DRAM prices continue to fall
The price of a 2GB DDR3 module is set to drop below $20 by the end of the year, from a high of nearer $50 at the start.
In the company's latest report into the market, it remarks that the wholesale price of a 2GB DDR3 module has dropped 46 per cent since the start of the year, from $46.50 to around $25 now - and predicts that it could drop as low as $20 by the end of the year.
The massive drop in price comes as manufacturers are experiencing increased output thanks to the use of immersion scanner technology to improve yields in their fabs, which couples with the unusually low demand for memory to form an oversupply situation - meaning massive drops in prices.
While that's good news for PC manufacturers, it's not so great for memory makers. The good news is that DRAMeXchange is also predicting that the market will bottom out around the first quarter of 2011, with OEMs and ODMs taking advantage of the cheaper RAM prices to boost the amount of memory systems ship with - a predicted 36 per cent increase for desktops, 31 per cent increase for laptops, and a whopping 105 per cent year-on-year increase for netbooks.
Sadly, the good times are unlikely to continue for long. As demand increases to accommodate the improved yields, prices will surely begin to rise - and given recent events between North Korea and South Korea, it's possible that the market could become extremely volatile extremely quickly.
Are you pleased to hear that memory prices are dropping, or just wondering whether any of the OEMs will be bothering to pass the savings on? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums ReplyI'd say 1333MHz or 1600MHz if you plan on overclocking.
:)
In other words "nih". Yeah I've seen a crazy decrease in DDR3 prices... my memory for my i7 was like £200 start of the year, its £130 or something now :|
________
Extreme q vaporizer efficiency
I need some of that for my lappy.
Hmm, that's odd, I'm running Win 7 64bit and at the moment using less that 1 Gig of memory. That's with Firefox up and a hardware monitoring program. So not much but I rarely see 2 Gig used, just opened Adobe with my mobo manual, still under a Gig. What are you running?
1 x 2GB DDR3 1600 9 9 9 24 modules are $34.
2 x 2GB DDR3 1600 9 9 9 24 modules are $50.
1 x 4GB DDR3 1333 9 9 9 24 modules are $60.
3 x 1GB DDR3 1600 9 9 9 27 modules are $68.
3 x 2GB DDR3 1333 9 9 9 24 modules are $76.
Of course there are more expensive choices of the same type as these, but they are not no-name brands.
And to top it all off the 3 X 2GB DDR3 1600 modules I bought in August for $145 are now $110.
So yes, prices have dropped. Since DDR4 won't be here until 2012, and Sandy Bridge CPUs/Mobo's will be using DDR3, now may be the time to stock up. It seems the high-end memory has not dropped in price as much.