Should I Buy RAM Now?
2026 data, not vibes. Updated August 28, 2026
Should you buy RAM now? If you're waiting for prices to return to 2024 levels, the data says stop waiting: every recent trend window is flat or rising, and the collapse that would justify holding off appears nowhere in it. But if you're asking whether you can buy fairly in this market, yes, with a price check first. A number of kits are sitting near their lowest prices of the past year even though everything remains historically expensive. The skill right now isn't timing the market's return; it's telling a fair current price from a bad one, and that's a checkable fact, not a feeling.
What actually happened to RAM prices
The surge wasn't gradual. Through most of 2024 and early 2025, memory was cheap and getting cheaper, DDR4 kits at $50, DDR5 at prices that now look like typos. The explosion came in roughly October through December 2025, driven by DRAM supply shifting toward AI datacenter demand, and it repriced everything: DDR5 up over 300% year over year at its peak, DDR4 up well over 150%, and it dragged SSDs along with it.
What's happened since matters more for your decision: prices mostly stopped climbing. Across the products we track, DDR5 has kept drifting upward, a slow grind rather than another surge. DDR4 actually fell double digits from its peak and has now flattened, its cooldown appears finished. This is a slow grind at elevated prices, not an ongoing explosion and not a recovery.
| Segment | 1 month | 3 months | 6 months | 1 year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DDR5 | +6.3% | +10.2% | +8.7% | +360.4% |
| DDR4 | +0% | +0% | -5.3% | +191.5% |
| NVMe SSD | +2.1% | +1.4% | +3.1% | +139.5% |
| SATA SSD | +2.9% | -5.3% | +14.7% | +189.9% |
Scroll the table sideways to see every period.
Last computed August 27, 2026 · median-based · per-period fairness subsets · full methodology
The 2018 lesson: prices do normalize, eventually
This isn't the first DRAM spike. In 2017-18, memory prices roughly tripled on supply constraints, and if you look at the long-tracked kits in our database, the shape is right there: a sharp climb, a high plateau, and then, starting in late 2018, a long decline that gave back most of the gains through 2019.
So the honest answer to "will prices come down?" is: history says yes, eventually. But two details from that history should shape your plan. The descent took roughly 18 months from peak to normal, and it began only when supply fundamentals changed, not because buyers waited hard enough. If your build can wait until 2027, waiting is a defensible strategy. If you're building this year, you're buying in this market, and the useful question becomes whether you're buying well in it.
(And yes: MemRadar earns affiliate commissions when you buy through our links, so you'd be right to notice we have an interest in "buy now." The data above is the same either way, and so is the 2018 chart showing prices did eventually fall. We'd rather you buy at a fair price later than a bad one today, bad purchases don't come back.)
How to judge a specific kit today
Market-level trends won't tell you whether the kit in your cart is priced fairly. Three checks will, and they take about a minute on any product page here:
First, where is it against its own recent history? A kit near its lowest price of the past few months is fairly priced for this market, even if that number would have been outrageous in 2024. Our "good time to buy" indicator does this math against the 90-day average.
Second, what's the price per gigabyte against its segment? Every product page shows $/GB against the current median for its class. A DDR5 kit at $13/GB when the segment median is $16 is a genuinely good relative price; the same kit at $19 is marked up beyond even this market's standards.
Third, cheap lately or cheap historically? Our price analysis distinguishes these on every page, because in this market nearly everything is "near its recent low" while sitting far above where it traded two years ago. Both facts are true; you should know both before deciding how to feel about the purchase.
RAM kits closest to their all-time lows right now
- Lexar OC DDR5 RAM 1x8GB 6000MHz CL38 $119.99 at its all-time low of $119.99
- PUSKILL 32GB Kit $179.07 at its all-time low of $179.07
- 16GB 1X16GB DDR4 2666MHZ PC4-21300 2Rx8 $157.26 0.2% above its all-time low of $156.98
- CORSAIR Vengeance RGB RS DDR5 16GB $255.11 1.0% above its all-time low of $252.59
- CORSAIR Vengeance RGB RS DDR5 32GB $467.59 2.8% above its all-time low of $454.99
- CORSAIR Vengeance RGB RS DDR5 RAM 16GB $244.99 6.5% above its all-time low of $229.99
Ranked by how close the current price sits to each kit's all-time low. Updates automatically.
Honest answers to the questions people actually ask
Will DDR5 prices drop in 2026?
The recent trend says no meaningful drop is underway, DDR5 has kept drifting upward for months, slowly next to the surge but persistently. A 2018-style normalization is possible but historically took over a year from peak, and the peak was late 2025.
Is DDR4 a smart buy right now?
It's complicated in an interesting way. DDR4 fell hard from its peak and that decline has now flattened, so the discount you see today may be the discount you get. For an older platform you're keeping, buying DDR4 near its recent lows is defensible. For a new build, DDR4's price advantage over DDR5 has narrowed enough that it's no longer the automatic budget answer.
Should I just buy used?
Used prices track new prices with a lag, and the same surge inflated them. The checks above apply, know what the kit sells for new before valuing a used one, and remember used carries no warranty in a market where you're paying near-new prices.
How current is this page?
The prices and the list above update automatically, several times a day. The market narrative is reviewed when conditions change meaningfully. If the grind gives way to a real drop, or picks back up into another surge, this page will say so.
Buying storage too? See Should I Buy an SSD Now.
Prices on this page update automatically every few hours. Page last regenerated: August 28, 2026.