RAM is up 89 percent this year. Buy now, not in 2027.
Key takeaways
- J.P. Morgan Global Research puts DRAM prices up more than 400 percent between the start of 2024 and the end of 2026.
- Inside 2026 alone RAM is up around 89 percent, with most of that increase landing in the current quarter.
- AI data centres are on track to take roughly 70 percent of high-end DRAM output this year, and consumer DDR5 gets what is left.
- If a build needs memory within six months, buy now. Waiting for a 2027 correction is a bet against every published supply forecast.
More than 400 percent. That is how far DRAM prices have moved between the start of 2024 and the end of 2026, according to J.P. Morgan Global Research.
Inside this year alone the figure is around 89 percent, and roughly 80 to 90 percent of that increase has arrived in the current quarter. If you priced a kit in June and priced it again last week, you were not imagining it.
Should I buy RAM now in 2026, or wait?
Buy now, if the build needs memory inside the next six months.
That is not a comfortable answer and it is not the one most people want. It is what the supply numbers support. Waiting works when a price spike is caused by a temporary shortage that new capacity will clear. This one is not.
The cause is allocation, not a shortage of factories
The fabs are running. The output is going somewhere else.
AI data centres are on track to consume about 70 percent of high-end DRAM production this year. Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron have collectively pointed around 93 percent of their combined output at high bandwidth memory, which sells at far better margins than consumer sticks. Desktop DDR5 is made from what remains after that decision has already been taken.
That is why adding fab capacity does not fix it quickly. A new line takes years, and when it opens the same margin logic applies to its output.
What it is doing to the shops
Gartner and IDC both forecast the global PC market down 10 to 11 percent in 2026, with smartphones down 8 to 9 percent. Memory pricing is the main driver in both cases, pushed through to retail.
You can see it in the component aisle too, where memory and storage have moved together. Our breakdown of memory and SSD pricing through 2026 has the month-by-month picture, and the effect is sharpest for anyone spec'ing capacity rather than speed. If you are sizing a machine for local inference, the VRAM tier list matters more than the DDR5 number, but both curves point the same way.
Why 2027 is not the fix
Analysts expect the shortage cycle to run into 2027 or 2028. SK Hynix has gone further and warned that supply may not fully normalise before 2030.
Nobody credible is forecasting a 2027 correction that hands consumers back the 2024 price. The optimistic case is that increases flatten. The pessimistic case is another leg up as the next generation of accelerators books capacity.
What to actually do
Buy the memory first and the rest of the build later. That inverts the usual order, where memory is the afterthought you slot in at the end, and it is the right call this year.
A 32GB DDR5 kit remains the sensible target for a desktop in 2026. The Corsair Vengeance RGB DDR5 32GB 6000MHz CL30 is the kit we keep coming back to for a mainstream board, and checking the current figure matters more than usual right now, because the price on any given week is a moving target.
If a machine is running today and merely feels slow, that is a different decision. Upgrading for comfort at these prices is hard to justify, and the same money buys more elsewhere in the system, including the UPS most home servers should already have.
The part that stings is the timing. For the first time in years, the right move on a PC build is to buy the memory before you have decided on anything else.
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