Trendforce says DDR5 RAM kit prices have fallen 'sharply' in US, Europe and China but that contract memory prices 'remain stable'

Is the worm finally turning for the poor beleaguered PC gamer, pummelled by painful component pricing? Yesterday, we covered a report claiming that spending cuts at OpenAI had "hit" memory chip prices. Now market analyst Trendforce says that retail DDR5 kit pricing is falling "sharply" in the US, Europe and China.

"Recent sharp price corrections across U.S. and China retail memory channels have pushed DDR5 modules to the center of a broader sell-off, further fueled by market debate surrounding Google’s TurboQuant. The development has raised questions over whether this signals an inflection point for weakening demand," is the analyst outfit's opening salvo in a news post.

Somewhat surprisingly, Trendforce's main source here appears to be some informal reporting by WCCFTech covering the German and US markets, plus a further Chinese source for that market.

When I trawled the usual online retailers yesterday, I found that some DDR5 kits were indeed lower than their absolute peak during this memory crisis. However, it's hard to argue that the historical price graphs on Amazon show a downward price trend.

Instead, as I said of a particular DDR5 kit, "if you observe the price trend of the 32 GB version of that Kingston kit, you'll see that the price has been essentially oscillating between $657 and around $515 since February, with it mostly being listed at the lower price."

That's true of many memory kits. Indeed, Trendforce caveats all this with the proviso that some industry sources say "contract prices from major memory suppliers have remained completely stable."

Trendforce then concludes, "on balance, the current DDR5 price correction appears to be a consumer-driven, short-term adjustment rather than a definitive signal of structural demand deterioration. Contract prices have so far held firm, and server-side HBM and DRAM demand has remained largely intact, with major suppliers reportedly locked into multi-year agreements with key clients.

"For now, the industry’s long-term fundamentals appear largely unchanged — but whether the recent turbulence proves to be a healthy cooldown or an early warning sign might only become clear in the months ahead."

So, is this all a nothing burger? At the very least, it's probably premature. Right now, there are countless contributing factors to consider, from OpenAI's cutbacks and a mooted expansion of the supply crunch to include CPUs to the idea that automated cars and robots will soon be gobbling up 300 GB a pop and Google's claims that its new AI algorithm reduces memory demand by 6x.

But, ultimately, all of this surely hinges on the fate of the AI industry. If it implodes, memory prices will surely collapse. If the hype proves fully founded, on the other hand, it's hard to see memory chips returning to pre-AI prices for years. Watch this space, in other words.