Average DRAM price in USD over last 18 months
13 comments
·December 4, 2025wnevets
If these prices don't return back to normal I just don't see how Valves steam machine is less than $1,000 USD.
teaearlgraycold
They would already have contracts in place.
wkat4242
For a while, yes. But I'm sure they will want to sell it for longer than a year or so.
Even Samsung is running into this issue now: their own internal foundry is refusing to give them a long term contract now so the S26 series will become more expensive.
If this happens to Samsung, what leverage will a player like Valve have?
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Daishiman
Inflation metrics seem to fail to capture the increase in leading-edge tech products of the past 18 months.
tstrimple
They seem to fail to capture a whole lot of things. Supposedly $1 in 2000 is worth $1.88 in 2025. So 88% inflation over the 25 years. Meanwhile the median home price has increased by 150%. Family insurance by 350%. Median college tuition by 225%. Childcare costs have risen by 200%. But sure. We can buy super cheap 65" tvs now. Hurray for us! Literal kings who lived hundreds of years ago couldn't possibly imagine a world with cheap large screen tvs. So the poorest among us should rejoice at the wonders they are able to enjoy while they skip meals and ration their insulin.
ggm
the other side of the AI bubble are a huge amount of 2nd hand parts of all kinds going to come onto the market?
mxfh
Waiting for all my out of use 4, 8, and 16GB DDR3 DIMMs that I have somewhere in a drawer to become the new gold standard first.
type0
Memory chips are divertied to registered server RAM and those will not fit most workstations
venturecruelty
No, they'll be shipped off to developing nations to be dissolved for rare earths for the next boom cycle.
To put this in long term relation.
Even current DDR4 3200 DIMM prices are at an all time high.
These are 6+ year old chip specs now!
I even thought stuff was overpriced four years ago in mid-2021 already, but this is a whole new level.
Some sample long term data for those:
https://geizhals.eu/?phist=2151624&age=9999