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Framework Raises DDR5 Memory Prices by 50% for DIY Laptops

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https://www.trendforce.com/news/2025/12/05/exclusive-memory-...

> Lenovo has begun notifying clients of coming price hikes, with adjustments set to take effect in early 2026.. Dell is expected to raise prices by at least 15-20%, with the increase potentially taking effect as soon as mid-December.. Dell COO Jeff Clarke warned that he’s “never seen memory-chip costs rise this fast,” .. Lenovo [cited] two key factors: an intensifying memory shortage and the rapid integration of AI technologies.. TrendForce has downgraded its 2026 notebook shipment forecast from an initial 1.7% YoY growth to a 2.4% YoY decline.

https://hanchouhsu.substack.com/p/overview-of-the-memory-mar...

> The full-year price increase for Samsung’s storage products supplied to Apple in 2026 has been finalized, with DRAM prices rising by 53% and NAND prices rising by 52%. Earlier rumors suggesting an 80% full-year increase for DRAM were inaccurate.. Apple negotiated the prices down to the aforementioned levels and signed long-term agreements (LTAs).. Kioxia also signed a similar agreement with Apple, with price increases consistent with Samsung’s.

1 month agoby walterbell

Altman should be jailed for this. Single-handedly crashing consumer spending in an entire sector of the economy. At the very least for the reason that that was supposed to happen _after_ they had the AI in hand to supplant majority white collar labor, not before.

1 month agoby acephal

I have 96GB of 6000 MT/s. Pcpartpicker says 64GB kits have quadrupled in price since August. So I'm almost surprised it's only 50%.

1 month agoby Neywiny

Yikes, I hadn’t realized this was that big of a problem. The same exact G.skill z5 64Gb ram I bought 4 years ago is well on its way to being double the price. Does this have more to do with Crucial ending consumer product lines or tariffs?

1 month agoby SlightlyLeftPad

Ultimately this is OpenAI and their (circular) investors doubling down on a US sovereignty wet dream and "too big to fail".

They might pull it off , but hell off a way to bet the economy dominos all on black.

1 month agoby PeterStuer

In my opinion we are witnessing the market influences of a new type of public-private "Phoebus cartel" except at a total global scale where anti-terrorism laws require pricing businesses and individuals out of owning their own compute forcing them to rent compute from multinational hyperscaler cloud businesses who are integrated with military intelligence operations. Computing technology after all is a weapon of mass destruction and the peaceful are being punished for the non peaceful. It is too dangerous for governments around the world to allow individuals to posses the immense power of computing technology. Call me chicken little but we are witnessing the end of publicly available private general computing. Market changes influencing cost effectiveness analysis to favor public cloud is a deliberate goal to secure national critical infrastructure. I also think this coincides with the limits of MOSFET scaling and RISC-V permissive licensing. My only credentials for this is 15+ years working in fintech I&O for a US Fortune 500 company.

1 month agoby Byron_t_Bulb

I thought Apple would get around and improve their memory prices with time, I guess it's the opposite: all manufacturers are now becoming Apple given these raises.

I wonder what Apple's next move will be :-)

EDIT: Spelling

1 month agoby fcoury

I bought a couple of terabytes of RAM and now I feel like one of those crypto-whales haha. It's just sitting there in the corner. One was a lucky one, too, because I tried to negotiate a guy to sell me a system with less RAM but he wouldn't discount it much. Now it pays for most of the cost of the damn thing.

These spikes do happen. I remember one for hard drives after a storm. The surprising thing for me is how cheap a super-powerful Epyc is these days. But then you need to fill the 12 RAM slots and that becomes more costly. Funny times.

1 month agoby arjie

Original article from Framework Blog:

https://frame.work/blog/updates-on-memory-pricing-and-naviga...

1 month agoby quentindanjou

Actual article: https://frame.work/blog/updates-on-memory-pricing-and-naviga...

1 month agoby ChrisArchitect

At some point it's going to make sense to buy a computer without ram once the lack of ram pushes demand down for all other components.

Maybe this won't last that long given the RAM shortage is apparently a corner attempt by Sam Altman.

1 month agoby jordanb

Placed an order from Lenovo on November 21st - 96gb of RAM in that machine, it still hasn't shipped yet - am wondering if/when they will try to "renegotiate" the deal... (supposed arrival date on that system is 01/02/2026)

1 month agoby jjkaczor

It seems easier to purchase from hardware vendors that have already locked in their prices for RAM.

1 month agoby j45

There's an errant thing at the back of my mind, I can't help but wonder if this ram shortage could revive the ram dimm as a concept as so many manufacturers were adopting the soldered-ram approach. I'm sure though this won't come to pass

1 month agoby WorldPeas

Given that major memory manufacturers are abandoning consumer RAM production to focus on HBM for AI data centers, can we make a prediction that HBM prices will eventually fall enough to make it viable for consumer hardware?

1 month agoby bicepjai

50% won't be enough so they'll need to raise prices again in a month or two.

1 month agoby wmf

It's not like Framework is choosing to do this just to screw consumers, their suppliers are raising the prices on them, so those increases have to pass through to the consumers.

1 month agoby Suppafly

What's wild is OpenAI doubling down on hyperscaling when it's obvious that the gains from pre-training are coming to an end. They seem determined to just go out in flames...

1 month agoby dismalaf

MacBooks will kill the market because of these memory price hikes

1 month agoby GlitchInstitute

I assembled a new 32c/64t 7970X threadripper with 128GB DDR5 and a 16GB RX9070XT over the summer...

This memory situation has me pondering putting it all up on ebay

1 month agoby pengaru

Work is skipping server, desktop, and laptop buys that were planned for 2026. Guess I am going to be fixing and patching a lot more often next year.

1 month agoby FuriouslyAdrift

I just bought 32gb ram at 650DKK 2 months ago and now the same ram goes for 3200+...

1 month agoby dustymcp

Don't worry, on the other side of the AI bubble pop the market will be flooded with used DDR5 sticks from unprofitable datacenters.

1 month agoby scottLobster

Thanks, Sam :<

1 month agoby insane_dreamer

Ah yes, the abundance ushered in by the "AI era" is overwhelming us all.

Is anyone's salary here projected to go up 53% in 2026?

1 month agoby pmdr

Great, another thing AI is ruining

1 month agoby LetsGetTechnicl

It seems the only thing that could break this is the off chance that the SCOTUS rules that the tariffs are illegal and/or Congress strips the Presidency of the power they gave it in utters incompetence many decades ago.

I’m thinking with sufficient pressure by all tech interested people it could become an issue in the midterms and even force Trump to sign agreements not to tariff RAM by Korean producers who could ramp up production.

Frankly, I wouldn’t even be surprised if we start seeing RAM smuggling. In not sure of drug prices, but would smuggling RAM not be at least just as profitable, especially without the high profile and risk?

Hey! … hey, you! You want to have some fun?

1 month agoby hopelite

Late-stage capitalism in action. We have companies that are so insanely rich (despite losing equally insane amounts of money) that they can single-handedly corner worldwide markets for critical components in a brazen attempt to hurt the competition, and nobody will do a single thing about it.

1 month agoby faefox

cc @apple

1 month agoby meindnoch

My question is, will the ram price go down at some point or is it a point of no return?

1 month agoby SchwKatze