they actually use, man. It's literally comfort, it's what brings more productivity to your routine. You have a good chair. And here I am, with Calena from Elements. It's the type of working, for meetings. She lies down, she has a massager, man, on her lower back. n't care, right? But anyway, she 's absolutely perfect, absolutely perfect as hell. link below for you to buy your chair. There are several models available, and oh, it's totally worth it chairs, but nothing like this one, my brother. If you're a programmer Elms chair; I'm sure you won't regret it. Here it is on the screen for you to scan, and oh, there's a coupon, so you can get an even bigger discount. Enjoy it while you can, AI swallowed the planet from 2024 to 2025. Things got ugly, artificial intelligence took over everything. It was born in 2022 with the GPT chat and it did n't take long to become part schools, even older ones searching for medicine in the chat. And no, I remember, but anyway. And of course, there was going to be an overall cost to using it. Guys, training and running language models requires absurdly large amounts of a special type of memory: HBM (High Band with Memory). Not only manufacture and offers much better profit margins for manufacturers. So, because of that, the manufacturers redirected the factories to this type of memory, to HBN, which pays more. And because artificial intelligence is in higher demand, they've relegated consumer RAM to the background. For those who will focus on consumer RAM if who will focus on consumer RAM if Randayá has more demand and offers a higher profit margin? Previously, production had stopped, but when it resumed, it focused on models for the 1A (anti-aircraft) market. And it's obvious that this was going to have a cost. The minutes explode. 2025 was a good time to build a PC, right? That's because a few months into the year, the 32GB DDR5 kits, which cost around $12 in September 2025, dropped in price in just a few weeks. My brother, man, it more than doubled. RAM companies like Corser raised prices by RAM companies like Corser raised prices by 62%, D Skill by 81%, and Team Group more than doubled from $130 to $80 in just over a month. Same product, dude. Exactly the same things in this product, right? But with prices more than doubled there in Toto, to give you an idea, man, the retailers started limiting the could buy. Dude, it was all about a technological apocalypse, guys. Man, the guys would go to the store and buy everything. Why? He was like a frog money changer. The guy my brother, because it was a goldmine. Then there is physical scarcity. Well, we buy and the production shortage, haven't we? But the crisis was taken to another level: physical scarcity. By 2026, several experts predicted a price increase of 300 to 500%. You mean, dude, that what used to cost X, mean, dude, that what used to cost X, now costs 3x or 5x. If it was $, it would now be somewhere between 300 and 500. That's bizarre to the point I can't one of the biggest in the world, started to feel the effects. Do you think it only affects buy a lot, and they feel the effects too. Mac Mini configurations with 32 GB and 64 Mac Mini configurations with 32 GB and 64 GB of RAM and Mac Studio with 128 and 256 GB of RAM. They have been listed as unavailable on Apple's online store in the United States since April 11, 2026, with no delivery date and no option to order. Total global crisis. In areas where stock was still available, the estimated shipping time was 16 to 18 weeks. To contain the damage, Apple quietly removed the option to upgrade to 518GB of RAM for the Mac in March, because there simply isn't enough RAM available. Micron, RAM manufacturers in the world, felt the pressure and had to publicly state that the K6 series might be extended until 2028. But what now, guys? It's all over. Google Savior of the guys? It's all over. Google Savior of the Pattern. Well, on March 24, 2026, is nothing more than, quote, a language model inference that reduces RAM usage by up to six times and increases inference speed by up to eight times on H1 GPUs without loss of but speaking in good Portuguese, which I translated first, they practically created a way to use six times less RAM than normal. The market Wow, if they need six times less RAM, companies are going to sell less, right?" And overnight, man, the market capitalization of the three largest RAM companies in the world suffered a loss of about 450 billion dollars. But it wasn't just stock prices that went down. In China, DSD5 RAM sticks dropped 30% in a matter of days, and prices on Amazon fell by more than 20%, causing a Core kit, for example, with 32GB of RAM, to go from $90 to $380. Everything dropped, man. Everything is falling apart increased it by 300 to 500%, my brother, decreasing it by Of course, any discount is always welcome, right guys? But there's still a long way to go before level I was talking about. And as Michael herself has said, things could problem, guys, is that just as you might think you're getting less. Things could go in a direction where if we can use six times less RAM, we'll invest even more and become more powerful in the process. But you do your job six times faster, will your boss let you times more work? And with that, companies will invest even more in A, they will buy even more RAM, the technologies will advance even further, until DDR6 emerges, [music] then DDR7 and so on. It's not built a PC, how much did you pay for your RAM? Leave a comment below, remember, a good chair increases your productivity. I'm recording continuously. wonderful little chair. I sit well, man, but that's because I'm in a good chair. Don't just focus on EA and graphics card productivity. With more comfort, you inspired to produce. So it's definitely worth buying these chairs here, I'll tap the links below. And hey, here's a coupon to get a discount. Let's go, guys. I'm looking at the comments now. Did you buy and build your building it now and sweating a lot? What's your computer setup like? this video, guys. We're always together. Until next time. Thanks, bye.