I wish this were April Fools, but it isn’t. Micron has just announced that it’ll be raising its prices all across its product portfolio, including DRAM and NAND flash memory. It seems that the price hikes will be gradual and won’t just hit us out of nowhere, but the fact of the matter is that RAM will get pricier. This means that the best RAM might cost more, but this isn’t limited to just straight-up PC memory.
The company sent out a letter to its investors, which was later shared by Tom’s Hardware, talking about the price increase and the reasons behind it. Micron notes that the memory and storage markets are finally on an upward trend after a period of lull over the past couple of years. We’ve seen this on the consumer end, too, with memory prices finally stabilizing — DDR5 RAM was super pricey at first, but buying RAM is now easier than ever. (Not for long, perhaps.)
The growing demand drives a higher price point. Again, we’re familiar with this, what with the crazy GPU prices right now. However, the consumer market is not to blame here; Micron says that the increasing need for memory and NAND flash in AI settings is what drove this need to increase the prices.
In the world of enterprise memory, this really refers to high-bandwidth memory (HBM), which is necessary in data centers, covering usages like AI accelerators and AI GPUs. This might mean that one day, companies like Nvidia will spend more on DRAM and NAND flash, which are used in SSDs, as well as things like smartphones and USB drives; on the AI front, it powers the storage in massive data centers.
What does this mean for the consumer market?
With all the talk of AI, it’s easy to feel that the consumer market will be safe from these price hikes — but it won’t.
DRAM and NAND flash price increases mean that a whole bunch of things could potentially cost more in the long run. RAM kits are an obvious one, as are SSDs, but there are also other things that might be affected. If GDDR memory prices go up, we’ll see some of the best graphics cards cost even more (and that’s the last thing we need right now). Similarly, devices like smartphones and game consoles, which also rely on NAND-based storage, could be pricier over time.
What’s the good news, then? Well, the good news is that the increases in the consumer market should be smaller than whatever the folks responsible for massive data centers will experience. We might see a price hike, but it shouldn’t be too horrible — although, with the current prices of PC components, you never know.
If you’d been hoping to buy some new RAM or a new SSD soon, you might as well go for it now before these price hikes kick in.
