It's been a long time since memory kits were cheap. Who knows if things will ever return to the way they were, though if you're looking for some positive news on the subject, a new report predicts that DRAM pricing will see a price drop in the fourth quarter.
The report comes from DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce, which has its pulse on the memory market. You may recall that DRAMeXchange noted a couple of weeks ago that lower DRAM pricing was imminent. That's still true, the market research firm says, only now it's forecasting a steeper decline.
"DRAMeXchange expects that the quotations of DRAM products to decline by 5 percent quarter-overquater, higher than the previous forecast of 1~3 percent. The weak quotations are mainly due to increasing bit supply yet fairly limited growth in demand, despite the coming of holiday sales season," DRAMeXchange said.
This is welcome news for consumers after nine consecutive quarters of price growth. Lower contract prices should translate to cheaper memory kits, at least in theory. Further good news is that the price forecast applies not just to server and mobile memory products, but consumer DRAM, and DDR4 memory kits specifically.
Memory pricing has a tendency to ebb and flow, though two years ago, RAM kits were comparatively cheap. For example, this 16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3000 memory kit hovered around $70 in 2016, but now lists for $144.99 on Amazon, and that's a sale price. Likewise, you could have found this 8GB Kingston HyperX Fury Black DDR4-2133 for just over $30 for a period of time in 2016, but now it sells for $97.34.
So, the best days are probably behind us, as it pertains to memory pricing, but we'll take any price drops we can get.
