Industry insiders say Samsung has confirmed a DRAM price increase of 'over 100%' for its customers, so brace yourself for the next phase of the dreaded RAMpocalypse
Well, I did say things were likely to get worse before they got better. According to South Korean outlet Etnews, Samsung Electronics has confirmed a DRAM price increase of "over 100%" for its customers in the first quarter of this year.
That's up from a 70% increase in January, which seems pretty indicative of how much worse the RAMpocalypse is going to get before it gets better.
Samsung is one of the big three DRAM manufacturers, taking second place to SK Hynix—which has itself reportedly informed customers of major price increases over the past few weeks.
Those customers include many memory DIMM suppliers, GPU AIB partners, and makers of just about every bit of modern, DRAM-reliant electronics you can think of, which is helping to drive the cost of consumer devices (and many PC components) through the roof.
The confirmation reports are attributed to Etnews' industry sources, one of which says: "Samsung Electronics has finalized DRAM supply price negotiations, and some overseas customers have already completed payment. The additional price increase reflects price fluctuations between January and February."
While previous memory supply contracts were often made on an annual basis, manufacturers are now switching towards quarterly contracts to accommodate for the massive DRAM demand.
Etnews reports that manufacturers are now considering switching to monthly contracts as well. And while supply of the precious memory chips remains unable to keep up with AI server expansion, I'd be very surprised if this is the last we hear of memory manufacturer price increases over the next few months. Perhaps even weeks, at this rate.
And of course, what bites Samsung's customers will inevitably bite the end consumer. While its a terrible time to buy a new set of RAM modules right now, it remains to be seen how long other component suppliers can hold out with more gradual price increases, or how high those prices can eventually go.
GPU prices already make for grim reading at this point, while NAND-dependent SSDs have been creeping up, too. And with prices looking to do nothing but rise for the foreseeable future, I think we're all in this for the long haul.
How bad can things get? It's genuinely hard to predict at this point, but I wonder if $400+ 32 GB RAM kits are merely the beginning of our potential woes.