Don’t you think that the news about the continuous drop in graphics card prices that we talked about a few hours ago is not enough? Looking to upgrade your PC or build a new one, but need another price cut? so don’t worry the GPU market is not the only component market aiming to continue its downward trend which we have been observing for some time. Yes, indeed, after a season of shortages and sky-high prices, the good news is now starting to pile up.

You may recall that at the beginning of June we told you that the situation in the RAM market was quite good and that it pointed to further near-term improvement. As we can now read in DigiTimes Asia, it seems that we can expect the prices of DDR5 RAM continue to decline during the second half of 2022 and into 2023, something that will especially (though not exclusively) affect the most basic models. DDR5 prices at the consumer level, especially at distributors, have reportedly fallen well below the manufacturer’s estimated retail price.

DDR4 memory prices are also expected to continue to fall, although in this case the drop will be smaller and it is expected to take less time to find its footing. So, according to some analysts, sometime in early to mid-2023, the price of entry-level DDR5 RAM modules could find itself very close to DDR4 memory early this year. With this price development, we can expect that the transition from DDR4 to DDR5 is almost complete and therefore Meteor Lake only supports DDR5.

More important in the face of DDR5 standardization was AMD’s decision to ensure that the AMD Ryzen 7000 series only supports DDR5. When the theory began to spread that this generation would not be compatible with DDR4, some thought that the company might have shot itself in the foot, since at the time the price of DDR5 memory was much higher than it is today. However, we understand that AMD’s intentions in this regard acted as a catalyst to increase the production capacity of DDR5 and thereby reduce its price. In other words, it is undeniable that we have to thank AMD’s decision for lowering the prices of the last generation of memory.