New report shows RAM prices are continuing to fall in Germany, US trends less certain — SSDs and HDDs are more expensive than ever in the States

A couple of weeks ago, we reported on some good news regarding RAM prices flattening out in Germany — that trend seems to be in full effect so far, with February seeing no hikes and even some price cuts. ComputerBase has conducted a thorough analysis of the local market in Germany, aggregating RAM and SSD prices for multiple SKUs from Amazon, and the data shows bittersweet progress.

The biggest positive difference (-20%) was seen in Crucial's Pro Overclocking 32GB DDR5 kit, which went from $473.89 to "just" $378.89 from January 14, 2026, to February 16, 2026. By contrast, here in the States the 6400 MT/s CL32 kit was priced at $348.99 at the same time, and now sells for $369, so that's a 5.73% increase. The 6000 MT/s CL36 kit is also priced at $369 right now, but it was selling for just $325.99 a month ago. While prices aren't going down like they are in Germany, the rate of increase has at least slowed a bit, with an overall plateauing of popular kits, as you can see in this PCPartPicker data:

In ComputerBase's list, G.Skill's Aegis 32GB DDR4 kit saw the largest price hike, going from $219.99 in mid-January to $236 in mid-February, constituting a 7.28% increase. Checking Amazon U.S., we see the 3200 MT/s CL16 kit priced at $269.99 right now, while it cost $229.99 a month ago — that's an enormous 17.4% surge in just a few weeks. Apart from these two extreme examples, there are more modest fluctuations, too.

You can see the full list above, and it shows an average price increase of 314% from September to mid-February. That means prices have more than quadrupled in the last five months, but they've started to plateau in the short term. Compared to January, the difference has fallen from 344% between September and now; nine out of the twelve kits on the list have actually become cheaper, but they're still inflated beyond belief.

• Check out Tom's Hardware's RAM pricing index

Memory aside, ComputerBase also included SSDs and HDDs in their report — less interesting since they've not skyrocketed in prices quite like RAM in the past few months, but they've actually become more expensive compared to last month. Hard drives are now 51% higher priced compared to five months ago. This difference was only 46.41% in January 2026, so just in a month, we've seen a roughly 5% hike already.

The screenshot below shows a bunch of HDDs ranging from 4 TB to 24 TB, with the biggest negative difference being the WD Red Plus 4 TB SKU. It went up by 21.5% from $133.90 last month to $162.79 now. In America, this model is currently available for $114.99 and used to cost $180 at the end of January, which is far as the tracking data goes.

In contrast, the 8 TB model of the same hard drive actually saw a 10.59% decrease in pricing compared to last month in Germany, going from $255 to $228. You can find it at $209.99 on Amazon U.S. now; it was $214.99 a month ago, but sat at $179.99 throughout most of January. Toshiba's MG11ACA 24TB was the only hard drive to remain perfectly flat at $602 across both months; it's available for $524 at B&H currently.

Lastly, we have SSD prices, which saw a similar trend, almost doubling in cost compared to their prices last year in September. These numbers make mechanical storage look more enticing than ever because NAND is now 86.59% more expensive than it was five months ago, but it was only 74.12% hiked as of last month. That means, going from January to February 2026, we saw more than a 10% increase in and of itself.

The WD_BLACK SN850X 2TB experienced a major hike of 33.86% in just one month, going from $215.90 to $289 in Germany. Unfortunately, the same drive costs $400 in the States (shipped by Amazon, sold by a third-party vendor), but it used to be $500 around 30 days ago, so we've made some progress. To further put things into context, this SSD retailed for a mere $89.99 in July 2023.

Out of 12 total models listed in the chart below, 9 experienced some form of price surge while 3 became less expensive. The best price cut award goes to Samsung's 990 EVO Plus 1TB, which saw a 4.5% reduction, going from $150.90 to $143.99 over the course of a month. There are no offers available to buy this new on Amazon right now, but it did drop down to just $64 in August 2025 when we spotlighted it.

This is a pretty bleak outlook, all things considered. Sure, memory prices are finally stabilizing, but it's more of an overflow stoppage than a normalization. Storage devices continue to get costlier across the world, with many places experiencing serious shortages.

ComputerBase ended their excellent article with a graph that we've also attached below; it shows just how insane the RAMpocalypse has been over the course of the last few months. The SSD and HDD trends pale in comparison, but it's concerning that their demand is not plateauing. Many companies have already said their production lines are fully booked, so only time will tell how much worse all this can get.

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