Computers & Electronics

How low will it go? [RAM Prices]

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Sep 21, 2012
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How low will it go? [RAM Prices]

RAM price are coming down. 7-8$ CAD/GB in CANADA
and 5-6 USD/GB in the US.

I've been holding off buying RAM for a year now. Sold the 16GB kit originally in my system for profit, and have been living off a single 4GB stick all this time.

I could probably continue living off 4GB of RAM, but considering I have a x79 motherboard, 3 R9 290s, and a costly cooling loop to keep those R9s cool; a single 4GB stick doesn’t really fit.

We're at 7$/GB now. Do you guys predict anything cheaper? I can't see DDR4 becoming popular until Intel releases a mainstream chipset that uses it, but by then DDR3 prices will probably raise like DDR2 did.
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Well if I had a time machine, I would go back and buy more of my $78 USD 16GB DDR3-1600 with free MicroSD card.
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The Canterbury Tail wrote: Where are you seeing this cheap RAM?
This was 128$ just a few hours ago: http://www.ncix.com/detail/kingston-hyp ... -95971.htm
and this is still on sale:http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00CWR3 ... YIK6Y9EEQB
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I keep missing deals on 2x8GB SODIMMs so I'm hoping the trend for cheap RAM continues.

Also I should pick up that 32GB kit. Chrome is fat.
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ToniCipriani wrote: Well if I had a time machine, I would go back and buy more of my $78 USD 16GB DDR3-1600 with free MicroSD card.
I would go to 2010 and buy all the RAM my motherboard can support and even if it can't. This year I spent $550 on DDR3 and it was on "sale".
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ddr3 seems to be back to boxing day prices, so it's gone down for regular price.
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Still have several of those 2x1gb ddr3 kits that were $6 a kit from tiger direct a couple of years ago.

Plus tons on ddr2 still unused.


The high costs have actually hindered the desktop market and shrunk it to a niche item now, taken over by tablets and phones.

My guess is $5 a GB is likely the lowesr point we will see for both ddr3 it ddr4.
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Those are sale prices, not regular price. The Kingston RAM is back to $145 only 24 hours after you posted. The Crucial RAM is back to $237.

$140-145 for 16GB DDR3 is pretty much the lowest a sale price has gone in the past 24 months. DDR3 prices aren't going to go much lower. There are only a handful of memory manufacturers remaining and while they're not necessarily colluding on prices, they're not really competing with each other on price either. Intel's Skylake will support both DDR3 and DDR4 which means DDR3 prices won't being falling. And for the most part manufacturers are focused on flash due to increasing mobile devices and decreasing PC sales.

For comparison, my 8GB DDR3-1066 was $45 in 2010, and which I've reused for my current PC.

The next time 16GB DDR3 is on sale I'm buying it and will just keep my Haswell i5 PC til at least 2018-2019.
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Mulder and Scully wrote: Those are sale prices, not regular price. The Kingston RAM is back to $145 only 24 hours after you posted. The Crucial RAM is back to $237.

$140-145 for 16GB DDR3 is pretty much the lowest a sale price has gone in the past 24 months. DDR3 prices aren't going to go much lower. There are only a handful of memory manufacturers remaining and while they're not necessarily colluding on prices, they're not really competing with each other on price either. Intel's Skylake will support both DDR3 and DDR4 which means DDR3 prices won't being falling. And for the most part manufacturers are focused on flash due to increasing mobile devices and decreasing PC sales.

For comparison, my 8GB DDR3-1066 was $45 in 2010, and which I've reused for my current PC.

The next time 16GB DDR3 is on sale I'm buying it and will just keep my Haswell i5 PC til at least 2018-2019.
237$ was the original sale price. (It's still on sale) 237/32GB is ~7.4$/GB

I didn't realize Intel was supporting both DDR3 and 4 with Skylake.

Thanks for the update.
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ToniCipriani wrote: Well if I had a time machine, I would go back and buy more of my $78 USD 16GB DDR3-1600 with free MicroSD card.
I can't believe ram prices are still so expensive.. I was lucky enough to splurge on 32 gb when I built my desktop system awhile back for only $115. Crazy..
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hot_potato wrote: I can't believe ram prices are still so expensive.. I was lucky enough to splurge on 32 gb when I built my desktop system awhile back for only $115. Crazy..
You are definitely fortunate in your purchase. 2012, i bought 8GB ddr3 ram for like under $40. I should have bought more and just sold it later on.
Nothing to see here...keep looking.
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Apr 25, 2013
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Zero1 wrote: You are definitely fortunate in your purchase. 2012, i bought 8GB ddr3 ram for like under $40. I should have bought more and just sold it later on.
You young-uns should not be complaining and count your blessings ...in 1999 I paid $228 for 128MB !
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EdT586 wrote: You young-uns should not be complaining and count your blessings ...in 1999 I paid $228 for 128MB !
BRB getting off your lawn
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EdT586 wrote: You young-uns should not be complaining and count your blessings ...in 1999 I paid $228 for 128MB !
Bah! Buncha whippersnappers, I paid $300+ for a 20mb HDD!

RAM was measured in KB, not MB or GB! We were trying to break the 640K barrier.

You kids get offa my lawn!
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makaturing wrote: Bah! Buncha whippersnappers, I paid $300+ for a 20mb HDD!

RAM was measured in KB, not MB or GB! We were trying to break the 640K barrier.

You kids get offa my lawn!
Getting off EdT586's lawn so I can get on your lawn to get off your lawn again.
And I thought I was old for finding a 40MB HDD in storage....
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hot_potato wrote: I can't believe ram prices are still so expensive.. I was lucky enough to splurge on 32 gb when I built my desktop system awhile back for only $115. Crazy..
i bought over 64gb ddr3 back then and still wasn't enough, acquired another 32gb last year, and bought a 8gb stick here and there for my test machines
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I bet there ain't too many here who have run SIPPs. :)

I had a 286 that used them. It was the first motherboard I owned that used modules instead of socketed DRAM chips.

In those days there were no fans/heatsinks and CPUs weren't ZIF socketed. You could have fried an egg on that 286 CPU!

[IMG]http://home.kpn.nl/a.dikker1/museum/sipp.jpg[/IMG]

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