I went to a pc building shop and the price of 64 RAM DDR5 was over $1000. I could have built an entire PC with price a year ago.
RAM and SSD prices are still climbing—here’s our best advice for PC builders
Submitted 2 weeks ago by themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
UnGlasierteGurke@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
flamiera@kbin.melroy.org 2 weeks ago
DDR4 is serviceable to me.
Here's some actual advice for PC builders - what do you actually want from your system? Nothing you say can be vague, you have to set up goals. That's the entire important note of PC building is what you're building it for and how long you want it to last for as in, how long until you're wanting to build another?
PriorityMotif@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
One thing I’ve run into is not performance with old hardware but missing features from the CPU/GPU. Think of tpm 2.0 requirements for Windows 11. There’s other obscure instruction sets that newer games and programs require such as resizeable bar if you want to run a local llm.
MagnificentSteiner@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Instructions unclear. Purchased a 5090, 9800X3D and 64gb DDR5 RAM for playing Terraria. Also, it has shiny lights.
cley_faye@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yeah. I’m on a relatively old build with DDR4, but still a decent processor and GPU. So far gaming have not been an issue with whatever I’m throwing at it. Not much in the way of loading times, and no real problem with the size of it. Some less game-y stuff, like video transcoding and 3D renders, also fine. And while I can see those improving somewhat with DDR5, I’m not sure it’s the actual bottleneck. And gaming won’t be much better with it… I mean seriously, moving loading times from 3 seconds to 2? I don’t really care.
The real issue will be when things starts to break down, as hardware do over time. It’s not that I want to replace the hardware if there’s no pressure from the software side, but I will have to if RAM goes bad, or motherboard decide to not power up.
Postmortal_Pop@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
My PC currently experiences a memory overload if I play ~150mods Skyrim for more than 2 hours straight. I currently have 16gb DDR4, Gtx1660 Nvidia. My thoughts are that the graphics card is the weak link but those are still too big a ticket.
absquatulate@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Sadly it may actually be your ram. I had a 1660 until a couple months ago and the card kept up fine, at lest for older games. With 16gb of memory though my system kept bottlenecking. Upgrading to 32 was like a breath of fresh air
tal@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
If it’s a leak in a mod and some pages just aren’t being accessed at all, then I’d think that the OS might be able to just page them out.
It might be possible to crank up the amount of swap you have and put that swap on a relatively-fast storage device. Preferably NVMe, or maybe SATA-attached SSD. I mean, yeah, SSD prices are up too, but you don’t need all that much space to just store swap, and it’s vastly cheaper than DRAM.
If you have a spare NVMe slot on your system or a free spot to mount a 2.5 inch SATA drive and SATA plug, should be good.
If you have a free PCIe slot, doing a quick Amazon search, looks like a PCIe card with a beefy heatsink to provide an M.2 slot to mount a single stick of NVMe can be had for $14:
And a 128GB M.2 stick of NVMe for $20:
amazon.com/GALIMU-128GB-XP2000-Gen4x4-XP2000F128G…
I have no idea the degree to which “lots of cheap, fast swap” helps. It will probably depend a lot on a particular use case. In some cases, probably about as good as having the memory.
If flash storage device is really heavily used, I imagine that it’ll probably eat through its life time write cycles relatively quickly, but if nothing else lives on the device, no biggie if it fails (well, not in terms of data loss for stored stuff), and I don’t expect it being 5 or 10 years until DRAM prices come back down.
Probably be interesting to see some gaming sites benchmark some of these approaches.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Playing it on a lean linux distro (or simply neutering Windows heavily) helps a ton. There’s tons of Windows stuff that just sits in the background for no reason.
There are also texture optimizers for Skyrim, and some other performance mods.
douglasg14b@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I want:
- Multitasking speed
- Fast SSD storage for dev tasks, builds…etc
- Large SSD storage for games
- Memory to run multiple development environments, and not have to turn them off to go play a game
- A GPU capable of playing most games on decent settings on a 4k monitor (upscaling allowed)
So generally this means:
- mid-high end CPU
- mid GPU
- 64+ GB RAM
- 1x High Performance 1TB m.2 SSD as primary drive
- 1x w/e 2TB m.2 SSD for secondary
RAM prices makes this… Absurd. My current PC is actually getting a bit slow for me now, it’s about 5 years old now, and it’s time for an upgrade. Which is going to cost me 2-3x what it should, simply from RAM…
tal@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
I commented elsewhere in the thread that one option that can mitigate limited RAM for some users is to get a fast, dedicated SSD swap device, stick a large pagefile/paging partition on it, and let the OS page out stuff that isn’t actively being used. Flash memory prices are up too, but are vastly cheaper than RAM.
My guess is that this generally isn’t the ideal solution for situations where one RAM-hungry game is what’s eating up all the memory, but for some things you mention (like wanting to leave a bunch of browser tabs open while going to play a game), I’d expect it to be pretty effective.
dev tasks, builds…etc
I don’t know how applicable it is to your use case, but there’s ccache to cache compiled binaries and distcc to do distributed C/C++ builds across multiple machines, if you can coral up some older machines.
It looks like Mozilla’s sccache does both caching and distributed builds, and supports Rust as well. I haven’t used it myself.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
I want to be able to run VRChat at high FPS even in the fanciest of settings.
tal@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
I haven’t used it, but my understanding is that it’s vaguely like Second Life, popular with folks creating adult-content-oriented-worlds.
From a technical standpoint, that might actually be a pretty good example of a game that would benefit from cloud gaming, since I assume that it’s not all that latency-critical, not the way an FPS would be.
I guess that there would potentially be privacy issues with adult content stuff that would argue against cloud hosting, but in the case of VRChat, the service itself is already living in the cloud, so…shrugs
Shyanae@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
64GB of DDR3 RAM in a system of that era is straight nuts!
Shyanae@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I got a good deal where it was cheaper than the 32gb I intended to have :D It’s DDR4 btw. So it might be worth the whole system soon (1000k for the whole computer in 2017)
Magnum@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
That’s actually pretty solid hardware lol get a grip
Shyanae@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It still works fine most of the time with a 1080p Monitor :)
digdilem@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Clearly the best advice is “Build your PC a year ago”
renrenPDX@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Not even. More like 3 months ago.
The pair of 2x16 DDR5 6000 TEAMGROUP I bought back in April was $90 from Amazon. According to pcpartpicker, pricing started trending upwards late September, which Newegg still had it at $89 (9/30/25; B&H @ $109). The same pair at B&H is currently $439 (12/21/25) and MemoryC is asking $596. It’s insane.
cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Ya but video cards have been insane since covid too
LiveLM@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
One of the commenters said:
“avoid building a PC right now” is advice I’ve been following since 2017
And honestly yeah. I guess at this point if you can afford it, just pull the plug whenever, it’s always some bullshit on the PC Market anyway.
Xenny@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I built my PC in 2019 right at the end of the yearcand I thank the gods everyday. I’ve only done one CPU upgrade since and it’s still great for 1440p gaming.
cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Same timing for me also. Still plays new games relatively well. Especially considering I have an ultra wide monitor
SapphironZA@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I am running a 2020 ryzen 5950x CPU and a 2080TI I got from a closing down sale of a computer store for $700 in 2019, just before the first Crypto rush.
I dont see myself buying any hardware for performance reasons for the next 3 years. Also not buying new AAA games anymore.
Small studio and indie titles on 50% off steam sales has been my jam of late.
LiveLM@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Small studio and indie titles on 50% off steam sales has been my jam of late
Oh, same.
The wacky performance I’ve been getting on Talos Principle 2 has been annoying me. Wish they stayed in the Serious Sam engine instead of switching to UE5
tal@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
As (relatively) old as they are, midrange Core i5 chips from Intel’s 12th-, 13th-, and 14th-generation Core CPU lineups are still solid choices for budget-to-midrange PC builds.
I would be hesitant about obtaining secondhand 13th or 14th gen desktop Intel CPUs, since those are the ones that destroy themselves over time. There is no way to know whether they’ve been run on non-updated BIOSes and damaged themselves. I burned theough an i9-13900 and an i9-14900 myself. Started with occasional errors and gradually got worse until they couldn’t even get through boot.
12th-gen chips are safe.
Auth@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Best advice is grab an AM4 motherboard and go for DD4 ram. You wont notice a difference in performance for majority of games.
tal@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
DDR4 RAM is presently cheaper than DDR5, but it has also increased dramatically in price recently.
pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/
DDR4:
lemmy.today/…/ed889201-f9e6-46ec-81a8-832f6bfc63e…
DDR5:
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
So happy I bought a m.2 for my laptop right before this insanity. Wonder if spinning plates are coming back to the menu?
SapphironZA@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Dont wait too long, retailers are catching on and increasing prices.
Auth@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
2nd hand its still cheap
nuko147@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
yeeght@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
As soon as I saw the prices of ram shoot up a couple weeks ago I started looking into am4 chips and so did everyone else I guess lol. Now I don’t even see the 5800/5700x3d for sale at all in my local used market.
Auth@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yeah but who needs a 5800X3D? a 5500 or 5600x will be fine for most. If you can afford to get a 5800x3d dont worry about the price and just buy it money clearly aint an issue.
theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Way too late
picnic@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
No. Ddr4 ram prices have been tripling this year.
I needed ddr4 ecc, but couldnt justify paying 3x the price that I paid last year.
Also wanted to buy ddr4 sodimm for my wife’s laptop, you guessed it, 3x the price.
humanspiral@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
IMO, the pricing is an extortion scam rather than a real shortage. People are falling for it because of AI hype narrative. Best to wait it out.
dil@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
They are manufacturing only 35% of consumer ram compared to what they were before? The supply is really going down?
humanspiral@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
It’s by choice. Samsung did announce recently that they are going back to consumer ram production instead of trying to compete for low margin big contracts on current gen hbm. At half of current prices, ddr5 is more profitable than HBM even for hynix (leader).
Stefan_S_from_H@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
I waited too long to buy a new PC. I thought the later, the better. And now this.
Well, Windows 10 support runs until October 2026.
tal@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
thought the later, the better
Well, usually that is true.
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
if you can’t switch to linux, upgrade windows to LTSC. massgrave.dev is your friend, they have installers and an activator, maybe it can even change the windows type without reinstall.
and then start planning your transition to linux. don’t overthink it, just what you need, and what files you need over there, especially before deleting windows. fedora kde edition is a good starter distro, you shouldn’t need to tinker it if you don’t want
Stefan_S_from_H@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
Yeah, this will make RAM prices cheaper. For sure.
capuccino@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Windows 10 LTLS?
tal@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
I assume this:
securityweek.com/microsoft-offers-free-windows-10…
The tech giant previously announced that users can pay for Windows 10 Extended Security Updates to get patches for another year, but this week it revealed additional enrollment options, including free alternatives for individual users.
Specifically, consumers can pay roughly $30 per PC (depending on location) to enroll in the ESU program and receive security updates for one year after Windows 10 reaches EOS.
If they don’t want to spend money, they can simply start using Windows Backup to sync their settings to the cloud. It’s worth noting that Microsoft recommends Windows Backup for backing up files and settings before switching to Windows 11.
Another ESU option that does not involve spending actual money is to enroll for 1,000 Microsoft Rewards points, which users earn for engaging with Microsoft products and services, such as Bing, Xbox and Microsoft Store.
“ESU coverage for personal devices runs from Oct. 15, 2025, through Oct. 13, 2026,” Microsoft’s Yusuf Mehdi explained.
Stefan_S_from_H@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
The normal Windows 10. ESU in the European Economic Area (EEA).
fum@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
How about just don’t buy a PC for now? I’m sure the machine you’ve got in good enough. Just hang on to it until the prices come back down
kylian0087@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
My old i7 4790k with DDR3 can run for a little longer…
tea@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
Yeah, it sucks though. It feels like building a PC has been inadvisable more often than not. Thanks to the GPU prices being ridiculous a while back. Now this. It’s crazy that you have to time building a PC between these stupid waves.
fum@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
True! It is frustrating. I fear the days of custom PC builds are coming to an end.
Even before this recent price hike it was a lot more expensive than it used to be.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
I guess my ageing i5-8400, 16GB, GTX 1060 rig can keep hobbling along a while yet.
Although I was amused to see my Legion Go S actually has a more powerful CPU now.
MrQuallzin@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Did some server maintenance yesterday, including driver updates. Broke my system since it updated my Nvidia driver to 590.x which no longer supports our little 1060s. Had to roll back the driver, thankfully easy. Suppose I better start keeping an eye out for some sort of upgrade…
SapphironZA@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Amd 9070xt and 9060xt options are probably the best you are going to get for the next 2 years.
Dont buy Nvidia again. They just end of lifed the 10th most popular GPU used with Steam.
deadymouse@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
[deleted]1995ToyotaCorolla@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Do you guys not have phones?
echodot@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
How much RAM does a time machine require because that seems to be the basic advice here.
tal@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
Not a hardware fix, but there’s memory compression. It sounds like Windows 11 defaults to having memory compression on:
xda-developers.com/little-known-windows-feature-h…
Linux has zswap and zram to do memory compression, which I’ve mentioned here recently. I don’t know of any distros that turn it on by default. It sounds from recent reading like for modern systems wirh SSD swap, zswap is probably preferable.
Gsus4@mander.xyz 2 weeks ago
Looks like I’m going to be stuck in 2023 for a long long time…
moonburster@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
So do we expect the cost of gpu’s to also rise due to this? Some money is opening up and next year I wanted to upgrade anyway. Might just need to buy it earlier
sundray@lemmus.org 2 weeks ago
Is it time to start shucking mini pcs and game consoles?
DylanMc6@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
how do you think market socialism would solve this problem?
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
As a silver lining, you think this could stabilize GPU prices? Or at least CPU prices?
If there’s less RAM/SSDs to build PCs with, then people will buy fewer GPUs/CPUs for them.
MildlyConcerned@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
AI-Generated Summary:
• RAM and SSD prices have spiked dramatically since summer 2025, with some RAM kits costing up to four times more and SSDs doubling in price, driven by high demand from AI data centers and supply shortages.
• Industry predictions suggest supply constraints and rising prices will persist into 2026, making it a challenging time for PC builders, especially for DDR5 memory and newer components.
• To mitigate costs, builders can consider alternatives like DDR4 for budget systems, slower DDR5 speeds, single RAM sticks, or pre-built PCs, though compromises in performance or flexibility may be necessary.
Powered by deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3 via Hyperbolic.ai
tabular@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
DDR6 will be about to release by the time RAM prices return to normal…
ragas@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
I guess my 96GB of RAM from 3 years ago will still hold up for another decade.
RiceBowl@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
What is the feasibility of getting a prebuilt gaming PC and using it for the parts I need/want and selling the rest of it? Anyone do this?
My old HTPC is running a Z87 motherboard with a 4770k i5 cpu with 16gb of ddr3 ram. It is chugging along. I had plans to build out something new in the same case but I don’t want to feed into this bullshit by buying now. The more people show their willingness to pay these prices the happier manufacturers and retailers will be to charge them. But I think it might get worse, too, and maybe not better. Ugh.
Whatever I build might be the last one I do considering how long I kept this one.
rimjob_rainer@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
I just built a PC with 64GB Ram Corsair Vengeance 2 months ago. Paid 250€, quite expensive IMO (was used to more like 50€ ten years ago). But who pays 1000€???
anon5621@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
The best we can do is just wait when price will fall down after ai bubble will explode
brsrklf@jlai.lu 2 weeks ago
Probably but with all the idiots fueled by sunken costs and desperate to prove they were right to invest, it could still last a long time.
I built a decent PC a couple years ago, and I don’t need to upgrade often since I don’t really care about cutting edge. So I kinda dodged a bullet, but, this sucks.
errer@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Honestly the incentive to “upgrade” a gaming PC the past decade is really weak. Aside from a few AAA titles almost all games run just fine on old hardware. Particularly if you ditch Windows.
So let’s just all refuse to buy this overpriced shit. The same price increases have already happened to GPUs and gamers felt like they “needed” to pay those prices still, nah fuck that, don’t give these greedy pigs a dime.
acosmichippo@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
not necessarily with hardware though. now they are flush with investments and have holes burning in their pockets. they may artificially extend the bubble, but rapid hardware expansion will be the first thing to slow down or stop.
io@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
i built one literally in early November and prices were still normal, that was close haha
Pistcow@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Im going to get me a dual CPU thread riper server for $399 when the crash happens!
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
assuming they will come down, if they can even get people to buy at an inflated price they wont reduce it.
Velypso@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
The ai bubble will never pop.
Safeguards have been removed from the market and too many rich people are balls deep. Prices will be manipulated and prices will continue to soar.
TheTimeKnife@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Thats how bubbles pop. Those safeguards dont prevent an infinite money glitch, they stop the entire system from crumbling in a mild headwind. People always think this time is different during the growth phase of the bubble.
IronBird@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
mah, it’s a casino. crash will come eventually, the complication is that both bulls and bears want the same thing.
olenkoVD@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
The prices will never go down again. There is literally no reason for the companies to decrease the prices. There will be like a 50$ decrease and people would go “oh look it’s so cheap now!!1!!” and companies will keep making 3 times their profits.