DRAM makers have shifted fab capacity to AI memory and consumer prices have roughly tripled since mid-2025. This site tracks what the hardware actually costs — desktop DDR5/DDR4, laptop SO-DIMM, server ECC, Macs, GPUs, and AI mini PCs like the DGX Spark — sorted by dollars per gigabyte of usable memory so you can tell a bad deal from a merely 2026-bad one.
Monthly averages through May 2026 compiled from published market data; daily points from products tracked here. GPU line ($/GB of VRAM) is hidden by default — click it in the legend to show. Click any legend entry to toggle a line.
| Product | Price | $/GB | Where |
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$/GB means: per gigabyte of RAM for memory kits, of VRAM for graphics cards, of unified memory for Macs and AI boxes (full-system price). Some outbound links are affiliate links; purchases may earn this site a commission at no extra cost to you. Prices are checked periodically and can differ at checkout.
The same fabs that make consumer DDR5 also make high-bandwidth memory for AI accelerators. Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron have shifted wafer capacity toward AI customers, so consumer supply shrank. A 32GB DDR5-6000 kit that sold for about $80 in mid-2025 now starts near $400. Most analysts expect supply to stay tight into 2027.
Forecasts from Gartner and TrendForce point to prices rising further through 2026. If you actually need memory, buying on a dip has been the better bet — that's what the chart and the 24-hour column are for.
Partly. DDR4 went up too, but it still runs about half the price per gigabyte of DDR5. If your board takes DDR4, it's the cheapest route to 32–128GB right now.
Local LLMs are memory-hungry — a 70B model at 4-bit quantization wants 40GB+. Mac unified memory used to look expensive next to DIMMs; after a year of DRAM inflation it's nearly at parity, which is why we chart it alongside everything else.