DRAM prices skyrocket 171% year-over-year, outpacing the rate of gold price increases — AI demand drives massive price hikes as shortage takes hold

DRAM prices are continuing to skyrocket thanks to exorbitant demands from the AI industry. CTEE reports that DRAM contract prices have increased by a whopping 171.8% year over year as of Q3 2025. In fact, DRAM prices have risen to the point that they are now outpacing the recent price increases of gold. ADATA chairman Chen Libai reportedly stated that Q4 of 2025 will mark the start of a major DRAM bull market, with 2026 likely to see severe DRAM shortages.

Significant memory price hikes have been a recurring theme in the industry during 2025. In late October, we reported that memory prices were increasing by up to 50% for Q4 2025, up from the 30% hike buyers had predicted earlier in the year. Going back to September, we covered NAND and DRAM contract prices rising by 15-20%. All of this (and more) has compounded into the whopping 171.8% year-over-year price increase we are now seeing in DRAM contract prices. These increases in pricing will take time to fully wash down to retail, but the price increases we already see on the market are only going to intensify over the coming months.

Despite server-grade RDIMM memory and HBM being the main attractions for hardware manufacturers building AI servers, the entire memory industry, including DDR5, is being affected by price increases. The problem for consumers is that memory manufacturers are shifting production prioritization toward datacenter-focused memory types and producing less consumer-focused DDR5 memory as a result.

Desktop memory prices reflect the severe memory shortages plaguing the industry. Just looking at Newegg, regular DDR5 memory prices are roughly double what they were just a few months ago. For example, Corsair's Vengeance RGB 2x16GB 6000MT/s dual-channel DDR5 kit is going for $183 on Newegg (at the time of writing). But if you check pricing history with PCPartPicker, that same kit cost just $91 in July.

DRAM isn't the only thing being affected by the insane price increases. NAND flash and even hard drive prices are increasing to meet the high demand from AI server manufacturers. Experts suggest that this pricing trend will continue for at least four years, which is the amount of time at least some companies have signed DRAM supply contracts with Samsung and SK Hynix.