The price of DDR5 memory is setting new highs these days as demand badly outstrips supply. In a bid to save money, Meta is recovering legacy DDR4 memory from used servers and is installing it into new machines using its in-house developed Vistara ASIC that enables it to connect old memory modules to its latest servers running AMD EPYC 'Turin' processors that only support DDR5 memory.

Interestingly, Meta is not the only company developing such a solution. Panmnesia, a startup from South Korea, has developed an off-the-shelf CXL controller and switch that enables servers to attach considerably larger memory pools without extending latency, which differentiates Panmnesia’s solution from competing CXL offerings.

Custom ASIC enables DDR4 memory to work with new servers

Vistara is Meta’s first-gen custom CXL memory expander ASIC designed to attach outdated DDR4 memory to modern servers. The chip implements a CXL 2.0 Type-3 memory expander over a PCIe 5.0 x16 interface and bridges standard DDR4 RDIMMs to host processors. Each ASIC supports two independent 72-bit DDR4 memory channels and can provide up to 256 GB of capacity using 64 GB DIMMs. At present, Meta deploys 128 GB per ASIC using 32 GB DDR4 modules recovered from decommissioned servers.

Meta deploys Vistara in its MemServer platform, where two ASICs connect to a single 158-core AMD Turin processor over PCIe 5.0 x8 links. Each server combines 768 GB of DDR5-6400 local memory with 256 GB of CXL-attached DDR4-2400, which expands memory capacity to 1 TB. The software stack transparently exposes CXL memory as a separate NUMA node and enables Linux to migrate cold pages to the slower DDR4 tier (with 76 GB/s of bandwidth) and retain frequently accessed data in local DDR5 (with 614 GB/s of bandwidth).

The ASIC is based on three RISC-V processor cores for secure boot, device initialization, firmware management, and health monitoring. Meta claims it has optimized its CXL controller and memory pipeline to reduce protocol overhead, minimize queuing delays, and lower idle round-trip latency to around 50ns. The chip also incorporates advanced reliability features, including Reed-Solomon two-symbol error correction and x4 chip-kill support.

Not only Meta's Vistara

Meta is not the only company that wants to attach legacy DDR4 memory to newer servers that rely on DDR5 memory and save some money. While Vistara is available exclusively to Meta, there is a new CXL expander solution from Panmnesia that will be available to other companies.

"There has been a perception that putting a switch between the CPU and devices makes it hard to meet the memory-access latency these systems expect, so directly attached multi-headed devices (MHDs) stayed the norm even though they were harder to scale," said Myoungsoo Jung, chief executive of Panmnesia. "Our work shows this is not an inherent limit of CXL or CXL switches — it is a trait of early-stage CXL, and one that fades as the standard and the products around it mature. With a fabric switch that carries our next-stage CXL controller, scalability, low latency, and stable performance can come together."

CXL is a protocol that sits on top of the PCIe physical interface. As a result of this, many early CXL implementations were built by modifying existing PCIe IP, which is why such implementations inherited architectural characteristics optimized for PCIe rather than for memory-semantic communications, which added substantial latency, according to Panmnesia. By contrast, its new CXL controller IP features a redesigned data path that replaces separate per-layer buffers with shared buffers to eliminate much of the synchronization overhead. In addition, it features additional latency optimizations throughout the protocol stack that offset the additional hop introduced by the switch.

The accompanying CXL fabric switch introduces Port-Based Routing (PBR), which removes the tree-topology limitations of conventional Hierarchy-Based Routing (HBR) used by PCIe and early CXL implementations. The fabric switch still supports both PBR and HBR to enable flexible system topologies, optimized traffic routing, and stable performance. In practice, it enables companies like Meta to install more DDR4 memory into their modern servers without major performance degradation because of high latency.

Panmnesia claims that while early CXL deployments could connect only a handful of compute nodes to shared memory pools, its fabric scales to up to 64 nodes, which means greater flexibility for hyperscalers that tend to run thousands of servers, but which now have to rationalize usage of expensive DRAM.

Panmnesia says its next-generation CXL technologies are progressing toward commercialization. The company has pre-release silicon for its PCIe 6.4/CXL 3.2 Fusion Switch and has completed development of its PCIe 7.0/CXL 4.0 Combo IP, which supports the latest features introduced by the CXL 4.0 specification.

G.Skill’s AMD EXPO ULL (Ultra Low Latency) memory kits, strong contenders among today's best RAM options, have arrived on the retail market. While AMD previously stated that EXPO ULL memory kits would be “effectively the same price” as vanilla EXPO memory kits, this has proven by far not to be the case. In reality, these new EXPO ULL kits carry a substantial premium that can scale up to 80% over their regular counterparts.

The Trident Z5 NeoX is G.Skill’s latest memory series featuring ULL optimizations. The new lineup is available in three striking color options, black, glossy black, and white, that cater to a variety of system aesthetics. G.Skill has not released the official product pages for the Trident Z5 NeoX series, so detailed information on the full range of planned capacities and speeds is unavailable. Newegg is currently selling the Trident Z5 NeoX memory kits in a 32GB (2x16GB) dual-channel configuration clocked at DDR5-6000.

To make it a meaningful comparison, we compared the Trident Z5 NeoX memory kits to their direct counterparts, the standard Trident Z5 Neo series. We deliberately excluded similarly specced lineups such as the Aegis or Ripjaws series, which are tailored for budget-conscious buyers, as well as omitting the Trident Z5 Royal Neo, which targets a more posh crowd.

The Trident Z5 NeoX DDR5-6000 C26 memory kit carries a 57% premium over the standard Trident Z5 Neo DDR5-6000 C26 memory kit. The price gap widens further for the DDR5-6000 C28 variant, which commands a 79% premium. Meanwhile, the Trident Z5 NeoX C30 and C36 versions are 14% and 9% more expensive than their regular Trident Z5 Neo counterparts, respectively.

On a superficial level, it’s basically impossible to grasp the true extent of the level of optimization that goes into AMD EXPO ULL memory kits just by looking at product listings. It’s customary for memory manufacturers and retailers to only list the four primary memory timings: CAS Latency (CL), Row Address to Column Delay (tRCD), Row Precharge Time (tRP), and Row Active Time (tRAS). Unfortunately, these memory timings only tell part of the story, since most of the secondary timings for AMD EXPO ULL certification, including Refresh Interval (tREFI), Row-to-Row Delay Short (tRRDS), and Write Recovery Time (tWR), are not publicly visible.

Returning to the example of the Trident Z5 NeoX memory kits, what immediately stands out is the dramatically reduced tRAS value, which is up to 67% lower than that of standard Trident Z5 Neo memory kits. In short, tRAS dictates how many clock cycles must pass after a row opens before the memory controller can close it. The reason for high tRAS values in DDR5 resides in the architecture itself. Unlike DDR4, which operates with a single 64-bit channel, DDR5 employs two independent 32-bit subchannels. This change, alongside the doubling of burst length from BL8 to BL16, enables each memory command to transfer twice as much data through the channels in a single operation. As a result, the memory rows remain open longer, leading to the higher tRAS values typically seen in DDR5 modules. What makes the AMD EXPO ULL memory kits unique is that they drive tRAS values back down to levels reminiscent of high-performance DDR4 from the old days.

Another significant advantage of AMD EXPO ULL memory kits is their ability to maintain tight timings at reduced voltages. The Trident Z5 NeoX runs at a consistent 1.35V across its entire product stack. This voltage is notably lower than the 1.45V or 1.40V required by the Trident Z5 Neo series. Lower DRAM voltages translate to lower power consumption, lower operating temperatures, and more headroom for overclocking.

If you’re looking for the simplest explanation as to why AMD EXPO ULL memory kits carry a hefty premium over regular AMD EXPO memory kits, it boils down to the extensive optimization and meticulous binning process involved in their production. Memory vendors spend more time testing and sorting memory chips that can operate at the tightest timings and lowest voltages. It’s a very time-consuming and labor-intensive process. As a result, the overall manufacturing costs for EXPO ULL kits are higher than for standard kits. In many ways, you aren’t just paying a premium for the hardware itself, but also for the vendor’s time and the guarantee that the memory modules run at near-maximum potential right out of the box.

Memory has become one of the most expensive components when it comes to building a PC. With the ongoing global DRAM shortage, one of the best ways to dodge obnoxious price tags is to either get a combo bundle or scour the used marketplace for a solid deal. However, if you are looking for a brand new pair of RAM sticks for a desktop PC, the PNY Performance 32GB DDR5 kit has just dropped from its listed price of $449.99 down to $379.99 over at Amazon, offering savings of $70. That makes it one of the cheapest 32GB DDR5 kits that you can purchase today.

• Check out this deal on Amazon

The kit includes two 16GB DDR5 modules capable of running at 5600 MT/s at CL46 latency, which is noticeably looser than the sub-CL40 timings found on higher-end DDR5 memory. The difference in performance is generally small, particularly gaming at higher resolutions where GPU is the primary bottleneck. However, gamers chasing every last frame or anyone building a high-performance workstation may want to invest in faster memory.

The modules are fairly barebones in terms of design as this particular kit does not include any heatspreaders or RGB lighting. The only saving grace is that the PCB has a black finish, which should blend easily with a dark motherboard.

If your priority is maximizing capacity while keeping costs down rather than squeezing out every ounce of performance, this kit can be a good solid choice at its discounted price. It should be well-suited for budget gaming PCs, home office machines, and productivity builds where 32GB of memory capacity matters more than the lowest latency and aesthetics.

Overall, this isn't the fastest or flashiest DDR5 kit on the market, but at its competitive price of $379.99 it offers solid value for budget-conscious buyers. More choices start to arrive if your budget can be pushed up to $399, where you'll find the TeamGroup T-Force Vulcan DDR5-6000 32GB (2x16GB) CL38 kit, for example.

If you are on the lookout for the best memory for your desktop build, make sure that you head over to our RAM price tracking list to find the lowest price on DDR5 and DDR4 memory of all capacities.

If you're looking for more savings, check out our Best PC Hardware deals for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals, Hard Drive Deals, Gaming Monitor Deals, Graphics Card Deals, gaming chair, or CPU Deals pages.

Hardware enthusiasts, server administrators, and all regular readers of this site will be well aware of the ongoing "RAMpocalypse," the memory and storage shortage affecting nearly every market and raising prices across the board in the tech sector. If you were hoping for relief, don't hold your breath; at the International Supercomputing Conference this past week, Lenovo reportedly said "it will never be like it was last year." Underlining the point, one of Lenovo's presentation slides was titled "The 5 Step RAMaggeddon Survival Guide."

That comes to us by way of our German friends over at ComputerBase, who note that "never" was said with a smirk, thus implying that it wasn't meant to be taken literally. Instead, the message from Lenovo is that memory prices were unusually low in early 2025, and it will be a long time before we see comparatively low prices on RAM, flash memory, and other components, as the #1 worldwide PC OEM expects AI demand to continue growing.

According to ComputerBase's report from ISC 2026, Lenovo's broader message is that the economics of the memory industry have fundamentally changed. The company reportedly argued that even as significant new manufacturing capacity comes online beginning around 2028, demand from AI infrastructure is expected to absorb much of that additional output, preventing DRAM and NAND prices from returning to the lows seen over the past two years.

The report points to SK hynix's recently announced plans to triple its memory production capacity by 2034 as supporting evidence. Lenovo's reasoning is straightforward: the notoriously profit-hungry memory manufacturers would be unlikely to invest so heavily in expanding production if they expected a return to the razor-thin margins and oversupply that characterized parts of the market in early 2025.

In case you needed extra evidence for its argument, Lenovo also suggested that memory capacity itself is becoming an increasingly important consideration when designing and purchasing servers. While vendors have traditionally advertised the maximum supported memory capacity of new platforms, actually populating those DIMM slots has become far more expensive. New dual-socket servers are on the way next year with 16 memory channels per processor, meaning that even a relatively modest configuration can require around 1 TB of installed memory to fully utilize the available bandwidth.

Lenovo is far from the only company predicting a prolonged memory crunch, although the industry's incentives are worth keeping in mind. Micron recently told investors it expects supply to remain constrained through at least 2027, with only gradual improvement beginning in 2028, while SK hynix has warned the shortage could persist until around 2030 as AI infrastructure continues absorbing wafer capacity. Those forecasts are backed by multi-year supply agreements worth roughly $100 billion that Micron has already signed with customers, underscoring how seriously hyperscalers are treating long-term memory availability.

Even companies that traditionally wield enormous purchasing power are feeling the squeeze. Apple reportedly has sought permission from the U.S. government to source DRAM from Chinese memory maker CXMT, a Pentagon-blacklisted company, illustrating just how valuable additional memory supply has become as prices continue to climb. At the same time, memory vendors are enjoying some of the strongest pricing power (and profit margins) they've seen in years, giving them little incentive to accelerate a return to the boom-and-bust pricing cycles that once defined the DRAM market.

Ironically, one consequence of the ongoing memory shortage is that HBM is becoming more economically attractive relative to conventional system memory. DRAM manufacturers have redirected significant production capacity toward higher-margin HBM for AI accelerators, reducing the supply of commodity DDR5 and LPDDR5 while demand for both remains elevated. As a result, the premium for HBM-backed computing has narrowed, not because HBM has become inexpensive, but because traditional system memory has become dramatically more expensive. Hyperscalers were going to buy the GPUs anyway, so maximizing their utilization to reduce DDR5 requirements suddenly becomes an attractive proposition.

That shift helps explain Lenovo's suggestion that GPU-accelerated computing may now make more financial sense for some workloads. If an application can keep much of its working set in GPU-attached HBM, it may require significantly less DDR5 installed in the host system. With system DRAM now representing a much larger share of overall server cost than it did just a year ago, reducing memory capacity requirements can materially lower the price of deploying large-scale infrastructure.

Obviously, we don't know whether Lenovo's long-term outlook will prove accurate, but memory pricing has historically been cyclical, with periods of oversupply often followed by sharp corrections. With hyperscalers continuing to pour billions into AI infrastructure and memory vendors increasingly prioritizing high-margin enterprise products, the company believes the unusually inexpensive DRAM and NAND prices of 2024 and early 2025 may prove to have been an anomaly.

The RAMpocalypse is hitting enthusiasts hard. We recently reported on the crisis seeping down to affect supplies of the decades-old DDR2 gen RAM. So it comes as no huge surprise that a well-known tech tinkerer has been inspired to look at the viability of Windows 11 on an even more ancient DDR1 platform. Step forward Omores, who demonstrates Microsoft’s newest OS running on a Core 2 Quad Q6600, using a DDR1 motherboard, supported by an ATI Radeon HD 4650 AGP graphics card. “The best part,” says our hacky hero. “It’s completely stable.”

Windows 11 on a DDR1 motherboard, with AGP support enabled from r/windows

DDR1 first became available to PC builders and DIYers at the turn of the century, replacing the aging SDR SDRAM. The DDR1 rollout began with data rates like DDR-200 and DDR-266, being the preferred choice over older platforms featuring PC100 or PC133 SDRAM. We don’t know the rated speed of the DDR1 sticks Omores used, as it isn’t shown, but DDR-400 was the best official non-overclocked standard (a couple of years later). It would make sense to use the best memory on a cherry-picked older system like this.

Other key components of this age-defying Windows 11 PC build include an ASRock ConRoe 865PE motherboard. This is regarded as something of a legendary board as it bridged generations and allowed folks to use the latest Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad chips from Intel while keeping their DDR1 RAM and AGP graphics cards. It isn’t only today that PC DIYers have cared deeply about component longevity.

The last significant component in this DDR1 system that we were told about was the ATI Radeon HD 4650 AGP graphics card. This seems to have required the most wrangling to make it work with Windows 11 / modern software. However, Omores reveals that “With some 'hacking' ... AGP 8X is fully functional and H.264 hardware decoding is active.” The key was finding, then crowbarring, ATI’s Windows 7 64-bit drivers from 2012 onto the system.

Once some details of the setup were confirmed in the video using tools like CPU-Z and GPU-Z, Omores showed the ‘fresh’ Windows 11 DDR1 system running modern browsers, with embedded video and hardware decoding. A handful of games and 3D benchmarks were also shown running without glitches. Last but not least, the system did indeed run Crysis.

In a later comment on the Reddit post, Omores elaborates on how to install the ATi driver on Windows 11 and shares a more detailed video link. “I like that Windows 11 is rock stable on these older systems with no UEFI whatsoever and only ACPI 1.1,” adds the adventurer in older PC tech. “A lesser-known fact is that Windows 11 actually officially supports BIOS systems via Windows 11 IoT, so it's kind of expected to run smoothly.”

Apple has made the unprecedented decision to hike the prices of all its current computers and tablets. iPhone prices remain as they were, for now. Bloomberg indicates that the rather steep price rises have been precipitated by increased costs of memory and storage. One of the most impactful hikes we see is the entry-level MacBook Pro going from $1,699 to $1,999. However, even the recently released but resource-starved MacBook Neo has had another $100 piled onto its price, so now it starts at $699 before tax.

In addition to Gurman’s highlighted price increases, we spotted that the cheapest Mac Studio M4 Max (mini PC desktop) has had its price increased to $2,499 from $1,999. There’s a lot to take in, so check out our at-a-glance before and after table for quick reference.

Bloomberg’s resident Apple expert, Mark Gurman, quoted an apologetic company rep. “We know this is not welcome news, and we are working tirelessly to find solutions,” a spokesperson from Apple told the reporter. Other interesting assertions from that conversation were that Apple had never seen component prices rise so high, so quickly. Moreover, its representative claimed that the firm did all it could to shield customers from any knock-on device price rises, stating the company had "shielded our customers from these increases so far, but we have now reached a point where we need to begin raising prices on a number of products including today’s increases for iPad and Mac."

While newsrooms might be agog at these price rises being implemented today, the writing has been on the wall of the RAMpocalypse for several months. Back in April, Tim Cook publicly forecast that the component shortages and price rises didn’t appear to be going anywhere soon. That statement came in the wake of the withdrawal of the entry-level $599 configuration of the Mac Mini, and Apple softening the blow of higher prices of its latest MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models by upgrading memory and other tech specs.

Until now, it seemed like Apple’s massive buying power and vertical integration had managed to help it hold off computer and tablet price increases. Today, the brakes came off, pretty dramatically.

In a world where memory is no longer a commodity but a strategically valuable asset, customers are eager to sign long-term supply agreements (LTAs) with their suppliers to ensure a steady supply of 3D NAND and/or DRAM. Micron this week announced that it had signed 16 strategic customer agreements (SCAs), 14 of which are worth around $100 billion. Furthermore, the company expects to receive cash deposits and other commitments worth $22 billion, but has warned there is no foreseeable end in sight to the RAM crisis driving up PC component prices.

“14 of the 16 SCAs that we have signed have a cumulative revenue at minimum price per our contracts of approximately $100 billion over the remaining agreement term,” a statement by Micron reads. “Under the SCAs we have signed so far, we project to receive cash deposits and related financial commitments of $22 billion.”

Based on Micron’s claims, the company has about $100 billion of guaranteed baseline revenue already locked in under 14 of those 16 strategic customer agreements, assuming customers only buy the minimum committed volumes and only pay the minimum contract price. In reality, Micron can earn more if customers buy higher volumes or pay higher prices. Furthermore, Micron expects customers who signed these long-term SCAs to put up real money up front — or make equivalent binding financial commitments — as part of reserving future memory supply.

Micron claims it has signed strategic customer agreements with four 'very large customers' and three 'medium-sized customers,' which means that the contracts were inked with clients that previously did not commit to LTAs. The contracts are signed with a five-year term (except the automotive LTAs, which have a term of three years), from calendar 2026 to calendar 2030.

Micron claims that memory supply will be insufficient in 2027 and may improve gradually only in 2028. To that end, it is not surprising that its clients are willing to sign LTAs for 3D NAND and DRAM to ensure that they have enough memory for their products.

"With respect to supply, our customers are recognizing that supply shortages in memory and storage will take considerable time to improve," said Sanjay Mehrotra, chief executive of Micron, in prepared remarks. "Even as we expect industry supply to improve gradually in 2028, we currently do not have line of sight as to when memory supply will be able to catch up with increasing demand."

Normally, Micron and other memory producers inked LTAs with select clients only (read: with Apple, Nvidia). 16 LTAs is a lot for this kind of arrangement, and this looks like a business model shift for the company. It is noteworthy that the 16 signed contracts represent roughly 20% of Micron's DRAM volume and 33% of the company's NAND volume over the period through 2030. That said, Micron may sign more LTAs with more companies.

Valve has confirmed that the first batch of Steam Machines will only come with a single stick of 16GB RAM, limiting the device to single-channel memory. The company confirmed this in a correction to Gamers Nexus (GN), after its engineers initially said that Steam Machines could either come with a single 16GB stick or two 8GB sticks. “We misspoke here,” Valve wrote in its email to the media channel. “All units will actually have one 16GB stick of RAM.”

Tests have shown that using single-channel memory can reduce performance by about 9% to 13% compared to dual-channel memory, meaning gamers will feel the difference, especially in 1% lows. This is especially hard on the Steam Machine, which uses already aging hardware — a semi-custom AMD Zen 4 CPU and RDNA3 graphics with only 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM. Note that AMD launched Zen 5 in 2024, while the RDNA4 GPUs dropped in early 2025. We also already have details for Zen 6 CPUs and have heard rumors that RDNA5 GPUs will arrive next year.

However, the company probably made this decision to keep the costs for the Steam Machine as low as possible. The device’s $1,049 base price is already steeper than what many are willing to pay for — an estimated $300+ price increase from the $700 to $750 target price that Valve presumably targeted. While its engineers did not confirm these numbers, they also said that the Steam Machine would have gotten a “probably similar” price hike to the one the Steam Deck experienced recently. Nevertheless, there is hope that later batches will have dual-channel memory, with Valve telling GN that there is a chance of this happening in the future.

This is another blow to the much-awaited living room PC console that is supposed to finally give PC gamers a chance to enjoy their Steam library with a console-like experience. Valve originally announced the Steam Machine and the Steam Controller in November last year, which was also around the same time that memory chips have started to be in short supply due to the massive demand from AI hyperscalers. The device was originally slated to launch in the first quarter of 2026, but the ongoing memory crisis forced Valve to hold off until it finally released the console this summer.

Although having only a single stick of RAM is a disadvantage to any system, more optimistic gamers can consider this a boon as they could easily upgrade the console to 32GB if they have an extra matching 16GB DDR5-5600 SODIMM stick lying around at home (or are willing to spend extra to buy one). Upgrading the console’s RAM is a rather involved affair, though, requiring you to remove a lot of components and sub-boards just to reach the RAM slots. But if you’re the adventurous kind and could score a good deal on laptop RAM, this might be a viable solution to getting more performance out of your Steam Machine.

TSMC has reportedly told customers to prepare for price increases across its advanced chipmaking portfolio, extending the hikes beyond the newer 3nm process to include 7nm and even legacy products. According to a June 23rd Culpium report, the increases would affect the bulk of TSMC’s wafer revenue and could raise costs for major chip designers, including Apple, Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm, Broadcom, and MediaTek.

The exact size of the increases remains unclear, as figures would reportedly vary by customer, node, and product category, but generally appear to fall in the 5% to 10% range. TSMC price increases have reportedly already started rolling out in some cases, while other customers have been told to build the higher cost structure into future purchase orders.

The company declined to discuss specific pricing with Culpium. “TSMC does not comment on pricing. Our pricing strategy is strategic, not opportunistic,” the company said in a statement to the publication. “We will continue to work closely with customers and sell our value to them.” Although the company had earlier said it would refrain from raising prices.

Earlier reports from Taiwanese media had mainly pointed to increases at TSMC’s 3nm node, one of its most advanced processes currently used for premium smartphones, PC, and AI chips, with price pressure also expected at the newest 2nm-class production. However, Culpium reports that TSMC has informed clients that “all advanced nodes” will become more expensive, meaning the hikes would extend beyond 3nm and 2nm to include older but still advanced processes such as 5nm and 7nm.

3nm alone accounted for 25% of TSMC’s wafer revenue in the first quarter of 2026, while the company’s full advanced-node portfolio — defined by TSMC as 7nm and more advanced technologies — accounted for 74% of wafer revenue. Therefore, the hikes would span nearly three-quarters of the company’s wafer business.

The inclusion of 7nm is especially notable because the node is no longer TSMC’s flagship technology. However, it's not exactly surprising as 7nm remains heavily used across processors, accelerators, networking silicon, and other high-performance chips. Many products remain on older, more advanced nodes because they offer better cost, yield, and maturity than the newest processes, especially when a design does not require the density or efficiency gains of 3nm or 2nm.

The client notices follow weeks of public comments from TSMC executives suggesting that higher prices were at least under consideration. At the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Hsinchu on June 4, CEO C.C. Wei said customers remained positive on the AI demand outlook, while also acknowledging cost pressures and the widening gap between chip demand and available manufacturing capacity. CFO Wendell Huang also said earlier that TSMC did not rule out price increases as inflation, overseas expansion, and advanced manufacturing costs continue to rise.

The timing of the price increases reflects TSMC’s strong negotiating position. The company remains the dominant manufacturer of leading-edge logic chips, and its most advanced capacity is in high demand among AI accelerator vendors, smartphone chip designers, and custom ASIC developers. With customers competing for access to the same manufacturing lines, TSMC has more room to pass on rising costs than it would in a weaker cycle.

The move also comes as TSMC benefits from a surge in AI-related demand. In its first-quarter results, the company reported $35.9 billion in revenue and a 66.2% gross margin, both supported by strong demand for high-performance computing and advanced-node production. TSMC has also raised its 2026 revenue growth target to more than 30%, with capital spending expected to remain elevated as the company expands capacity in Taiwan, the U.S., Japan, and Germany. The company’s Arizona manufacturing capacity has been sold out through 2027 since early 2025.

The reported increases are still far smaller than the recent price spikes seen in the memory market, where AI-driven demand for HBM and other high-end memory products has allowed suppliers to push through much steeper increases. Conversely, TSMC does not need memory-style pricing to meaningfully improve its margins. Because advanced nodes account for most of its wafer revenue, even a mid-single-digit increase across that base could add billions of dollars in annual revenue if demand remains strong.

For chip designers, the immediate impact is a higher manufacturing bill. For consumers, the effect is less direct but still important. A 5% to 10% wafer price increase does not automatically translate into a 5% to 10% increase in the price of a GPU, CPU, smartphone, or laptop, since the wafer is only one part of the final product cost. However, when combined with higher memory prices, packaging constraints, AI demand, and rising manufacturing costs, it creates another reason for device makers and component vendors to raise prices or protect margins by cutting costs elsewhere.

We're keeping a close eye on deals that pop up, looking for any and all RAM bargains to be had and adding them to the constantly-updated list below. RAM is expensive right now, but the brutal fact is that it is only going to get more expensive in the months ahead. Inflation on prices is making it hard to find value in the memory market, but there are some deals you can still buy. You might be holding off for the market to stabilize, but signs indicate this problem is going to get worse in 2027, not better. You can also find good deals, often yielding the lowest overall RAM pricing, if you check our RAM bundle page. There, we list combo deals that involve buying multiple items, like a CPU, motherboard, and RAM together, that then yield lower overall pricing.

Because the RAM market is very volatile right now, these deals tend to move quickly, so it's a good idea to act sooner rather than later so you don't miss out on a great opportunity. We're updating this page constantly to keep the deals fresh, but you will have to act fast to snag the last deals on memory we will likely see for at least a year, if not longer.

We've put together a handpicked list of the best options to make your shopping easier. We carefully review offers from different retailers to find the best value for you, drawing on our extensive experience from thorough reviews, detailed benchmarks, and analysis of past prices. We keep a close eye on the latest RAM deals as they come up, highlighting the top choices we've found across various stores.

Top RAM Deals: Quick Links

• Amazon: Up to 18% off RAM at Amazon

Top RAM Deals

DDR5 RAM Deals

DDR4 RAM Deals

More Tech Deals

Best Tech and PC deals | Best gaming PC deals | Best RAM combo deals | Best 3D printer deals | Best RAM deals | Best gaming laptop deals | Best monitor deals | Best Wi-Fi Router deals | Best GPU deals | Best SSD deals | Best hard drive HDD deals | Best CPU deals | Best gaming chair deals | Best PC building tool deals | Best PC peripherals deals | Best filament and resin deals | Best motherboard deals | Best CPU cooler deals | Best PC case deals | Best Dell and Alienware deals | Best USB charger deals | Best gaming and productivity laptop deals under $1,000 | Best laptop PC deals

Also, you can join the Tom's Hardware deals Discord for up-to-the-minute hardware deals.

DDR2 contract prices rose 55% to 60% in the second quarter of the year and are projected to climb another 35% to 40% in the third, according to research published this week by TrendForce, pushing the AI-driven memory shortage onto a standard that first shipped in 2003 and that the three largest DRAM makers stopped prioritizing years ago. The increases come from buyers redesigning products around older memory to secure supply, and from a split among the handful of remaining DDR2 suppliers, with Winbond reducing output as ESMT expands it.

The shortage hasn’t hit DDR2 directly, but Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron have steered wafer capacity toward HBM and server DRAM to feed AI infrastructure spending, thinning the supply of mature-node parts, including DDR4. As DDR4 tightened, OEMs and ODMs began specifying DDR3 in its place, and some DDR3 designs were reworked to use DDR2, with each tier of buyers chasing whatever generation it could still source. The result of this is shortages moving down through successive generations, something we saw unfolding back in March, when earlier data showed DDR3 and DDR2 prices rising 20% to 40% in a single month.

This continues the market inversion we’ve watched unfold throughout the year, as DDR4 climbed past DDR5 on price despite being slower and older, and in which module makers and motherboard vendors restarted DDR4 production after the big three had moved to wind it down.

Winbond and ESMT are the two main remaining sources of DDR2 components, and they’re responding to the squeeze in different ways. Winbond is gradually cutting DDR2 production to shift capacity toward higher-margin DDR3, DDR4, and LPDDR4, while ESMT is doing the reverse, concentrating its wafer allocation at foundry partner PSMC on DDR2 to capture the demand Winbond is tossing aside. Taiwanese suppliers, including Nanya, are already struggling to match the volume of orders migrating down from DDR4, and because new capacity depends on slow process migration, Winbond's withdrawal removes supply faster than ESMT can replace it.

Of course, today’s PCs don’t use DDR2, so we’re likely to see the impact of these price increases landing in areas like embedded systems, networking equipment, industrial controllers, automotive electronics, and other long-lived devices that were designed around it and are too costly to requalify on newer memory generations like DDR4 and five.

The spread of rising contract prices to DDR2 suggests that we’re staring down the barrel of a very long-term DRAM shortage. Contract prices across the wider market are still rising with no sign of levelling off, and meaningful new capacity isn’t expected until late 2027 at the earliest as a best-case scenario.

Memory is expensive right now, and there's just no escaping how AI has significantly pushed prices up across the board. Unfortunately, 32GB of DDR5 RAM is now pushing $385 as of this month. This same, exact kit is usually even pricier, costing $439.99 on Amazon, when a year ago, it would have cost less than $100. Memory firms are already warning that costs are expected to go up further, too, with prices likely to double over the next year. With that in mind, this Corsair Vengeance 32GB DDR5 RAM is on sale at Woot for $339.99 right now, and it's the cheapest kit going. If you've decided to bite the bullet before things get worse, this is as good as it gets.

● Check out this deal on Woot

Without a DeLorean time machine, if you need to upgrade or build a new PC, you're going to pay more today than you did back in 2025 or 2024. That doesn't mean that this is a bad option, or make it bad RAM. In fact, the $339.99 price means that, as it stands, this is the cheapest 32GB DDR5-6000 RAM kit you can buy right now on its own. We've tested a slightly different spec of Corsair Vengeance RGB DDR5-6000 RAM in a review, too, and it scored well, offering great performance, with the same striking black colorway for a gaming build as you'll find here.

So, here we are. Necessity means that, if you need to buy memory, you're going to have to pay current market prices for it, and the best way to do that is to find RAM on sale, like it is here. As mentioned, industry figures are warning that RAM prices are expected to double by the end of the year, bearing in mind they've already increased by 4-500%. Newegg combo deals can sometimes offer better value, but they require you to purchase a number of components together to get the RAM at an effectively lower price, and we've seen the best of these deals dry up over the last few weeks, too. Our RAM price tracker will give you a clear indication of just how bad the market has been for buyers lately: you won't find a single option below its record low price floor, with plenty of the most popular models out of stock.

Back to this Corsair memory, then. You're getting a 32GB kit of Corsair Vengeance RAM, rated at 6,000 MT/s, with CAS latency and memory timings of 38-44-44-96. While it isn't the fastest DDR5 you can buy, this DDR5 kit is a big step up over older DDR4 modules, which would usually see speeds of around 3,600 MT/s at best. This is dual-channel memory, meaning your PC will be able to double the bandwidth between the RAM and CPU to boost frame rates and load times significantly when both modules are installed.

The RAM comes with a solid aluminum heat spreader to reduce high temperatures while you're gaming or working. That'll be useful if you decide to overclock it, as you can with this kit, with support for Intel XMP and AMD EXPO OC profiles when installed in supported motherboards. It has RGB lighting, too, which you can customize using Corsair's iCue app on your PC or laptop.

Nobody wants to pay more, but for now, cheap RAM just isn't an option. The next best alternative if you need to buy RAM for a PC is to buy it on sale, and the $339.99 sale price for this 32GB Corsair Vengeance RAM from Woot is the best you'll find right now. There's a pretty lengthy period for this deal to run for, but it could sell out fast, so keep that in mind if you decide to buy. If it does run out, your next, cheapest option is this Patriot kit for $384.99.

If you're looking for more savings, check out our Best PC Hardware deals for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals, Hard Drive Deals, Gaming Monitor Deals, Graphics Card Deals, Gaming Chair, Best Wi-Fi Routers, Best Motherboard, or CPU Deals pages.

While we're accustomed to having Samsung, Micron, or SK hynix chips in the best RAM on the market, it may not be long before we start seeing Chinese chips in mainstream memory kits. According to ITHome, many Chinese memory vendors have already defected to domestic producers such as CXMT (ChangXin Memory Technologies).

Chinese manufacturers such as CXMT, which produces chips for memory, and YMTC (Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp.), which manufactures NAND for storage, often enjoy heavy government backing and other subsidies. While there isn't an obligation per se, it's understood that domestic chipmakers contribute to China's technological self-sufficiency; therefore, profits somewhat take a back seat.

While foreign chipmakers, such as Samsung, Micron, and SK hynix, are maximizing profits of data centers and the AI boom, Chinese chipmakers prioritize supplying Chinese companies. To a certain extent, the supply and pricing of memory chips, or NAND, in China are relatively stable because it's shielded from the steep premium charged by the Big Three memory giants.

Nelson Duann, Silicon Motion's Senior Vice President, in a recent interview with Tom's Hardware, stated that "China is a different market. China has domestic NAND and DRAM makers, and their strategy is not the same as that of foreign memory suppliers. Because they receive government support, they also have a responsibility to help maintain the health of the local market."

Duann went on to say that "foreign suppliers generally follow the highest-return opportunities and can allocate most of their supply to data centers. Chinese suppliers cannot do that in the same way because the government can provide guidance and encourage them to support certain local industries."

Chinese memory brands Gloway and KingBank recently announced new DDR5 memory modules that highlight the usage of domestic 24Gb (3GB) memory chips. Using a standard eight-die configuration, these companies could produce 24GB memory modules and package them into dual- or quad-DIMM memory kits for 48GB or 96GB of capacity, respectively.

Chinese memory chips, particularly those from CXMT, have begun to spread outside China. Corsair has already implemented CXMT DDR5 in some memory kits from the brand's prestigious Vengeance lineup. Meanwhile, titans such as HP and Dell have begun qualifying CXMT memory kits for their products. Unfortunately, we haven't had the opportunity to review any memory kits with CXMT chips, so their performance and overclocking headroom remain to be seen.

Despite having just 10 years under its belt, CXMT has gradually become an influential player in the chipmaking game. Thanks to U.S. export controls that have effectively cut China off from acquiring advanced extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography tools, CXMT has made all its progress with trailing-edge deep ultraviolet (DUV) chipmaking tools. The company's 16nm (G4) node is its current flagship manufacturing process, which CMXT uses to produce DDR5 and LPDDR5X chips, or the same ones found in recent Corsair, Gloway, and KingBank memory kits. Whether the use of CXMT DRAM becomes more widespread as a result of the AI supply crunch remains to be seen.

Nvidia and SK hynix have inked a multi-year collaboration agreement under which the companies will co-develop next-generation memory technologies for Nvidia's upcoming platforms, and SK hynix will supply them to Nvidia. The deal is designed to ensure that Nvidia will get the memory it needs from a prominent supplier and will guarantee that SK hynix will be able to sell its output in a predictable manner.

The key part of the agreement is indeed the co-development of advanced memory products designed for Nvidia's future platforms. Currently, Nvidia uses HBM, LPDDR5X, DDR5, and 3D NAND memory in various systems, so going forward, SK hynix will develop its new memory with Nvidia in mind. The joint press release says nothing about customization of memory for Nvidia, and while we cannot exclude such a possibility, it looks like the companies will continue to co-develop industry-standard solutions, but will ensure that they are compatible with Nvidia's processors.

In addition, the agreement is intended to address the increasingly long lead times and massive capital expenditures required for the production of advanced types of memory. The two companies will coordinate roadmaps over multiple years. Nvidia will gain greater visibility into future memory availability, while SK hynix secures a guaranteed role in Nvidia's next-generation platforms (i.e., guaranteed demand).

The initial part of the cooperation covers memory destined for NVIDIA Vera Rubin AI systems (HBM4, LPDDR5X, 3D NAND), standalone Vera processors (LPDDR5X), RTX Spark-powered personal computers (LPDDR5X, 3D NAND), and Jetson Thor robotic computing systems (LPDDR5X, 3D NAND).

The deal also extends to semiconductor research and design. SK hynix is deploying Nvidia's CUDA-X libraries to speed up complex chip development workloads, such as technology computer-aided design (TCAD) and computational lithography (CuLitho). In addition, the memory maker is adopting Nvidia PhysicsNeMo to accelerate proprietary simulation software as well as AI-driven physics models used during semiconductor development. In addition, the companies see an opportunity to expand these capabilities into general electronic design automation (EDA) and simulation ecosystems and potentially create tighter relationships within the industry.

Last but not least, SK hynix is creating digital twins of its semiconductor fabs using Nvidia Omniverse and OpenUSD technologies. These virtual facilities enable engineers to model production lines, test changes, and optimize operations before making adjustments in real fabs. The company also plans to use Nvidia's cuOpt and Metropolis platforms to improve the movement of autonomous robots and other factory equipment. In the future, SK hynix aims to connect these digital twins with existing manufacturing software and AI systems and enable them to analyze fab data, automate routine tasks, and help make production decisions.

Lexar's Regional Manager for Australia & New Zealand, Chris Xia, said that he personally thinks RAM prices are expected to double by the end of the year. While there have been a few instances of RAM module prices stabilizing and even some retailers selling them for a discount or bundled with other PC parts, he said that this is just sellers making an effort to make their inventory move and make way for new stocks, which are expected to be priced higher.

The current AI build-out is siphoning all the memory chips available from the traditional big three suppliers — Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron — with nearly all production capacity getting allocated towards high-bandwidth memory. Consumers are getting left behind, and as supplies dry up, their prices continue to go up.

Sapphire PR manager Edward Crisler said last December 2025 that DRAM prices will begin to stabilize in the next six to eight months, albeit at higher prices. However, the situation seems to have changed, and industry insiders now expect prices to continue going up towards the end of the year. Xia said that industry costs take up to eight to nine months to affect consumer prices, and the current market pricing trend has only been going up.

Some consumers get hope when they see RAM kits getting discounts or retailers lowering the list prices of these items, but Chris said that these are often the result of sellers trying to get rid of old inventory. They do this so that they can get some liquidity back and to make way for new stocks coming in from suppliers, usually at a higher price. Another thing that adds to the confusion is that some distributors manage to get their hands on unsold inventory from other regions that are still priced lower compared to what’s arriving now. Because of this, they’re able to sell at a lower price — but only until supplies last. Once the old stock runs out, they will eventually be forced to increase retail prices as market forces catch up with the low supply and high demand. Xia recommends that if you need to buy RAM, you should buy it now. Don’t wait for lower prices as they won’t arrive for years to come.

The memory chip crisis is going beyond desktop computers and laptops, which are expected to see shipments contract by more than 10%. Motherboard sales have already collapsed by more than 25% as the increasing RAM and SSD prices are making enthusiasts think twice before building a new system. Smartphones are expected to either get more expensive or see lower and slower memory configurations, and even action camera manufacturer GoPro is in trouble due to memory chip shortages and lower sales.

AMD's EXPO Ultra Low Latency program, announced at Computex 2026, aims to give users a one-click route to lower memory latencies than its existing EXPO profiles, but the company's initial announcement was light on details. To learn more about EXPO ULL, I stopped by G.Skill's Computex booth, where the company demonstrated four new kits that offer EXPO ULL support.

Memory latency directly affects how long the CPU has to wait in order to get data back from RAM, and so it has a major impact on CPU performance. But even as new DDR standards and ever-faster DIMMs have boosted memory bandwidth, DDR latency has improved at a much slower pace over time.

For some very high-level background, when selecting memory, PC builders will generally consider a given memory kit's speed and its CAS latency (CL). If you compare two CL30 memory kits, for example, the one with the higher clock rate will have a lower effective latency in nanoseconds (because CL30 expresses a number of clock cycles).

Knowing this, your first instinct for reducing latency might be to seek the highest-clocked memory you can find with the lowest CAS latency (like DDR5-8400 or even faster modules).

But on modern AMD platforms, it's not that simple. Reaching memory speeds higher than 6000 MT/s generally requires the use of a 1:2 multiplier mode between the clock of the integrated memory controller (the UCLK), which generally tops out around 3000 MHz, and the memory clock (MCLK). This 1:2 multiplier adds latency, and so it can counterintuitively reduce performance even as memory speeds climb above 6000 MT/s. (Remember that DDR memory moves bits at twice the clock rate, hence MT/s).

With this 1:2 multiplier active, by the time additional memory clock speed even begins to bring latency back down to where it would generally be in the 1:1 mode, you're looking at wildly expensive and exotic memory kits, and so most enthusiasts running Ryzen 7000 and Ryzen 9000 CPUs consider it desirable to choose memory that lets them run the UCLK and MCLK in 1:1 lockstep for the best balance of low latency and (relatively) low cost.

All that is why using memory faster than 6000 MT/s on AMD platforms is generally counterproductive for gaming performance. That's why modules in the range of DDR5-6000 CL30 are widely regarded as the overclocking "sweet spot" for Ryzen 7000 and Ryzen 9000 CPUs.

But that doesn't mean there isn't further room for improvement, as the introduction of EXPO ULL suggests.

G.Skill told me that until now, DRAM module makers were only permitted to change the four primary timings within EXPO (and XMP) profiles, leaving performance on the table. EXPO ULL affords memory makers more freedom to adjust the sub-timings within each of those four primary timings for even lower latencies, and to include those results in the memory's SPD.

Tweaking memory sub-timings on Ryzen platforms using community-made tools to determine the best potential settings used to be a fairly common practice for those seeking the best performance from their AMD systems, but Ryzen X3D processors and their massive slices of 3D V-Cache reduced those CPUs' sensitivity to those finer adjustments. It's become much more common to just get a DDR5-6000 CL30 kit, enable EXPO, and call it good.

But if you are focused on achieving the absolute lowest memory latency, EXPO ULL removes the need to perform the (tedious and tricky) process of determining those improved sub-timings by allowing memory makers to shoulder that work and include it as part of the one-click boost that EXPO provides.

For all that, EXPO ULL doesn't change the fundamental performance characteristics of X3D versus non-X3D CPUs, so while you can certainly pair an X3D chip with an EXPO ULL kit, G.Skill tells me that you're not going to see as large of a difference in performance from that pairing as you would with a non-X3D chip. That's why AMD is touting the performance gains of EXPO ULL with a Ryzen 7 9700X and not the Ryzen 7 9850X3D you might expect.

G.Skill also told me that EXPO ULL-ready memory requires stricter binning of individual memory chips during production, so it isn't just a software change that can be applied to existing modules. The company says the extra work involved in this stricter binning process means that modules supporting the feature are likely to be more expensive than kits that haven't undergone the same characterization.

Overall, then, EXPO ULL is likely to be a premium (and somewhat niche) addition to the EXPO program instead of a broad replacement for non-ULL EXPO profiles. Demanding gamers who need the lowest memory latency for the best performance in CPU-bound gaming scenarios will likely want an EXPO ULL kit regardless of the type of Ryzen CPU they're using. But we'll have to see just how much extra cash these kits demand in today's already eye-watering memory market and what benefit they have, if any, for AMD's massively popular X3D chips.

A coalition of nine US trade associations has urged the Trump administration to take immediate action on what it describes as an emerging memory chip shortage driven by the explosive growth of AI data centers. In a June 3 letter sent to US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent shared with Tom's Hardware, the organizations — representing telecommunications providers, automakers, medical device manufacturers, and major retailers — warned that AI infrastructure deployments are consuming an outsized share of global memory production, creating supply constraints and price increases that could ripple across large segments of the US economy.

The coalition warned that the AI data center expansion, which has consumed an unprecedented share of global memory capacity, has led to a memory chip shortage that could lead to higher prices for consumer electronics, increased costs for broadband and telecommunications infrastructure, disruptions to automobile and medical device production, and delays affecting federal contractors attempting to fulfill government procurement obligations. The letter argues that these risks are emerging despite billions of dollars of US investment intended to strengthen domestic semiconductor supply chains.

The signatories acknowledged AI's importance but argue it shouldn't come at the expense of the rest of the economy. "While recent developments in AI offer the promise of generational technological advances and are important for US tech leadership, we must also ensure other key industries are not negatively impacted by this disruption in the marketplace," the coalition said.

The organizations are asking the administration to work directly with memory suppliers and major chip buyers to address the imbalance. Their recommendations include accelerating expansion of memory manufacturing capacity in the United States and allied nations, using trade agreements to strengthen supply-chain resilience, ensuring adequate memory supply for non-AI industries, leveraging CHIPS Act programs where possible, and reducing regulatory barriers that may slow capacity growth.

"We urge the Administration to work with memory chipmakers and chip buyers to assess steps that can be taken to address this imbalance in the memory market and protect against harm to consumers, workers, and businesses of all sizes," the letter states.

The warning arrives as memory manufacturers increasingly prioritize high-bandwidth memory (HBM), the specialized memory used in AI accelerators from companies such as Nvidia and AMD. Demand for HBM has surged over the past two years as hyperscalers race to deploy larger AI clusters, prompting memory suppliers to devote an increasing share of their production capacity to AI-oriented products.

Samsung and SK Hynix — which together with Micron control over 95% of global DRAM production — have been diverting wafer capacity toward high-margin HBM for AI accelerators, starving the commodity DRAM and NAND markets in the process. Both companies warned in April that significant shortages will continue through at least 2027. IDC, meanwhile, has already revised its 2026 PC market forecast downward by up to 9% as a direct consequence of memory scarcity and rising prices.

Industry analysts have repeatedly warned for months that AI demand is reshaping the economics of the memory market. While memory shortages have historically been cyclical, the coalition argues that AI infrastructure spending is creating a structural shift large enough to affect industries far removed from data centers. The letter marks the first coordinated, multi-industry push for federal intervention. Whether the administration will respond — and how — remains to be seen.

The PC industry is bracing for a slip back to DDR4 memory among enthusiasts. Tom’s Hardware has learned at Computex 2026 that both motherboard brands and many module houses — the companies that produce the DIMMs you can buy — are shifting their strategy toward a resurgence in DDR4 platforms as unprecedented memory shortages and price increases continue to raise the entry point into building a PC. Those pain points are particularly acute with DDR5 memory.

We confirmed with over half a dozen sources: motherboard manufacturers and module houses are seeing an increase in demand for DDR4 platforms and shifting production accordingly. This could create challenges, however, as high-performance DDR4 dies, such as the famous Samsung B-dies, are no longer in production. As such, most of the revamped DDR4 kits will top out at a rather pedestrian DDR4-3600.

On the motherboard side of things, at least two vendors confirmed to Tom’s Hardware that they are ramping production of DDR4-supporting motherboards for the second half of the year and into 2027, which makes sense, given that motherboard sales have seen a “collapse” this year, with sales declining by as much as 37% with some vendors. Others have confirmed that they plan to either refresh or re-release DDR4-supporting options later in the year. Many of these products had been in end-of-life (EOL) status, so production lines had long ago shifted to other products. Now new manufacturing capacity will be dedicated to restoring those product families.

This comes as demand for DDR4 platforms has increased. One motherboard brand cited a double-digit increase in sales over the last quarter, which Tom’s Hardware was unable to corroborate, while others simply said the demand has increased significantly.

AMD and Intel have geared up for a shift back to DDR4, as well. AMD launched the Ryzen 7 5800X3D 10th Anniversary Edition at Computex, which the company says it will continue to sell as long as it makes sense; in other words, it’s not a limited edition run. AMD has also shifted the hybrid bonding process of the 5800X3D, setting it up for a more long-term production run. It joins AMD’s Zen 3 XT chips, which it released in 2024 and continues to sell.

Intel continues to sell its Raptor Lake and Raptor Lake Refresh CPUs, as well, and the company told Tom’s Hardware it “will continue to make sure that there are products which can take care of older memory technologies.” One motherboard vendor said it was specifically ramping production of LGA 1700 motherboards with DDR4 support, as options have slowly dried up in the market.

Although there is already DDR4 in the market, it’s also easier to produce, which would help elevate some of the bottlenecks in the current memory supply chain. One of the key shortages right now is advanced packaging, which DDR5 requires with an integrated PMIC. DDR4, by comparison, is much simpler to package and sell, which should help keep prices from climbing into the DDR5 range.

The major chokepoint for DDR4 is wafer allocation, which is a bottleneck that one memory manufacturer (not a module house) pointed to as a potential issue with a shift back to DDR4 platforms. Wafer allocation is a broader bottleneck within the PC industry, however, with Intel even shifting allocation toward the data center as an unprecedented demand for data center CPUs takes hold.

Unfortunately, there appears to be no end in sight. If there’s one thing that nearly all of our sources agreed on, it is that DRAM and NAND shortages will continue throughout all of 2027.

TeamGroup showed Tom's Hardware a new external SSD with a remote “self-destruct” function at Computex 2026. The T-Create Expert P35SG External SSD offers a “wireless one-click data destruction” function, letting you wipe the contents of the storage device remotely with a single text message.

The drive is connected wirelessly via 4G LTE to ensure that the user can still reach it even when not connected to Wi-Fi or to another device. Once it receives the wipe command, it triggers a “deep-level logical wipe” of the drive and then executes a high-voltage “physical hardware breakdown” to ensure that its contents are unrecoverable. This new drive arrived on the show floor nearly a year after TeamGroup revealed the P250Q-M80 M.2 SSD that had a similar physical self-destruct function.

Aside from this wireless high-security external drive, the company also unveiled the T-Create Expert P35S, which offers the same “self-destruct” function, but through a physical button right on the drive. There’s also the P33 External SSD, which includes an e-Paper display that can show important information like available storage capacity, drive health, drive name, and other information. This lets you see what a particular USB drive contains without needing to plug it into a device or place an external label on it.

There’s also the T-Create Expert AI 4R CUDIMM — this quad-rank CUDIMM packs in two rows of DRAM chips on both sides, giving a single RAM stick 128GB capacity. The sample DDR5 RAM was installed on an MSI MEG Z890 Unify-X that offers two RAM slots, giving it a total capacity of 256GB. We’ve seen other vendors like Origin Code bring 4R CUDIMMs to market, too, and this high-capacity RAM, which could potentially go as high as 256GB per stick, is quite useful for AI developers and enthusiasts who need the massive amounts of memory for AI agents.

Gamers gets goodies from T-Force too

Aside from the professional and creator-focused T-Create product line, TeamGroup also introduced new RAM kits, SSDs, and associated accessories from T-Force. The most interesting new device is the T-Force Liquid II SSD cooler, which brings liquid cooling to SSDs. This cooling solution is designed to sit on an exposed SSD and uses aluminum alloy heatsink fins, a micro cooling fan, and a liquid coolant (available in multiple colors) to help keep your high-performance storage drive cool. The coolant itself is designed to last five years and could be topped up as necessary.

There’s also the T-Force DARK RGB desktop memory kits, which are designed for low-profile builds with a maximum height of just 42mm. Despite its lower height, this RAM kit still features 6400 MT/s speed and a full RGB light strip. It’s also available in various capacities up to 64GB, making it an ideal solution for enthusiasts looking for an SFF build.

And, in celebration of 10 years of T-Force, TeamGroup also released several carbon-fiber-themed products. These include the T-Force Delta RGB DDR5, T-Force Xtreem DDR5, T-Force Z54E M.2 PCIe 5.0 SSD, M400 RGB External SSD, and the T-Force Vulcan and Delta LPCAMM2 DDR5 memory.

We expect these products to drop in the coming weeks and months, although we weren't able to confirm exact availability dates. Nonetheless, we can't wait to get our hands on some of these new solutions and see how they match up against the best RAM and SSDs we have available at the moment.

Representatives told Tom's Hardware at Computex 2026 that counterfeit memory modules with G.Skill and V-Color badges have hit various marketplaces in China, and the problem is widespread enough that V-Color has observed lower sales to certain clients. Fake memory modules are nothing new, but in this case, forged DIMMs reportedly use printed circuit boards (PCBs) that are identical to those used by G.Skill and V-Color, which makes early detection of counterfeit products difficult.

“We have customers telling us that some Chinese manufacturers are making copies of our products, as well as products from other brands, and selling them at lower prices than we do,” a spokesperson for V-Color told Tom’s Hardware. “We do not really know how they are doing it. The PCB looks the same, even the heat spreader looks identical.”

Given the current situation with memory prices, counterfeit memory modules have become a growing problem in Asian online marketplaces, particularly in gray-market and second-hand channels. Recent reports described fake DDR5 modules containing dummy ‘chips’ made of plastic or fiberglass with fake markings, as well as mislabeled modules marked as products from well-known brands. However, the new case is different because forged memory modules use PCBs that are identical to those used by G.Skill and V-Color and use the same heat spreaders and perhaps complex RGB lighting, making distinguishing between real and counterfeit products particularly difficult.

While developing a PCB for an enthusiast-class memory module takes time and money, producing that PCB is fairly easy, as makers of DIMMs use neither complex PCBs nor too complex equipment. Also, developing enthusiast-grade memory modules (ensuring that they run at the right specifications with popular CPUs) also takes time and money. In addition, sourcing chips from DRAM makers or distributors to make fake memory modules is hard, if even possible at all today. Finally, quality control at the chip level and at the module level is relatively costly, and these two are the main value adders when it comes to enthusiast-grade memory. That said, forging high-end memory modules is easy and might be a profitable business, especially if perpetrators have access to second-hand memory chips. Speaking of chips, the V-Color representative could not say which ICs the fake modules used.

“We do not know because we have not had any of those modules in our hands,” the spokesman said. “We only use SK hynix memory, so we cannot say what chips they are using. We have not received any RMAs related to them. Other brands may have received returns and been able to inspect the products, perhaps because the memory chips were different.”

While a representative for G.Skill confirmed that there are counterfeit G.Skill memory modules sold on Chinese marketplaces, he said that the issue has existed forever, so users should buy their high-end DIMMs from official partners and resellers in a bid to avoid the problem.

As the demands of AI continue to consume manufacturing capacity at every level of the PC hardware supply chain, 32GB of DDR5 RAM — broadly understood to be the sweet spot for gaming PCs and enthusiast builds — can no longer be found for less than $375. Well, $374.97 to be precise.

RAM price tracking through 2026 will show you that kits that routinely cost less than $100 just a year ago are now fetching upwards of $240 (16GB). As the AI frenzy has taken hold, retailers far and wide have been pumping up their RAM prices to exorbitant levels. However, there's so much fluctuation and noise that average pricing is now something of a ludicrous fugazi. The going rate for 32GB of DDR5 RAM — the cheapest you can expect to pay — has hovered around $320 for some time, climbing past $350 in recent weeks. Price tracking courtesy of PCPartPicker now reveals the cheapest 32GB DDR5 RAM you can buy is $375. Specifically, four XPOWER kits from Silicon Power will set you back $374.97 thanks to a promo code. You can see the listings yourself below.

• Silicon Power Zenith Gaming DDR5 6000MT/s (PC5-48000) CL36 32GB(2x16GB)
• Silicon Power Zenith RGB DDR5 6000MT/s (PC5-48000) CL36 32GB(2x16GB)
• Silicon Power Pulse Gaming DDR5 6000MT/s (PC5-48000) CL36 32GB(2x16GB)
• Silicon Power Zenith RGB DDR5 6000MT/s (PC5-48000) CL36 32GB(2x16GB)

As you can imagine, this is enormous pricing pressure for enthusiasts trying to build gaming PCs or upgrade their rigs in 2026. A component that once cost less than $100 and was something of an afterthought now costs almost four times as much, and that's before you've even fired a neuron in consideration of aesthetics, timings, or brand. More popular kits from the likes of Corsair and Crucial, or RGB offerings to match the rest of your build, will easily set you back more than $400.

Of course, 32GB is really the minimum sweet spot you should be aiming for when building a PC in 2026. If you did want more capacity, 64GB will set you back an astonishing $679.99. 16GB of RAM as a compromise can be found for $200 at B&H Photo, but with SK hynix warning that manufacturing constraints will persist through 2030, there's no sign of prices letting up so that you can upgrade capacity any time soon.

The humble RAM combo deals we've been highlighting in recent months are a small source of solace for builders, letting you score RAM for less than the $375 going rate if you pair it with a decent motherboard, a processor, or even an entire set of PC components. A theme of ongoing Computex 2026 announcements remains a lack of pricing clarity on lots of PC hardware, including Nvidia's RTX Spark laptops and PCs, as well as new-build systems and, of course, RAM components themselves. Vendors are likely wary of scaring off potential buyers with higher-than-expected prices ahead of release. Perhaps more likely, the prices haven't been set because they're still going up. Storage isn't much better, with SSD price tracking revealing that drives which once cost as little as $38 are now fetching $200.

AMD is making a noticeable effort to keep PC gaming prices down, this week announcing the return of its Ryzen 7 5800X3D, and the advent of a new Ryzen 7 7700X3D. Intel, which warned this week that "something has to give" when it comes to memory prices, also teased dragging out some of its legacy products to give users more options on older memory technologies, namely Raptor Lake and DDR4.

GoPro, the creator of the modern action camera, warned in a regulatory filing on June 1 that it faces “substantial doubt about the company’s ability to continue.” According to Digital Camera World, the news report comes as the camera manufacturer is pummeled on both sides by declining sales and increasing costs, particularly memory chips driven by a global AI shortage.

These action cameras do not have internal memory, meaning buyers must purchase their own microSD cards. So, even though these have skyrocketed in price, the only direct impact they would have on the company would be reduced sales because buyers are balking at the thought of buying a separate storage card. On the other hand, even though camera specifications do not list them, these cameras' processors require RAM.

GoPro, as a niche action camera maker, isn’t in a good position as smartphones have become better at photography and videography. Furthermore, it has faced stiff competition from the likes of DJI and Insta360, which also offer products such as drones and gimbals. While the FCC has banned the former from the U.S. market, the latter is still widely available.

The action camera company suffered a net loss of $432.3 million in 2024, while it managed to shrink this to $93.5 million last year. Unfortunately, GoPro saw reduced sales in April and May this year. When you pair that with the memory chip crisis, which has driven up RAM prices and made supply harder to find, it seems that GoPro is in real trouble.

This filing does not mean the company is in deep trouble just yet, but it publicly signals that it needs to address its situation — otherwise, it could lead to a complete disaster. “Without obtaining additional sources of financing or consummating a strategic transaction, the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern would be materially and adversely impacted,” GoPro said in its regulatory filing. “The Company may be required to significantly reduce, restructure, cease operations, or seek protection under the Federal bankruptcy laws, although no specific plans to file for bankruptcy protection have been initiated or considered.”

Since GoPro is a publicly traded company, it’s required by law to make notifications like this. Still, it does not mean the company cannot turn itself around before it runs out of cash. We’ve seen a few firms turn themselves around before they had to declare bankruptcy. However, because GoPro is focused on such a niche product, vagaries in the direction of its only market will have an outsized impact on its sales and revenue.

AMD announced EXPO Ultra Low Latency at Computex 2026, but provided very few details about what it is or how it works. The company claims it provides a 13% average uplift compared to JEDEC standards, and a 4% uplift compared to standard EXPO, and that’s it’s coming from leading memory partners. Now, AMD’s David McAfee, VP and general manager of Ryzen and Radeon, has given Tom’s Hardware a bit more color on what exactly EXPO ULL is and how it will roll out.

“Expo has evolved, and we've been working with all of the module vendors. We've seen an opportunity with adding more sub timings to the SPD profile, and just getting a little bit lower latency,” McAfee told Tom’s Hardware.

Beyond what EXPO ULL is doing, AMD says that it will work with existing chipsets and motherboards, but McAfee clarified that he wasn’t sure if it would require a BIOS update (that seems likely). Regardless, McAfee said: “My advice to all of your readers and viewers is: update your bios.”

EXPO ULL kits will come with different branding on them, including a new badge, so “it’ll be noticeable that these kits are different.” McAfee also says that, although AMD doesn’t control memory or module prices, “[AMD’s] understanding from the partners is [that] they expect to bring these in at effectively the same price points that the current kits are at.”

Those price points, at the moment, are inflated due to ongoing memory shortages. But McAfee isn’t being coy here about pricing. The executive says ULL is “simply about extending the sub-timings and really getting every little bit of OC performance out of those DIMMs,” so there’s nothing specifically about ULL that would cause the DIMMs to be radically more expensive.

Across a test suite of 30 games with the Ryzen 7 9700X, AMD says ULL delivered a 4% uplift compared to standard EXPO, with both running at DDR5-6000, and a 13% uplift compared to JEDEC-standard DDR5-5600. 1% lows, as expected, see more of an improvement, with a 15% uplift compared to JEDEC and the same 4% compared to standard EXPO.

AMD says that EXPO ULL is “coming soon,” but it hasn’t said anything beyond that for a release window. Regardless, it already has partners lined up to support the feature, including G.Skill, Kingston, Lexar, XPG, and TeamGroup.

This week at Computex 2026, we saw Nvidia reveal its RTX Spark, and last month, AMD detailed its Ryzen AI Max 400 "Gorgon Halo" lineup, a refresh of the Strix Halo APUs that lifts supported unified memory to 192GB and allows up to 160GB of that pool to be addressed as VRAM. AMD describes the flagship Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 495 as the first x86 client processor able to run a 300-billion-parameter language model locally, pitching the platform for use cases that need to keep multiple AI agents resident in memory at once.

The market for Gorgon Halo will likely be directly shared with other chips, such as Nvidia's RTX Spark, which debuted at Computex 2026. RTX Spark is also positioned as an on-device agentic computing device. With local AI computing demanding lots of on-device RAM, it poses a difficult issue for device vendors.

DRAM contract prices are forecast to climb another 58% to 63% this quarter, on top of the record 90% to 95% jump TrendForce recorded in Q1, which also saw Nvidia raise the price of its DGX Spark desktop from $3,999 to $4,699, citing memory supply. So, what happens to the dream of accessible local AI compute?

DRAM supply squeeze

The local AI PC has become a category defined by how much memory it carries, and it’s scaling that memory up at a time when memory has never cost more. AMD's three Gorgon Halo SKUs reuse the same Zen 5 cores, RDNA 3.5 graphics, and XDNA 2 NPU as the existing Ryzen AI Max 300 parts, with the Max+ PRO 495 gaining a 100 MHz boost-clock bump to 5.2 GHz, a 40-compute-unit Radeon 8065S, and a 55 TOPS NPU.

Memory capacity has been increased 50% from the 128GB ceiling on Strix Halo, with a leaked PassMark entry putting the 192GB figure as eight 24GB SK hynix LPDDR5X packages on an HP test board, though AMD hasn’t yet confirmed this. Partner systems from Asus, HP, and Lenovo are due in the third quarter of 2026.

It’s all well and good that Nvidia and AMD are releasing machines like the RTX Spark and the Gorgon Halo line-up. However, Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron have all shifted the bulk of their wafer capacity toward high-bandwidth memory for AI accelerators because HBM carries far higher margins than commodity DRAM, and the conventional memory supply has tightened as a direct result of this. HP told investors in February that memory now accounts for roughly 35% of the cost of building a PC, up from 15% to 18% a quarter earlier.

SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won, speaking at Computex 2026 on the show’s official opening day, repeated his position that the shortage will run through 2030, despite the company's intention to double wafer capacity within the next five years. New fabs from all three makers are under construction, but none will reach volume production before late 2027 at the earliest, and most forecasts now predict a structurally higher price floor that persists even after the acute shortage eases.

The 192GB in a Gorgon Halo box, the 128GB in an RTX Spark or DGX Spark, and the LPDDR5X soldered into every AI laptop announced at Computex all come off wafers the memory makers would otherwise sell as HBM. That’s why Nvidia raised the DGX Spark by $700 in February without changing a single spec, and why component makers have begun passing memory costs through directly. One vendor has even taken an extremely on-the-nose approach of adding a flat memory surcharge to every purchase, and in some cases, smaller buyers are now quoted prices that change by the hour.

Bandwidth caps inference speed

A single pool of 192GB would enable an APU to hold a model that would otherwise require a multi-GPU server. While it doesn’t make the model run quickly, dense language model inference reads close to the full set of active weights from memory for every token generated, so generation speed is governed by memory bandwidth divided by the per-token weight footprint, not by idle memory.

Gorgon Halo keeps the same 256-bit LPDDR5X-8000 interface as Strix Halo, which tops out around 256 GB/s in theory and which independent testers have measured closer to 212 GB/s on the GPU. By comparison, the Apple M3 Ultra that AMD and Nvidia are chasing on capacity is rated at 819 GB/s, and an RTX 5090 moves data at 1,792 GB/s.

This gap explains why a dense 70-billion-parameter model fully resident on a Strix Halo iGPU lands in the low single digits of tokens per second, regardless of how much headroom the memory pool has. Our own Corsair AI Workstation 300 review found that Nvidia's slightly higher-bandwidth GB10 pulled ahead of Strix Halo as context length grew, for exactly this reason.

Capacity matters most for mixture-of-experts models, which activate only a fraction of their parameters per token and run far faster than their total size suggests, and for long-context agentic workloads, where it’s KVcache rather than model weights that consume memory. It’s these use cases that AMD’s agentic pitch points at, with leaked details on the next-gen Medusa Halo parts showing a move to LPDDR6 and as much as 80% more bandwidth.

Holding the line on price

Agentic AI is also something of a pricing tool for vendors, beyond describing a workload. A 192GB workstation sold on the promise of running 300-billion-parameter models locally can hold a four-figure price more comfortably than a mini PC sold on cores and clocks, and it justifies loading the most expensive component in the build to its maximum. AMD's Ryzen AI Halo developer box, a 128GB Strix Halo system, opens pre-orders in June at $3,999 through Micro Center, matching the launch price of Acer's GB10-based Veriton GN100 and the original DGX Spark before its increase.

Apple, the one vendor with the scale to hold priority memory allocation, has moved the other way. It pulled the 512GB Mac Studio configuration from sale, raised the price of its 256GB upgrade, and in May removed several more high-memory Mac mini and Mac Studio options as supply tightened.

This shows us beyond doubt that expanding capacity while holding the line on premium pricing is a choice the AMD and Nvidia camps are making, not one that the market is forcing. Whether buyers accept it rests on whether local agentic inference delivers enough value over cloud services to justify the outlay, on machines shipping with memory capacities that outpace the bandwidth that ultimately determines what that memory can do.

SK hynix will double its memory wafer capacity within five years, SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won told reporters at Computex in Taipei on June 2nd, while repeating his forecast that the AI-driven shortage gripping the memory market will run until 2030. As reported by Bloomberg, Chey declined to put an exact dollar figure on the expansion, saying instead that the company's 2026 spending would climb well above the 30.2 trillion won (roughly $20 billion) it spent in 2025, and confirmed SK hynix has filed to list American depositary receipts in New York this year.

On its own timeline, the pledge will do little to shorten the squeeze. Chey put the lead time for a greenfield fab at more than five years, placing fresh output near the tail end of the shortage window that he’s predicting. This new stance is also a significant departure from his March comments at Nvidia’s GTC conference, where he said a new fab wasn’t planned and that capacity couldn’t be added on demand.

Chey also said the cost of the buildout is difficult to pin down because prices for land, equipment, and electricity keep moving, which is likely why no figure accompanied the announcement. With the company's existing lines already saturated, customers have offered to buy SK hynix's EUV scanners and prefund fab lines as available capacity has fallen to near zero. "Until 2030, there's still some shortage," Chey told reporters

Ultimately, it’s HBM that’s driving the massive gap between wafer supply and demand. HBM consumes far more wafers per bit than standard DRAM and carries the industry's highest margins, so capacity keeps tilting toward them. SK hynix holds about 57% of the HBM market and 32% of global DRAM, and Chey has said he wants the company to become a major HBM supplier for Nvidia's Vera Rubin platform and is seeking more manufacturing partnerships in Taiwan beyond TSMC.

But buyers aren’t waiting on new fabs for relief. TrendForce projected DRAM contract prices to rise 63% in the second quarter after climbing roughly 95% in the first, and DDR4 spot pricing ran up around 2,200% over 12 months before a recent decline. Even with capacity doubling, outlooks across the next five years are unchanged, and the market is likely to stay tight for the rest of the decade as things currently stand with AI demand.

Thousands of SK hynix employees fled their factory stations earlier today as a fire broke out in a room where fluorine gas was used. Yonhap News reports that seven of the workers have been hospitalized, five are being treated for eye irritation, and two are under observation (machine translation). At the time of writing, a cleanup operation appears to be continuing at SK hynix’s Cheongju 4th campus, with all 3,600 employees evacuated. A company official told Yonhap, “There are no issues with equipment operation, so there will be no production disruption.”

Reports indicate that the fire began at around 10.23 am Korean time today. An unintentional fire is probably not a great thing anywhere in an advanced semiconductor fab, even in the burgers and cigars wing. However, in “the gas room on the 6th floor connecting the M15 and M15X factories at SK Hynix's Cheongju 4th campus,” it could have been a particularly nasty incident. This room includes equipment/canisters/pipelines holding highly toxic fluorine gas.

According to the Korean news source, the fire in the gas room was extinguished immediately by sprinklers, but fluorine escaped into the room at a concentration estimated to be 5 ppm. This is where the seven hospitalized workers had been situated.

Fluorine gas is used in various industrial processes, but it is a highly reactive gas that can cause spontaneous combustion or explosions if it comes into contact with common materials. It is also quite deadly to humans. Wikipedia states that “significant irritation of the eyes and respiratory system as well as liver and kidney damage occur above 25 ppm… The eyes and nose are seriously damaged at 100 ppm… and inhalation of 1,000 ppm fluorine will cause death in minutes.”

Official insists there will be “no production disruption”

With the immense demand and pressure on memory-making titans like SK hynix, some may be concerned that a facility like Cheongju closing even for a few hours could impact supplies, schedules, pricing, and more. However, an official insisted, “There are no issues with equipment operation, so there will be no production disruption.” It was also suggested that the fire/leak occurred in the gas pipeline, but that fact had yet to be determined.

At the time of writing, there may still be environmental purification and repair work to do. If and when that’s completed, operatives will begin safety inspections, including air quality measurements. After the all-clear, “we plan to return the employees,” the official told Yonhap. We’ve linked to the latest report on this incident available at the source.

Origin Code, one of the newest players in the memory market, has unveiled the brand's quad-rank (4R) CUDIMM memory kits to compete directly with the best RAM. Unveiled at Computex 2026, with DDR5 memory modules up to 128GB each, achieving up to 256GB (2x128GB) on a dual-DIMM motherboard has become a reality for the mass market.

Quad-rank memory has existed for a while, though it has largely been available in the enterprise and server domains. It has played a significant role in enabling high-capacity memory modules. However, it wasn't until very recently that the technology reached the mainstream market. Consumer memory modules normally feature a single- or dual-rank design.

In other words, memory modules either have a single set of memory chips (single-rank) or two sets (dual-rank). Quad-rank memory, on the other hand, comes with four sets of memory chips. As a result, memory manufacturers can fit more memory chips on a single memory module, increasing its density. DDR5 already enabled a single 64GB memory module, and now quad-rank DDR5 has upped it to 128GB, a twofold increase. It wouldn't surprise us if the capacity eventually reaches 256GB.

Origin Code showcased a standard 4R CUDIMM memory kit on a Gigabyte Z890 Aorus Elite Duo X with a Core Ultra 7 270K Plus processor. The 256GB (2x128GB) DDR5-8000 memory kit had relaxed 64-63-63-128 memory timings, which is entirely expected given that the modules run at 1.1V DRAM voltage. Notably, Origin Code has a flagship version that's geared toward enthusiasts and professionals who demand the absolute best in performance. The premium DDR5-8000 memory has much tighter memory timings, 42-57-57-108, but requires 1.4V.

The emergence of consumer quad-rank DDR5 memory kits isn't a coincidence but the result of the introduction of CUDIMMs, memory modules equipped with a client clock driver (CKD). Just as the CKD enables memory modules to reach very high frequencies, the chip also enhances the stability of quad-rank memory, which uses four banks of memory chips. Running a large amount of memory puts excessive stress on a processor, which is why quad-rank memory didn't exist before for everyday users until the arrival of CUDIMMs.

Origin Code won’t be the only memory vendor to offer quad-rank CUDIMM memory kits. For instance, Adata had already partnered with MSI to demonstrate quad-rank CUDIMM functionality several months ago, showcasing modules running at DDR5-5600 speeds. It’s reasonable to expect that additional brands will soon jump on the quad-rank CUDIMM bandwagon.

So far, demonstrations from Origin Code with Gigabyte and Adata with MSI all share one common factor: Intel's Z890 platform. It is reasonable to speculate that quad-rank CUDIMMs will likely not work on AMD's current platform since it hasn't fully embraced CUDIMMs. The chipmaker has confirmed that the AM5 socket supports CUDIMMs, but never said when the feature will arrive. However, the current speculation is that full CUDIMM support could arrive with Zen 6.

However, the biggest challenge quad-rank CUDIMM memory kits and consumers face is the persistent global memory shortage. Memory prices have already skyrocketed, and there appears to be no end in sight. That alone is enough to kill any momentum that quad-rank CUDIMMs can generate.

AMD is bringing a new automatic memory overclocking feature out, dubbed EXPO Ultra Low Latency (ULL). The new tool promises a 13% uplift in average performance across over 30 games compared to JEDEC standard speeds for DDR5, as well as a 4% uplift compared to standard EXPO, at least according to AMD’s internal benchmarks. The company hasn’t said when ULL will be available, but it has several memory partners lined up to support the feature.

We don’t know much about how EXPO ULL works, and more specifically, where AMD is finding improvements compared to standard EXPO. Despite that, AMD shared some broad benchmarks looking at EXPO ULL performance on a Ryzen 7 9700X CPU in over 30 games. AMD didn’t share resolution (presumably 1080p) or settings details for the titles, outside of the fact that they were tuned for “best performance.” You can see the full configuration in the gallery below.

Compared to JEDEC-standard DDR5-5600 CL46, AMD shows EXPO running at DDR5-6000 running 9% faster, and DDR5-6000 CL30 with EXPO ULL running 13% faster. Looking at 1% lows, AMD claims a performance improvement for EXPO and EXPO ULL of 11% and 15%, respectively. AMD didn’t clarify the CAS Latency of the standard EXPO memory, but it notes that it tested at CL28, CL30, and CL36 for both EXPO and EXPO ULL.

AMD simply says that EXPO ULL is “coming soon” from major memory partners, including G.Skill, Kingston, Klevv, Lexar, Origin Code, TeamGroup, V-Color, and XPG.

There are still several lingering questions about ULL, which we hope to learn more about on the ground at Computex 2026. Presumably, ULL isn’t a feature that’s being backported to older EXPO DIMMs, but rather a new standard moving forward. AMD hasn’t confirmed that’s the case, however.

We also don’t know what ULL is actually doing to find 4% extra performance compared to standard EXPO. Given the wide swath of games and CAS Latency settings AMD tested at, there’s a good chance ULL won’t show a benefit in all games. We should see better uplifts in smoothness, however, as evidenced by AMD’s 1% low results.

Tom’s Hardware is on the ground in Taipei for Computex, where we’ll be meeting with AMD to learn more about EXPO ULL, along with the newly-announced Ryzen 7 7700X3D and reintroduced Ryzen 7 5800X3D.

If you thought DDR5 was already too expensive right now, Cooler Master and G.Skill have a surprise in store for you. The two manufacturers are partnering up to make "MasterDIMM" — a new line of DDR5 memory kits that come with active cooling and a promise of temperatures that are up to 15 degrees cooler than conventional RAM. These sticks feature a thick heatsink with a fan built-in to emulate a blower-style cooler you see in some GPUs. There are no pricing or availability details yet, but it's not hard to imagine these kits, made for "demanding next-gen systems," will be even pricier than regular DDR5.

MasterDIMM will be properly shown off at Computex 2026 in just a few days, so expect more information then. For now, we know that these are high-end UDIMMs (desktop) that will push the envelope for DDR5 RAM in terms of style. The design of these sticks is very classy, sporting a black and gold aesthetic with part of the copper heatsink visible on the front, along with the fan on the other end. Naturally, they're a little larger than regular DIMM's, so motherboard compatibility remains to be seen.

There are two RGB strips running along the top, also flanked by gold accents, and the whole thing looks oddly similar to a fancy M.2 SSD. The RAM itself is made by G.Skill, while the heatsink is designed by Cooler Master. MasterDIMM will offer speeds up to 6,000 MT/s at CL26 latency with AMD EXPO, or up to 8.400 MT/s on Intel platforms via XMP 3.0. Capacities will scale up to 128GB at the top-end through 64GBx2 configs.

The companies claim the fan inside is whisper-quiet, delivering optimal cooling at just 35 decibels. That's the same noise level as a library. The heatsink and fan combo can drop temperatures by up to 15 degrees Celsius, which would be a remarkable improvement if proven true in testing. Keep in mind that DDR5 RAM, in general, is already rated for operation at up to 95°C, but it stays between 70-80°C in most cases.

Now, this is not the first time someone has put a massive cooler, or even two fans, on some RAM, but it's the most mainstream version of such a combination yet. Both G.Skill and Cooler Master are huge names in the PC hardware industry, so it'll be interesting to see how well this product does. Of course, that depends on pricing, and DDR5 prices are still out of control despite some semblance of the AI boom slowing down as of late.

More than a decade ago, Corsair tried to actively cool memory with its Vengeance Airflow modules, and vendors have tried to fit their DIMMs with creative heatsinks forever. Last year, we even tested a Silverstone AIO that could attach optional fans to itself to cool your memory and SSD.

In late 2024, China-based ChangXing Memory Technologies (CXMT) began producing DDR5 modules aimed at the consumer market. Since then, the company has even laid out a roadmap that currently puts its max DDR5 capabilities at 8,000 MT/s across 16 Gb and 24 Gb densities. Fast forward to today, and we're finally seeing Chinese DRAM in a mainstream product, more specifically, a Corsair Vengeance DDR5 16GB stick purchased in China by @wxnod, running at 6,000 MT/s with CL36 speeds.

We can see the "CMK5X16G3E60C36A2-CN" part number, where "CN" denotes it's a China-exclusive kit. It's still certified for both Intel XMP and AMD EXPO (since it runs beyond JEDEC speeds), and we also see the rest of the specs printed on the label, such as the timings and operating voltage. There are also "UKCA" and "CE" signs that indicate this kit meets European and British standards for sale in those regions.

The post above shows CPU-Z screenshots clearly revealing that the DRAM powering this kit is from CXMT and not one of the big three memory makers: Micron, Samsung, or SK Hynix. All of those companies are busy selling out their entire production lines to data centers instead, so it makes sense that Corsair is shifting around its suppliers. CXMT might seem like an unusual choice, but the company is well-positioned for this transition.

See, unlike the major DRAM manufacturers, CXMT doesn't even possess the latest cutting-edge tools to produce memory for hyperscalers. The company isn't tied to any data center contracts, so it has, relatively speaking, empty production lines just waiting for customers. And that clientele CXMT seems to be targeting is regular consumers left in the dust by the rest of the RAM industry.

Until now, CXMT has only really sold to local businesses and lesser-known brands, but being featured in a Corsair kit marks a major shift in the landscape. Even if this kit is exclusive to Chinese markets, it's still made by one of the biggest names in consumer memory — a name that people trust. Besides, most customers won't actually check what factory their DRAM chips are coming from as long as the specs seem up to par.

Speaking of which, we're looking at a DDR5-6000 CL36 kit, which is not the fastest, but it's plenty for gaming and daily tasks. There's generally less than 5% difference between a CL30 and CL36 kit at 6,000 MT/s, so if you're saving a lot of money going for the slower latency, it might be worth it in some cases, such as, you know, a RAM shortage. That brings us to the main question: Is this RAM actually cheaper?

There was no explicit mention of a price, so for all we know, Corsair is sourcing cheaper memory from CXMT but still selling it at the same inflated rates. If supply from Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron is tight, it makes sense that DRAM bought from those companies would be expensive, but CXMT-made DDR5 should be significantly more affordable for it to matter and make an actual dent in the market.

Moreover, there would be concerns about how stable these modules are and whether they're fit for overclocking. Since a brand like Corsair is backing them up, a customer would expect it to perform just as well as any other Corsair kit. Another post from the same OP shows a similar KingBank-branded DDR5-6000 kit overclocked to 8,000 MT/s with 44-56-56-128 timings at around 1.5V, so there's clearly some potential here.

PC memory manufacturer Team Group has agreed to settle a class action lawsuit to the tune of $1.1 million over allegations it advertised deceptive speeds for its DDR3, DDR4, and DDR5 memory products purchased in the U.S. between May 3, 2020, and April 8, 2026. Similar to a recent case involving G.Skill, the lawsuit claims that consumers were led to believe that the advertised speeds on Team Group’s memory kits could be achieved out of the box without requiring BIOS tweaks or overclocking profiles.

It was alleged by the plaintiffs that the company marketed its RAM kits using rated speeds that could only be achieved after enabling XMP or EXPO memory profiles via the motherboard BIOS/UEFI menu. Team Group has denied all allegations of wrongdoing and says that its “products were appropriately labeled and performed as represented.”

An individual can claim as part of the settlement class if they purchased Team Group DDR3, DDR4, or DDR5 memory products while living in the United States between May 3, 2020, and April 8, 2026. The settlement only applies to individual consumers, while purchases made directly by a business, such as a company, LLC, corporation, or partnership, do not qualify for compensation. However, if you personally bought the memory as an individual consumer, you may still qualify even if you later used the product for work or business purposes.

As there is no fixed amount out of the total settlement fund of $1.1 million, the money will be divided among every individual who submits a valid claim. Payments will be made based on how many eligible Team Group DRAM products each person claims. The settlement also clarifies that one may claim compensation for up to five memory products per household without providing proof of purchase, while claims beyond that require supporting documentation.

Eligible customers can head to the Claim Hub website and follow the instructions carefully to file an official claim. You can also submit an objection or exclude oneself from the lawsuit completely. The deadline for the claim is currently set for July 7, 2026.

Earlier this year, G.Skill settled a similar $2.4 million lawsuit involving its DDR4 and DDR5 memory products. Plaintiffs argued that advertised speeds above JEDEC defaults required additional BIOS adjustments and overclocking settings that were not clearly disclosed on packaging or product pages. Most memory kits for modern PC platforms ship with conservative default speeds based on JEDEC standards, while higher advertised frequencies, such as DDR5-6000 or DDR5-7200, require users to manually enable XMP or EXPO profiles. The lawsuit argued that average consumers may not realize these additional steps are necessary to achieve the marketed performance levels.

G.Skill was also required to change its packaging and be clearer about overclocking and BIOS adjustments as part of its agreement. The Team Group settlement doesn't seem to include any such provisions and is rather purely offering a payout to affected buyers.

75 years ago this week, on May 11th, 1951, MIT electrical engineer Jay Forrester filed the patent application for coincident-current magnetic core memory, a technology that became the dominant form of random-access storage in digital computers for two decades.

Granted as U.S. Patent 2736880 in February 1956, Forrester's invention evolved from MIT's Project Whirlwind, where unreliable vacuum-tube memory was failing to meet the demands of real-time Cold War air defense.

Whirlwind began in the mid-1940s as a U.S. Navy flight simulator project but pivoted toward real-time digital computing. The machine needed to track aircraft in flight, and the electrostatic storage tubes Forrester initially used broke down constantly.

Forrester's solution used tiny rings of ferrite material, each about the diameter of a pencil lead, strung on a grid of copper wires. Sending current through two intersecting wires simultaneously magnetized a specific ring in one direction for a "1" or the other for a "0." The coincident-current technique allowed a small number of wires to address millions of bits in three-dimensional arrays. His graduate student, William Papian, built the first prototype in October 1950, and the first full core memory bank went into Whirlwind on August 8th, 1953.

This demonstrated that the underlying tech worked, and Whirlwind subsequently became the prototype for the SAGE air defense network, which operated 23 computer-controlled radar installations across the United States and one in Canada, and remained operational into the 1980s.

While Forrester applied for the patent in 1951, it took five years for it to be granted, and a series of legal battles soon followed. RCA engineer Jan Rajchman had filed a similar application eight months earlier, and Harvard researcher An Wang had separately patented a different core memory technique that IBM purchased in 1955 for $500,000. Wang used the proceeds to expand Wang Laboratories.

IBM then spent years challenging Forrester's broader patent. MIT responded with forensic thoroughness, according to its archival records, tracing purchase orders, examining telephone bills and travel vouchers, and analyzing lab notebooks to establish Forrester's priority. RCA eventually withdrew its claims, and in 1964, IBM settled for $13 million, the largest patent payout in history at the time. Forrester personally received $1.5 million.

Forrester left digital computing in 1956, the same year his patent was granted, joining MIT's Sloan School of Management, where he founded the field of system dynamics. He died on November 16th, 2016, at 98.

Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Republic of Gamers (ROG) brand, Asus has unveiled the company's first memory kit, which will compete with the best RAM on the market. Announced at the ROG Day 2026 event, the ROG 幻刃 (meaning "Phantom Blade" in English) 48GB DDR5 RGB 20th Anniversary Edition memory kit will retail for $880, turning it into a luxury item that's even more expensive than a GeForce RTX 5070 Ti graphics card, which starts at $829 when in stock.

Late last year, there were rampant rumors within the technology community that Asus might venture into the competitive memory market. At the time, the company publicly denied these rumors, and for good reason, because there was a misunderstanding about the speculation. Many thought Asus would magically spin up a fabrication facility and begin manufacturing and selling memory. It was quite the opposite. The rumor was about the possibility of the company offering Asus-branded memory modules, likely under the ROG gaming brand, to the retail market.

Asus's move is reminiscent of what Gigabyte does with its Aorus line. The latter sells many Aorus-branded DDR5 and DDR4 memory kits on the retail market. The tactic would allow Asus to expand its ROG ecosystem and leverage its already-renowned brand to retain existing customers and attract new ones in segments that the company previously didn’t compete it.

Asus’s first ROG memory kit comes in an impressive 48GB capacity, packaged as two matching 24GB memory modules. The specifications of the memory kit are pretty solid. It operates at DDR5-6000 with tight CL26-36-36-76 timings at 1.45V. Like many enthusiast memory kits, the ROG memory kit supports both AMD EXPO and Intel XMP profiles. Additionally, Asus has introduced a unique secondary profile that is exclusive to ROG motherboards to set this kit apart from standard offerings.

Users can activate “ROG Mode” directly in the BIOS of a compatible ROG motherboard to push the memory kit to DDR5-8000 with 36-48-48-110 timings at a DRAM voltage of 1.40V. It's just Asus's way of giving its customers an easy one-click method to overclock the memory kit. Logically, this is possible because the memory kit leverages SK hynix's high-quality M-die integrated circuits, which are great for overclocking.

Over the years, Asus has strategically partnered with several major memory manufacturers to offer Asus-branded memory products under both the ROG (Republic of Gamers) and TUF (The Ultimate Force) lineups. Notably, Asus developed the recently announced ROG memory kit with Biwin. Building on a collaborative approach, Asus has significantly expanded its ROG-certified memory program to include 14 carefully selected partners authorized to produce and market ROG-themed memory kits. The growing network of partners includes some of the most trusted brands in the memory industry, such as Corsair, G.Skill, Kingston, and Adata.

The ROG DDR5-6000 C26 48GB memory kit will retail for $880. For perspective, the most affordable GeForce RTX 5070 Ti graphics card commands a retail price of $829, when it is available, and the Trident Z5 Neo RGB DDR5-6000, which offers similar capacity and specifications, is currently listed for $799.99 on Amazon. Asus’s ROG kit is up to 6% more expensive than a contemporary high-end graphics card and approximately 10% pricier than the competition.

The substantial price premium is something we've grown accustomed in the ongoing global memory shortage. Furthermore, Asus products are famously associated with what enthusiasts refer to as the “Asus Tax." The ROG DDR5-6000 C26 48GB memory kit, which comes with a limited lifetime warranty, will launch in late June. Given its exclusivity and the supply constraints, it probably won't have a problem getting off the hardware shelves.

Don't walk, run (to your PC) and hit that order button on a deal that cuts the cost of buying a new stack of DDR5 memory modules by $70. The folks at B&H Photo have slashed the price of this Corsair Pro Overclocking DDR5 32GB (2 x 16GB) to just $329.99 right now. With RAM prices still impacted by the AI-fueled boom, a $70 price cut on RAM, given current market prices, is one you can't ignore, but you'll need to be quick, as this deal is likely to run out soon.

● Check out this deal at B&H Photo

Unfortunately, the ultra-low prices we saw last year are a distant memory (no pun intended). The term skyrocketing might be a cliché, but it's unfortunately true, with RAM like this significantly more expensive than it would have been 12 months ago. Those old prices aren't coming back any time soon, with hardware manufacturers like Framework warning about even more price rises this year. Right now, $239.99 is a bargain, with the next-best option with equivalent speeds costing you at least $40 more, and prices likely to go up, not down in the next 12 months.

This particular kit comes with two 16GB modules, with rated speeds of 6,400 MT/s. That's a big speed jump over older DDR4 memory, where you'd see max speeds of 3,600 MT/s. As our Corsair Pro Overclocking DDR5-6400 review shows, however, you can push this RAM even further, as it's overclockable using Intel XMP and AMD EXPO OC profiles on motherboards that support it. For enthusiasts, you can push this RAM to speeds of 6,600 MT/s or higher, making it an ideal option for seriously powerful gaming PC builds.

You're getting CAS latency and memory timings of 38-40-40-84 with this Corsair Pro Overclocking RAM kit, operating at a voltage of 1.35V. Unlike some of the flashier RAM kits on the market, including Corsair's own Vengeance models, you're not getting any RGB with this kit. It instead comes in a simple white colorway, with a solid aluminum integrated heat spreader to help keep things cool during heavy workloads.

It's true: this isn't a record-breaking deal, but that's missing the point. What it is, however, is a great deal given the current market. A $70 price drop, and one that makes it the cheapest 32GB DDR5 RAM kit on the market right now, is worth a buy if you're thinking about upgrading your PC or building a new one.

You won't find better, faster RAM as cheap as this $329.99 Corsair Pro Overclocking 32GB RAM kit from B&H Photo. This isn't a no-brand kit, either, so you'd be buying high-quality and reliable RAM at a price that, given the tough market conditions, is pushing against the grain. Past experience tells us that these discounted RAM kits sell out fast, so if you're interested, you should order it before it sells out.

If you're looking for more savings, check out our Best PC Hardware deals for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals, Hard Drive Deals, Gaming Monitor Deals, Graphics Card Deals, Gaming Chair, Best Wi-Fi Routers, Best Motherboard, or CPU Deals pages.

It's a bad time to build a PC right now, given all the component shortages and political tensions that seemingly never leave sight of uncertainty. Bad times call for desperate measures, and that's precisely the window of opportunity that scammers are waiting to bank on. As such, reports of fake DDR5 memory circulating in Asian markets have begun to pop up, with some scammers replacing entire modules with counterfeit, hollow plastic chips. You can see the clever counterfeits by expanding the tweet below.

The post above from Japanese user TAKI shows laptop DDR5 memory (SODIMMs) with some of these fake chips. The sticker on the RAM says it's a Samsung stick, but the modules are clearly from SK Hynix. They also look a bit weird with the edges looking abnormally rounded off, exposing a white material around the perimeter. If you look closely, one of the ICs on the PCB is also knocked out of place, suggesting these components have been dropped on the board rather prematurely.

Looking closer at one of the DDR5 modules, it's clearly been shaved off; that explains the white perimeter. But there's nothing inside because these chips are just made of plastic or fiberglass with no circuitry inside. The second giveaway then becomes clear — since these are literally just bits of plastic, the SK Hynix part number markings are also fake, printed on top to make the RAM look convincing.

These counterfeit memory kits are common on secondhand marketplaces, such as Mercari and Yahoo Auctions, and some are listed as broken. The description on one of these listings outlines a whole story about where these sticks come from, and that the buyer shouldn't purchase them expecting a functional product.

People looking to make a quick buck would pounce on such ads, or even worse, scammers would buy these lots to actually resell as working sticks to unsuspecting customers. And these are SODIMMs with no heatspreaders, so you can actually see the part numbers and likely make out the fact they're not authentic. For desktop memory that does come with heatsinks, you're basically out of luck until you actually test it.

The sellers peddling these fake DDR5 modules also accept no returns, which is common for "as is" purchases. Another possibility is that these sticks are coming from Amazon bait-and-switch scams where people buy an authentic product, swap it for a fake (or nothing at all), and return it, from where it ends up in a returns warehouse. It then gets picked up by a larger seller who might sort and sift through the lot to identify valuable items like RAM and put them up on the aftermarket.

Ultimately, the point remains that you should be extremely vigilant when buying used products, especially in times like these. If a deal is too good to be true, it most likely is. Purchase from reputable stores and vendors that accept returns or refunds, or at least those who'll exchange faulty items for you. While memory is the most price-hiked PC hardware category right now, similar scams run through GPUs and even CPUs.

Make sure to tally any product numbers with authentic ones you find online and thoroughly test the components to ensure they work. The latter practice should be enough to spoof out any bad actors, but try to secure a warranty as well, just in case.

Retro Games Limited (RGL) has announced that the release of TheA1200 computer has been delayed by almost six months. The Commodore Amiga-emulating full-size A1200-like design has been up for pre-order since Nov 2025, and retro-hungry fans were anticipating deliveries of the first units on June 16, 2026. In a social media post on Wednesday, RGL announced that the machine won’t be available until December 4, 2026. It blamed a combination of “global chip shortages and rising plastic production costs” for the setback. However, the firm insists that TheA1200 specs and pricing will not be adjusted.

In some ways, we are surprised that the release plans for TheA1200 have been impacted by the global chip crunch. An original Amiga 1200 had such puny specs compared to systems nowadays – it used a 14 MHz processor, 2MB (not GB) of RAM, and zero fixed storage, just a floppy disk drive. We would assume RGL is going to create TheA1200 using the magic of emulation and a cheap Allwinner/Rockchip Arm SoC backed by 512MB to 1MB of RAM. However, the tendrils of the AI boom are now beginning to spread and strangle tech production beyond the high-end RAM, NAND, and processor niches.

RGL also notes that TheA1200 OS “isn’t yet where it needs to be.” This aspect of the product is currently functional, it is explained, but for the best possible Amiga experience, the dev team needs more time “to get it right.”

Obviously, delays like this are frustrating to folks who have already endured a protracted pre-order period. An extra (almost) six months of patience is quite a lot to ask. With this in mind, RGL has prepared an FAQ regarding the delays. We’ve embedded the full blurb above, but key takeaways are that pre-orders will stand unless you are fed up enough to cancel, the price isn’t going to change, and the machine specs will not be adjusted. Furthermore, TheA1200 is “fully on track for release on 4^th December 2026,” insists RGL.

We visited the U.S. distributor’s TheA1200 product page on Amazon.com and saw that the machine is still up for pre-order at $189.99 at the time of writing. However, the release date hasn’t yet been updated; it still says “June 16, 2026” is when TheA1200 will become available.

TheA1200’s price looks quite competitive for a bit of retro fun in 2026, with the entry price of even basic computers and SBCs ratcheting up lately. The pre-order value looks even better compared to RGL’s TheA500 Mini, which is listed at $218.95. This well-reviewed Mini Amiga can also play A1200 games, but it doesn’t have a functional keyboard, and thus lacks the real Amiga feel and presence.

If you're building projects based on Nvidia Jetson modules, don't panic; it's fairly likely that you're working with the newer Orin and Thor modules. If, however, your project is based around the older Xavier or TX2 boards, then we have some bad news: Nvidia has apparently brought forward its EOL timelines for those families of Jetson products due to the RAMpocalypse making LPDDR4 harder to get. That's according to Connect Tech, a Canadian supplier and system integrator for AI systems that says Nvidia has moved these devices to Non-Cancelable, Non-Returnable (NCNR) status due to the change. (Shout out to CNX Software for spotting this.)

The specific devices affected at Connect Tech are the Jetson TX2 NX, the Jetson TX2i (all SKUs), the Jetson AGX Xavier 32GB Industrial variant, and the Jetson Xavier NX in 8GB and 16GB versions, but the supplier actually says that Nvidia has marked all TX2 and Xavier models as NCNR on its side. It also says that final purchase orders for those modules must be in by July 1st, existing purchase orders convert to NCNR on July 15th, and the last time it will ship any orders featuring those products is July 15th next year.

Strictly speaking, those timelines are from Connect Tech, not Nvidia itself, but the company does say that they are "based on Nvidia timelines." In any case, it's not really that surprising; all of these are older models, with the TX2 having been introduced in 2017 and the Xavier parts originally introduced in 2018, though some of the specific variants included arose as late as 2021.

Given that, it's probably time to start thinking about moving to newer hardware if you're working with these parts. Nvidia's Orin NX is close to a drop-in replacement for the older Xavier NX platform as long as you are not relying on more specialized I/O configurations, and the overall form factor and power envelope remain in the same class. Moving from AGX Xavier to AGX Orin is even more straightforward since both use the same 699-pin connector family, although power delivery and thermals still need to be validated.

These are hardly the first casualties of the RAMmageddon, but they do complicate the idea that only DDR5 is under pressure. DDR4 pricing has skyrocketed due to lacking supply since memory manufacturers moved on to DDR5. What is happening here is not a simple shortage in the traditional sense but a reallocation of manufacturing capacity. Memory vendors are prioritizing higher-margin parts for AI accelerators, particularly HBM and newer DDR5, and that shift pulls capacity away from legacy nodes that produce LPDDR4.

That leaves older embedded platforms in an awkward position. They depend on memory that is no longer the focus of the industry, yet they still require long lifecycle guarantees that newer consumer products do not. When supply tightens, those platforms are often the first to be pushed into constrained ordering terms, and NCNR status is usually the earliest visible signal.

Seen in that light, this is less about an abrupt discontinuation and more about a market reality finally catching up with aging hardware. The TX2 and Xavier families were already living on borrowed time, and the current memory crunch simply accelerates a transition that was going to happen anyway. For developers and integrators, the takeaway is that if a design still depends on LPDDR4-based Jetson modules, the window to secure supply is closing, and migration to Orin is no longer just a performance upgrade but a matter of long-term viability.

Reports of YouTube freezing browsers and consuming enormous amounts of RAM began spreading across Reddit and browser forums late last week, with developers now pointing to a bug in the platform's interface code that may be trapping browsers in an endless layout recalculation loop. What's emerging is that there is a runaway interface bug buried inside the platform's video controls.

Users across multiple browsers, including Firefox, Brave, and Microsoft Edge, have described videos stuttering, tabs becoming unresponsive, and systems slowing to a crawl while watching YouTube. Some users reported the individual YouTube tabs consuming more than 7GB of RAM.

Many of the initial reports blamed YouTube's ongoing war against ad blockers or recent browser updates, as the issues seemed to have first been noticed after a Firefox update. However, similar reports from Brave and Edge users have increased the spotlight on YouTube.

Following investigations, reportsMozilla's emerging from Mozilla’s open-source bug-tracking system, Bugzilla, suggest YouTube's frontend interface logic is the main culprit. Developers investigating the issue appear to have narrowed the problem down to the flexible menu container located directly beneath the video player — the section containing controls such as Like, Dislike, Share, and other interaction buttons.

Button peek-a-boo loop

According to comments related to the investigation, the interface repeatedly checks whether all buttons fit within the available horizontal space. If the controls overflow, the system hides one of the buttons to free space. However, hiding the button changes the container's width, immediately creating a new problem.

Once the button disappears, the available width appears enough for the interface to believe there is room again, causing the hidden button to reappear. The buttons then overflow once more, forcing the interface to hide the button again. The cycle repeats continuously at extremely high speeds.

While the visual behavior itself may appear minor, the consequences inside the browser can be far more significant. Modern browsers constantly recalculate page layouts whenever interface elements change size or position. If a webpage repeatedly triggers those recalculations thousands of times per second, the browser can become trapped in what developers often call layout thrashing or a reflow loop.

That forces the browser to continuously recompute layout geometry, redraw interface elements, and update rendering states, rapidly consuming CPU resources and memory. A user shared screenshots on Reddit showing CPU cores pinned near maximum utilization while YouTube tabs became nearly unresponsive. Others reported browser-wide slowdowns severe enough to temporarily freeze entire systems.

Mozilla developers are reportedly still investigating the issue, though no broadly confirmed fix appears to exist yet. The fact that both Firefox-based and Chromium-based browsers appear to experience similar problems further supports the suspicion that the issue may originate primarily with YouTube. For now, the exact root cause remains unofficial; neither Google nor YouTube has publicly confirmed the source of the problem.

AMD's long-awaited EXPO 1.2 has finally arrived on AM5 motherboards. The new and improved memory overclocking technology will allow vendors to release fast memory kits for AMD that rival the best RAM. Renowned third-party AMD utility developer 1usmus and hardware leaker chi11eddog have detailed the improvements in EXPO 1.2. However, according to the former, the most substantial benefit will likely be unlocked only with AMD's next-generation Zen 6 processors. The new version also adds support for three Chinese RAM vendors.

One of AMD EXPO 1.2's enhancements appears to be support for module geometry. While 1usmus didn’t provide extensive details, module geometry refers to the arrangement and structure of memory chips on a memory module. The feature may be related to HUDIMMs, a recent innovation that suppresses one of the 32-bit sub-channels in DDR5 memory modules, aiming to offer a cost-effective solution to the ongoing memory shortage.

AMD EXPO 1.2 introduces support for MRDIMMs (Multiplexed Rank Dual In-line Memory Modules), designed to deliver substantially higher bandwidth and greater memory capacity. These memory modules are for server and data center platforms, though, so they won't be available on consumer AM5 platforms.

Sadly, EXPO 1.2 still only partially supports CUDIMMs (Clocked Unbuffered Dual In-line Memory Modules) and CSODIMMs (Clocked Small Outline Dual In-line Memory Modules). These modules leverage a CKD (Client Clock Driver), a small IC that maintains signal integrity and stabilizes memory operation at higher frequencies. It's a key component to help DDR5 continue to scale the frequency ladder.

However, EXPO 1.2 retains bypass mode for CUDIMMs, treating them as standard memory modules without fully leveraging the CKD's benefits. There is mention of CKD bypass modes, but we don't yet have any detailed information on them. According to 1usmus, the current AGESA 1.3.0.1 firmware does not yet fully support CUDIMMs. According to 1usmus, AMD is likely laying the groundwork for full CUDIMM support in preparation for the upcoming Ryzen 10000 processors (codenamed Olympic Ridge) that will leverage AMD's new Zen 6 execution cores.

$4.99 thrift store GPU from r/pcmasterrace

AMD has been making significant behind-the-scenes improvements on EXPO 1.2. One of the standout features introduced is the new Ultra Low Latency (ULL) mode. It reportedly reduces memory latency. Hardware leaker chi11eddog claims that enabling ULL mode can decrease memory latency by an impressive five to seven nanoseconds on a typical DDR5-6000 memory kit.

Other improvements that EXPO 1.2 brings to the table are new fields for further fine-tuning memory that overclocking enthusiasts will appreciate. The new memory timings include tREFI, tRRDS, and tWR, along with options for VDDP voltage.

In response to the ongoing global memory crisis, AMD has proactively expanded memory compatibility by adding support for three Chinese memory manufacturers: RAMXEED Limited Conexant, Rui Xuan (formerly known as Rei Zuan), and Fujitsu Synaptics. These brands are popular in China, but it's unlikely you'll see their memory kits in the Western markets. However, consumers who purchase Chinese memory kits from overseas via platforms such as AliExpress can expect full compatibility thanks to AMD EXPO 1.2.

Asus has already started deploying beta firmware with early support for AMD EXPO 1.2 across its 800-series motherboard lineup. Many of the company's X870E and X870 motherboards can access the new firmware; however, the B850 motherboards still have to wait a little while longer. Other motherboard manufacturers will likely follow suit very soon.

AMD EXPO 1.2 is a great sign of commitment to continue improving the AM5 platform. However, we won't get to experience its full potential until Zen 6 hits the market, which should be sometime between late 2026 and early 2027.

Dr. Semiconductor is back in his shed, and this time he’s checking whether Joe Public can DIY themselves out of the DRAM crisis. In the video embedded below, you can see the good doctor go through the semiconductor process steps required to make an array of memory cells in a backyard shed cleanroom. This is the “first time ever RAM has been made at home,” boasts our hero.

RAMageddon isn’t the only issue affecting PC DIYers and the industry in general. Dr. Semiconductor mentions the AI-industry-fueled RAM price disruption being driven by the big three players (but there are others) not being able to keep up with demand. We are seeing similar effects on storage, GPUs, and some reckon CPU supplies will also begin to be impacted.

With the existing industry incapable of addressing consumer RAM needs at attractive prices in 2026, the TechTuber asks, “I turned a shed in my back yard into a class 100 semiconductor cleanroom… but the question is, can I make my own RAM?”

After the intro, Dr. Semiconductor gives a brief description of how computer memory works, and how it is largely made up of huge arrays featuring oodles of capacitors and transistors.

Moving on to the practicalities of the job at hand, the good doctor begins by snipping a couple of silicon chips from a large sheet. This is the beginning of the preparation and cleaning stage of the chipmaking process.

Next up, we move to the initial patterning stage. A layer of oxide is built on the surface of the silicon in a high-temperature furnace. It is estimated that this layer is 330nm thick. On top of this layer, an adhesive layer and photoresist film are applied. UV exposure projects a design mask onto this newly created surface, which allows a developer solution to wash away the areas that have been hit by the light rays.

The source and drain of the transistors in the design are formed in the following steps. This involves more layer etching, doping exposed silicon to make it highly conductive, then annealing the chips to push the doping agent deeper.

Several more carefully targeted deposition and erosion steps later, we are ready for the metallization of the silicon chip. A tiny stencil is used to accurately spray the sample with aluminum, the excess stripped away, and the fully layered and formed chip is at last ready for some tests!

Checking the results

The freshly fabricated DRAM cells are so small that wires can’t be used to hook them up to test machinery by the DIYers. Micromanipulator probes are precisely positioned instead. The good news is that Dr. Semiconductor was pleased with his finished DRAM chips, as cells were measured to offer a hobbyist sweet spot of 12pF capacitance.

At the end of the video, the doc teases that he’s going to build on this significant, though admittedly small-scale, achievement. He’s looking to prepare a much larger array of finished memory cells and says that they will be prepared to “hook up to a PC.” Stay tuned for the PC-scale practical implementation, folks.

We reported on Dr. Semiconductor's creation of this garden shed-based cleanroom back in March.

A couple of days ago, Intel, TeamGroup and ASRock came together to unveil the "HUDIMM" spec for DDR5 RAM. HUDIMM use a single 32-bit subchannel instead of populating a 64-bit wide bus with two 32-bit channels. This effectively cuts bandwidth and capacity in half but allows for cheaper DDR5 that uses less ICs per stick. Today, new testing done by HKEPC, with the help of Asus, confirms exactly that — HUDIMM will incur an almost 50% bandwidth penalty, reducing performance significantly.

First things first, HKEPC did not get their hands on an actual retail HUDIMM kit manufactured by TeamGroup; instead, they used standard DDR5 RAM but taped half of the contact points. This allowed for one of the 32-bit subchannels to become unrecognizable, hence simulating HUDIMM. A member of Asus' R&D team has already tried this before the announcement, and we mentioned it in our previous coverage.

This new testing is more substantiated and was done on an Asus ROG Maximum Z890 Extreme motherboard, using an Intel Core Ultra 9 285K. The outlet "matched the BIOS that supports HUDIMM modules" because, unlike a retail 1x 32-bit stick, the modified 2x 32-bit RAM's SPD will still tell the memory controller it's supposed to have a 64-bit wide bus. The PC will fail to initialize (POST) otherwise and be stuck with training errors.

We start with a single rank 16 GB 7,200 MT/s stick that showed up as 8 GB. In AIDA64, it achieved read speeds of 32,447 MB/s, write speeds of 25,195 MB/s, and copy speeds of 26,894 MB/s, with an 87.7 ns latency. In contrast, the same stick when untaped hit 58,913 MB/s read, 48,800 MB/s write, and 52,648 MB/s copy speeds. That's essentially double the throughput across the board, but latency was the same at 85.7 ns.

As expected, disabling one of the 32-bit subchannels slashes the numbers in half pretty consistently. You get to build cheaper sticks that require only 4 ICs instead of the usual 8 for a 16 GB DIMM, but it clearly comes at a cost. The standard 16 GB stick is almost at 60 GB/s of effective bandwidth while the simulated 8 GB HUDIMM stick only reaches 32 GB/s. That's the kind of discrepancy you'll notice.

Switching gears to a dual channel setup, HKEPC put 2x 16 GB 7,200 MT/s sticks on the motherboard, which showed 32 GB in the standard config, but only 16 GB when taped. The same story follows; half of the bandwidth is gone when simulating HUDIMM. We drop from 106 GB/s read speeds to just 58 GB/s, the write speeds go from 93 GB/s to 48 GB/s, and the copy speeds fall from 97 GB/s to 51 GB/s. The latency remained identical.

The HUDIMM numbers here basically match the performance of a regular 16 GB stick running in single channel, which is to be expected. It's simple math, really. Across the board, we're just halving the bandwidth and capacity just to be able to make cheaper DDR5. The performance hit is significant, but since HUDIMM is aimed at budget gamers and business users, perhaps the tradeoff will be worthwhile for some.

One claim from the announcement that HKEPC didn't check was asymmetric dual channel support — combining HUDIMM with regular DDR5 with 2x 32-bit subchannels is supposed to drastically improve performance. ASRock said that using an 8 GB HUDIMM stick with a standard 16 GB stick nets more bandwidth than a single 24 GB UDIMM (despite having the same capacity). The 24 GB stick on its own is apparently more expensive to manufacture, too, so this is a sort of "best-of-both-worlds" pitch.

40 years ago today IBM was in the news for becoming the first computer company to make use of 1-megabit memory chips. Thus, the megabit memory era began with an American company and its Vermont fab leading the way, pushing back stubbornly against the seemingly unstoppable Japanese takeover of the memory market.

IBM’s 3090 (Sierra series) mainframe computers were the first to adopt this new high-density memory. However, the New York Times reported the occasion as “a rare, if fleeting, moment of glory,” as it thought the Japanese semiconductor industry would inexorably rise beyond its already impressive 75% market share.

The NYT’s take contrasted with IBM’s triumphant tone. “This is a signal of our semiconductor technology leadership,” said IBM SVP, Jack D. Kuehler, at the time. He went on to emphasize how these DRAM chips were built in the USA. Some of the newspaper’s cynicism came from the fact that it already knew the likes of Fujitsu, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, NEC, and Toshiba were busy sampling their own 1-megabit DRAM chips. Once they were satisfied and moved them to mass production, it was expected the Far East tiger economy would roar back to pole position.

If we turn the clock back to 1986, most computing devices in use might have packed memory chips of the 64 kilobit variety. The state-of-the-art Japanese memory tech at the time was churning out 256 kilobit memory chips. In that context IBM’s 1-megabit chips, fabricated on a 1.2 micron process, were very impressive, bringing a leap in both density and efficiency.

The arrival and establishment of 1-megabit memory chips would enable memory makers to produce 30-pin SIMMs with 1MB RAM capacity, using eight to nine chips in a single-side configuration. Such SIMMs will be very familiar to users of home and personal computers from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. Additionally, you would be able to use the same SIMMs in printers, on sound cards, and even graphics cards like the Tseng ET3000 / ET4000, Trident TVGA 8800 / 8900, and Cirrus Logic GD542x series.

Thanks to the AI boom, component prices have skyrocketed in the past few months, leading constituents to come up with creative ways to fight the RAMpocalypse. ASRock has previously introduced a motherboard with both DDR4 and DDR5 slots to help alleviate the crisis, but now it's teaming up with Intel and TeamGroup to launch "HUDIMM" — a new type of DDR5 RAM that can potentially help you save money.

DDR5 memory (UDIMM) typically uses two 32-bit subchannels per stick, requiring enough chips to populate a full 64-bit wide bus. This constitutes a single rank. HUDIMM, or Half Unbuffered DIMM, uses just a single 32-bit subchannel instead, effectively halving the bandwidth and density of the RAM. This allows for cheaper sticks that use fewer modules and are basically "half-rank" in nature.

ASRock has partnered up with TeamGroup to produce some of these first HUDIMM sticks, which are already working on Intel 600, 700 and 800-series motherboards. ASRock is also making HSODIMM, which is basically the same concept but for SO-DIMM (laptop/mobile) instead of U-DIMM (desktop). The company is targeting entry-level users across both segments that don't need the highest performance, or capacity.

According to ASRock, "two sub-channel (2*32-bit)" architecture is beneficial for high-capacity single DIMM module, however, it is not so practical for current PC market." That being said, HUDIMM has asymmetrical dual-channel support at the BIOS level. This should allow you to mix and match different DDR5 RAM to circumvent the single subchannel limitation and achieve higher bandwidth, while still maintaining compatibility.

For instance, an 8 GB HUDIMM stick paired with a 16 GB UDIMM stick will run in proper dual-channel mode with at least 3x 32-bit subchannels active — one from the HUDIMM and two from the standard UDIMM. This Frankenstein 24 GB setup apparently provides better bandwidth than a single 2x 32-bit 24 GB stick, which would be more expensive to manufacture anyway. Though ASRock's press material shows a 90 ns latency, which would be considered high by any modern standards.

Following ASRock's announcement, Asus also chimed in with its own HUDMM showcase on a ROG Maximum Z890 Apex motherboard. A member of the R&D team took two regular 24 GB DDR5 RAM sticks and just taped half of the contact points, effectively disabling half of the ICs. Instead of showing 48 GB in the BIOS, these taped sticks showed only 24 GB.

The company didn't say whether it was partnering up with TeamGroup as well to add official HUDIMM support, but the fact that an engineer acknowledged it could signal something is in the works. If Asus hops on board the standard, an industry-wide push for this would be imminent, and we could genuinely see more affordable DDR5 soon. There is no word on availability or pricing from any side, however.

An employee saved 72 RAM sticks headed for the dumpster after their company’s new servers received a memory upgrade in 2024, as soon as they arrived. According to the Reddit poster, these memory modules were about to be turned into e-waste, so their father took them instead and gave the components to the poster.

While we cannot find an HP Enterprise module on Amazon, a similar memory module from SK hynix is currently priced at $287.95, meaning those 72 RAM sticks are valued at more than $20,000. When we checked CamelCamelCamel for the historical pricing of these components, they were approximately $35 in 2024, with a low of $29.02 in mid-2025.

This might seem like a massive waste for many enthusiasts, especially given the outrageous pricing that RAM has hit this year due to the massive demand for memory chips driven by the AI infrastructure build-out. However, other commenters on the Reddit post pointed out that many corporations don’t care about what happens to their old equipment. After all, once they’ve been depreciated, then they already have zero value, at least in their books.

pcmasterrace from r/pcmasterrace/comments/1sod8mr/2_years_ago_my_dads_company_bought_new_servers

“In many places where I worked, the sysadmins in charge of the servers were not hardware enthusiasts, had never built their own machines, and did not care what things cost as long as the infrastructure kept running,” ArcticCelt said under the post. “They constantly did things like that, throwing away perfectly good equipment instead of keeping it for test labs or anything useful. It was their budget to spend, and they simply did not give ------ because no one above them understood how any of it worked.”

Unfortunately, registered memory like this isn't supported by consumer-grade hardware, so the Redditor won’t be able to use it to upgrade their computer. These types of memory modules require server and HEDT motherboards and the corresponding CPU, like Intel Xeon and AMD EPYC chips. So, unless the original poster or their dad has a specialized build tucked away in their basement, their only option would be to resell these kits on the used market. Although we don’t expect these chips to fetch more than $20,000 on the used market, they could still probably sell them for more than the price of one of the best gaming PCs of 2026.

The Vengeance RGB Custom Lab Cherry Blossom DDR5-6000 C36 is a peculiar offering from Corsair to compete with the best RAM. Corsair's decision to launch the Custom Lab platform in 2024 marks a bold step forward in enabling users to customize the brand's products, including gaming peripherals, external SSDs, and memory, with more options on the horizon. The online creator service enables consumers to choose from a variety of eye-catching, pre-designed options. The Vengeance RGB DDR5 series, currently the only memory kits available for customization, offers configurations ranging from 32GB (2x16GB) to 64GB (2x32GB), with data rates from DDR5-6000 to DDR5-6400. Corsair is likely just testing the waters with the Vengeance lineup. The company will likely expand its Custom Lab service to other memory lineups, such as the renowned Dominator series, if the brand receives positive customer feedback.

Corsair’s Custom Lab offers three distinct presets for customers to choose from: Cherry Blossom, Sci-fi, and Respawn. The Cherry Blossom and Sci-fi options come in both black and white, with Sci-fi also available in grey, giving enthusiasts a total of eight stylish combinations to match any build. They are similar to skins that you can apply to your video game's characters or weapons, but are applied to memory modules that come directly from Corsair's factory.

Beyond the customization, the Vengeance RGB Custom Lab Cherry Blossom retains all the Vengeance series' hallmark features. The memory modules are still 1.73 inches (44mm) tall and feature a brilliant ten-zone RGB lighting diffuser. Control is seamless with Corsair’s iCUE software, which now features exclusive profiles specifically designed to complement the Custom Lab aesthetics. In this instance, there's a specific Cherry Blossom profile for peripherals and memory that sport that theme.

The memory modules feature a black PCB with a single-rank architecture. Each module offers 16GB of capacity, achieved by integrating eight 2GB SK hynix H5CG48MEBDX014 (M-die) integrated circuits. The specific M-die revision is known for its stability and decent overclocking potential, so it's popular among enthusiast-grade memory kits. Additionally, the modules include the MPTC5431CT56B power management integrated circuit (PMIC), which we've traced back to Monolithic Power Systems (MPS).

To ensure maximum compatibility, the memory modules operate at a JEDEC-baseline DDR5-4800 with conservative memory timings of 40-40-40-77. The memory modules support both Intel XMP 3.0 and AMD EXPO, so you can easily enable the overclocking profile that corresponds to your platform. Once the respective memory profile is activated, the memory modules automatically ramp up to DDR5-6000 and tighten the memory timings to 36-44-44-96. The DRAM voltage increases to 1.40V to support the newly-enabled data rate and memory timings. See our PC Memory 101 feature and How to Shop for RAM story for more timings and frequency considerations.

Comparison Hardware

The Intel system features the Core Ultra 9 285K processor and the MSI MEG Z890 Unify-X motherboard with firmware version 7E20v1A60. Conversely, the AMD system utilizes the Ryzen 9 9900X processor and the MSI MPG X870E Carbon WiFi motherboard with firmware version 7E49v1A64. The Corsair iCUE Link Titan 360 RX LCD CPU liquid-cooling solution efficiently maintains optimal temperatures for both the Arrow Lake and Zen 5 processors, ensuring efficient thermal management across platforms.

The MSI GeForce RTX 4080 16GB Gaming X Trio efficiently handles demanding graphics workloads, preventing any bottlenecks during our gaming RAM benchmarks. The TeamGroup A440 Lite PCIe 4.0 SSD balances performance and capacity, delivering 2TB of ultra-fast storage with speeds up to 7,400 MB/s—perfect for Windows 11 24H2 installations, benchmarking software, and gaming applications.

The Corsair RM1000x Shift ATX 3.0 power supply delivers reliable and ample power to our test systems, directly supporting the GeForce RTX 4080 via its native 16-pin (12VHPWR) cable. The Streacom BC1 open-air test bench offers flexible, tool-free accommodation for all hardware components, streamlining assembly and component swaps.

Intel Performance

The Cherry Blossom memory kit, although operating at DDR5-6000, was held back by its relatively slow timings. This limitation prevented it from competing with rival memory kits that offer tighter timings. The memory kit was at the lower end of the performance charts. Nevertheless, the Cherry Blossom memory kit delivered its strongest performance in the Adobe Premiere benchmark, where it not only held its own but also outperformed all competing kits.

AMD Performance

Sometimes, memory kits perform differently on alternative platforms. However, this was not the case for the Cherry Blossom. When evaluated alongside a Ryzen processor, the Cherry Blossom memory kit failed to demonstrate any noticeable gains or advantages over its results on the previous Intel platforms. It did not stand out in any of the benchmarks.

Overclocking and Latency Tuning

We were able to overclock the memory kit from DDR5-6000 to DDR5-7200 and retain the same timings easily. It's the highest we've reached with any DDR5-6000 memory kit. However, it's important to note memory modules ran at 1.4V by default so we had to raised it to 1.45V for any overclocking headroom, while the other memory kits were at 1.4V. The 0.05V extra gave the Cherry Blossom more room to stretch its legs.

With a 0.05V advantage over the other memory kits, it was possible to get some decent timings on the Cherry Blossom at DDR5-6000. We successfully lowered the timings from 36-44-44-96 to 34-36-36-76, putting the Cherry Blossom in the same alley as the competition but at the cost of 1.45V.

Bottom Line

Corsair's Custom Lab service offers a practical way to order custom memory kits that differ from standard offerings. Available options are limited at this early stage, as the platform is just taking shape. It would be awesome if Corsair expanded the service to allow user designs in addition to presets, so customers' personalities can really shine. The Vengeance RGB Custom Lab Cherry Blossom DDR5-6000 C36 looks great, and no one could argue about that. However, the performance is behind many DDR5-6000 memory kits with better-optimized memory timings.

You can order the Vengeance RGB Custom Lab Cherry Blossom DDR5-6000 C36 directly from Corsair for $126.99. That, of course, is the pre-shortage pricing. Nowadays, Corsair sells the same memory kit for $464.99, a testimony to how much DDR5 pricing has increased over the last few months. The company offers a lower-latency variant (C30) of the memory kit for $579.99 as well as a higher-clocked DDR5-6400 C32 version for $584.99.

Some better news today if you're looking for some RAM to fill a system. For owners of an AM5-platform-based PC in particular, today's memory deal offers some of that 6000MT/s speed that hits the sweet spot for AMD CPU performance. It also happens to be the absolute cheapest DDR5 memory kit you can currently purchase at these speeds and capacities, thanks to a double-dipping discount frenzy at Newegg.

Originally priced at $429.99, Newegg has discounted the RAM by $55 to $374.99, and then added a further $90 discount code SSF5767 to bring the price of Team Group's 32GB Team T-Create Classic DDR5-6000 RAM to just $284.99 - the lowest price as of today for 32GB DDR5-6000 kits.

• Grab this deal at Newegg

This is not a gaming-oriented RAM kit! There are no fancy RGB lights or accents on the heat spreaders. This T-Create Classic memory is packaged for professional use, where the design of the aesthetics isn't the primary concern. So the heat spreaders are black with just the logo and naming conventions visible in white. The timings of the RAM are fairly loose, with a CAS latency of 48 and further timings of 48-48-96. Not ideal for a cutting-edge gaming system where every frame counts, but perfect for applications or standard rendering. It will, of course, still function perfectly well in a gaming rig, but just be aware it's not the fastest kit out there.

At one point in time, over a year ago this same RAM kit was on sale for only $87, but that was well before the AI-crunch that saw memory prices quadruple and more in a matter of weeks. Today's deal is a very good deal based on the current climate, but not on historical data. We won't be seeing RAM prices that low again for some considerable time - if ever. If you need RAM urgently, then today's DDR5 Team T-Create Classic RAM deal for $284.99 is a winner.

If you're looking for more savings, check out our Best PC Hardware deals for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals, Hard Drive Deals, Gaming Monitor Deals, Graphics Card Deals, Gaming Chair, Best Wi-Fi Routers, Best Motherboard, or CPU Deals pages.

The AI boom has driven memory prices to soar over the past few months, with prices just beginning to slow as of late, only for uncertainty to take over again amid escalating geopolitical tensions. In these trying times, finding a fairly priced DDR5 RAM kit is nothing short of a miracle, but we've just spotted an incredible deal. Newegg's Doorbuster event has listed a Corsair Vengeance 96 GB kit for just $499 right now, shaving an insane $680 off its current price.

• Check out the Corsair Vengeance 96GB DDR5-6000 deal on Newegg

The kit features 2 x 48GB sticks of DDR5 memory running at DDR5-6000, featuring a CAS latency of 36, so it's not an entry-level model either. There's no onboard RGB to spice up your build, but there's still a bit of design flair with shiny triangles and a brushed-aluminum badge up top. The understated, minimalist grey aesthetic is sure to fit right into any setup without feeling too gaudy. Just make sure to pair it with one of the best motherboards and best CPUs on the market to maximize its potential.

When Corsair first announced its 96 GB SKUs back in 2022, they launched at just $380, so it's hard to believe how far we've come. You could get 96GB kits for as little as $185 a year ago; the cheapest 96GB kit we could find right now is G.Skill's Flare X5 at $895 on Amazon, but that's only DDR5-5600. So, with everything in mind, $499 for a 96 GB Corsair Vengeance kit today is an incredible deal you shouldn't miss out on if you need a RAM upgrade during the memory shortage.

If you're looking for more savings, check out our Best PC Hardware deals for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals, Hard Drive Deals, Gaming Monitor Deals, Graphics Card Deals, Gaming Chair, Best Wi-Fi Routers, Best Motherboard, or CPU Deals pages.

Lexar recently invited Tom’s Hardware, along with several other journalists, to visit its Shenzhen office, which sits north of Hong Kong, as well as its research and development facilities at Zhongshan across the bay. From there, the company took us to their Suzhou factory, about an hour and a half to the west of Shanghai, to explore their automotive storage production line.

The company is primarily known for its flash memory products, particularly for high-performance microSD, SD, and CFexpress cards for cameras and other portable devices, as well as flash drives and card readers. However, the company has recently been making a push towards modern SSDs and RAM modules, and it’s also working on the next generation of AI-ready storage solutions.

We'll start with our factory tour on this page, and then move to the Q and A session with Lexar executives and the history of the company on the second page.

Moving beyond memory cards and flash drives

Lexar has continued producing removable storage solutions after its 2017 acquisition by Longsys. Just one year after the purchase, the brand was the first to commercially release a 1TB SD card. The company also claimed that it had the world’s fastest CFexpress Type B cards in 2022, which is crucial for both photographers shooting in burst mode and videographers shooting at high-resolution 4K video. Just last year, the company also released the world’s first stainless steel SD cards, featuring an IP68 environmental protection rating while also providing much more strength than regular plastic SD card models.

But now that Lexar was under the wing of Longsys, the company had access to formidable resources for research and development, as well as the nearly two decades of experience that its parent firm had in working with flash storage. Although the company had already been making USB flash drives before 2017, it was only after the Longsys purchase that the company started making and selling proper drives.

One of the first Lexar SSDs we’ve seen is the NM600 M.2 NVMe SSD, which, although it did not offer mind-bending performance, was an affordable and efficient SSD that offered a great solution for those looking for relatively affordable storage. Since then, Lexar has released several NVMe SSDs, like the NM790, which offered excellent sustained read and write speeds while staying power efficient and is priced competitively, especially at the 4TB capacity, as well as the 1TB Lexar Play M.2 2230 SSD, which is one of the best solutions for expanding storage on gaming handheld devices.

The company has also started building its own storage controllers, which manage how data is stored, moved, corrected, and retrieved from the NAND flash chips used by memory cards. This would allow Lexar to have more in-depth control of how its memory products would perform and differentiate its offerings from the competition. At the moment, Lexar’s Silver Plus microSD, Blue microSD, Silver Plus SD, and Silver SD cards already use in-house controllers.

Aside from building its own storage controllers and expanding into solid state drives, the company also ventured into RAM with its basic DDR4-2666 C19 memory modules in 2020 and the Hades gaming RAM the following year. By 2023, the company made the Ares RGB DDR5-6000 C34 gaming RAM, which supports both Intel XMP 3.0 and AMD EXPO.

Of course, Lexar also saw the need for specialized storage in the age of AI. Because of this, it’s planning to release its AI Storage Core solution, which is more than just a faster, more performant memory solution. Of course, these will have higher read and write speeds, which is crucial for the massive amounts of data that AI handles, but will also have better encryption to protect the sensitive data handled by AI models. Lexar also says that they’ll be more robust, especially for applications in AI-powered vehicles and robots, as well as having hot-swapping capabilities to make it more convenient to switch devices without requiring a reboot.

The company says that it will offer multiple configuration options for AI Storage Core devices, ensuring that manufacturers and end-users can pick one that’s optimized for their application. It’s also working with various AI vendors, ensuring that Lexar’s storage solutions will be supported in future AI applications, allowing for easier and direct access to the data stored within them. There’s also development of supporting snapshots directly on the storage device’s firmware, giving users a secure backup directly on the device and making it easier to restore their data in case something goes wrong during the AI workflow, making it easier to roll back to an earlier snapshot.

Of course, Lexar cannot achieve all its plans without putting in the effort to develop new technologies. So, the company invited us to explore their various sites to see what it’s doing to achieve its goal of “Bridging Continents and Powering the World.”

Research and development for next-generation storage technologies

One of the first places we visited was the Longsys Innovation Laboratory, located in the Foresee Building at Zhongshan. This is where Lexar’s parent company works on developing next-generation products, including DDR5 and LPDDR5/5X memory modules, PCIe 5.0 storage solutions, UFS4.1 memory cards, as well as CXL2.0/3.0 for data centers and AI systems. The lab covers an area of over 9,000 square feet and is staffed by over 50 personnel, of which 20 are full-time engineers, scientists, and researchers.

Everything begins at the Design Simulation & Signal Analysis Lab, where new Lexar products are developed, validated, and engineered. The Design Simulation Lab is where upcoming storage solutions are tested for thermal performance, structural rigidity, and signal and power integrity, while the Signal Analysis lab looks at the high-speed signals being sent throughout the entire system to ensure everything stays in spec and operates reliably.

Since Lexar relies on third-party suppliers for NAND and DRAM supplies, it must ensure the quality of the dies it receives and know exactly what’s inside each product it manufactures. This is where the Chip Resource Analysis Lab comes in, where multiple high-end machines test timings, memory redundancy, and the memory core, as well as running accelerated aging under stress (also known as burn-in testing), to ensure the quality and reliability of Lexar products over time.

There are several labs that deal with completed products. There’s the System Verification Lab, where finished storage and memory items are tested for their power draw and timings, ensuring that Lexar DRAM meets JEDEC specifications. Lexar has a high-end gaming PC installed in the lab so that they can run their hardware on various benchmarking apps like AIDA64, 3DMark, and PCMark.

The Reliability Lab is where things are getting interesting, as Lexar puts its various products through their paces here. It has various testing machines, including the Drop Tester for simulating dropping an item from a height of up to 1.5 meters or 4 feet to a concrete or steel floor and the Roller Drop Tester, which continuously tumbles items between 5 to 25 RPM. There’s also the Plug-in/out Force Test machine, which simulates plugging in a memory card into a slot thousands of times and with various levels of force, the Tensile Test machine, which basically pulls on materials to see how much strength it takes to break them apart, and several other devices that check the durability of their prototypes and other products.

Aside from physical strength, the company also tests for electrostatic discharge resistance in its ESD lab, ensuring that its memory cards, storage drives, and memory modules aren’t killed by everyday static that people build up from their environment.

The tests we’ve mentioned above are mostly limited to day-to-day use. At the end of the hall sits the Environmental Lab, where Lexar puts its prototypes and products through the wringer. There are four testing machines here — the Salt Spray Test, which accelerates aging through a corrosive environment, the Precision High-Temperature Oven, where Lexar products are exposed to high temperatures while they are running, the Highly-Accelerated Stress Test, for reliability failure analysis, and the Dye Penetration Test, which looks at the effects of thermal shock on various components.

Besides the ESD Lab, you’d find the X-ray Lab, where the tiny wiring and connections in the chip are analyzed. Inside it, you’ll find a combined 2D X-Ray and CT Scan machine, allowing Lexar engineers to find minute, microscopic defects. There’s also the Failure Analysis Lab, which looks at how the items fail after this series of tests, allowing Lexar to figure out what went wrong with them and rectify their shortcomings, ensuring that they do not fail once out in the real world.

Last, but not least, we visited the Materials Analysis Labs, where the scientists and engineers visually inspect the chips. Note that they do not just place them under a microscope — instead, this is an involved process where they would put the memory or storage module they want to inspect in resin and then use a precision cutter machine to exactly slice the material and reveal the area where the suspected damage is.

Now, all the testing here is done directly on the Lexar products and prototypes. However, storage and memory do not exist in a vacuum — instead, they must work with a massive number of different devices, like cameras, drones, security cameras, gaming handheld devices, desktops, laptops, tablets, dashcams, and so much more. So, our next stop was the Longsys Quality Labs.

An extensive compatibility testing lab

Lexar has an extensive portfolio of memory and storage products, including CFexpress cards, SD cards, microSD cards, the NM card for some Huawei phones, portable SSDs, USB flash drives, M.2 and SATA SSDs, DDR4 and DDR5 memory modules, card readers, enclosures, and more. If Lexar plans to release any new product, it must ensure that it will work across a wide range of devices already on the market. Because of this, Longsys Quality Labs keeps more than 1,200 different gadgets across 35 categories to ensure that it can test its products before release.

For example, we saw more than 30 handheld gaming consoles on one desk, featuring popular brands and models like the Steam Deck, ROG Ally X, Lenovo Legion Go, and the Nintendo Switch 2, as well as from more niche brands like OneX Player, Ambernic, and more. There are also several drones and action cameras from DJI, as well as shelves of DSLRs, mirrorless, and point-and-shoot cameras from Canon, Nikon, Sony, and Fujifilm. The Lexar team also had multiple phones, including those from Chinese brands like Huawei, Xiaomi, Vivo, and Oppo, as well as popular international brands such as iPhone and Samsung. Aside from these flash devices, other rooms also stored a ton of more mundane gadgets, like dashcams, security cameras, and even automotive modules.

After exploring the lab, we visited the Memory History Museum, where Lexar showed how storage technologies developed from prehistoric knots to the SSDs that we know today. We ended our day there, as our next stop would be the company’s manufacturing base in Suzhou, a two-hour flight from Shenzhen, which we took the following day.

Exploring the Longforce automotive storage production facility

Our entire group landed in Shanghai, and we took a one-and-a-half-hour drive to the Longforce Technology (Suzhou) Co., Ltd., which is the company’s manufacturing arm. We then made our way to the company’s production line for automotive storage, where we saw how NAND silicon wafers are turned into automotive-grade storage solutions. Since this is a silicon production line, we all had to wear cleanroom suits and get blasted with air jets before entering the actual production area. That way, we minimize the chances of bringing in contaminants that would affect yield rates.

The NAND arrives from the suppliers in wafer form, where it must first undergo taping, which is the mounting of the wafer to a backing material to ensure its rigidity during processing. That’s because a silicon wafer is extremely thin, and the backing material will protect it from cracking. From here, the wafer first undergoes pre-grinding, which thins out the wafer and makes it ready for cutting. It’s then cut into pieces with a laser using a technique called stealth dicing, because the cuts were made under the surface. From there, the wafer is finally fully ground to bring the wafer to its final thickness.

Once all of that is completed, the wafer is then finally mounted, and the tape is removed through DDS. It then goes through various processes until the die is mounted onto a substrate. From there, it will go through wire bonding, which connects all the layers of the die to the substrate, and be packaged via a C-Mold process. From there, it receives branding, and solder balls are attached to the underside of the substrate to make it ready for attachment to a PCB.

Note that the process does not end there, as the chips are all built together into a single molded panel. They must first be cut into individual pieces through singulation. Once that is done, they go through final testing and quality control, and then the chips are packaged for delivery to clients.

Let's move to the executive Q and A on the following page.

We visited a lot of places in so little time, so we did not get a chance to get to know Lexar’s leadership team a bit deeper. Nevertheless, some of the journalists who joined the tour were still able to ask them a few questions regarding the brand and the state of the memory and storage market today.

30 years of Lexar

Before we dive into anything else, let’s look at the quick history of Lexar. The storage company was founded in 1996 in San Jose, California, after it was spun off from audio semiconductor company Cirrus Logic. The company focused on flash memory technologies, tapping into the massive opportunity presented by the booming digital camera landscape, which began in the late 90s and exploded in the early 2000s. After nearly 10 years as an independent company, Micron Technology bought the firm in 2006.

Lexar partnered with Kodak in 2004 to produce a Kodak-branded 64MB SD card, which the two companies extended for another five years in 2007. It was during this period that the latter started producing 1GB and 2GB SD cards for the American camera brand, as well as the 128MB Picture Card UFC Drive, which worked both as a memory card and as a USB flash drive.

Aside from this push on consumer-grade memory, Lexar also developed storage media that focused on professional photographers with its CompactFlash (CF) cards. Many pro-grade DSLRs relied on this form factor during this time, which was larger, more robust, and often delivered performance better than comparable SD cards. The company was the first to deliver a 256GB CF card in 2012, which it released alongside an SDXC UHS-I card. It then doubled down on this focus the following year by releasing the Professional Workflow solution — a docking station that allowed you to mix-and-match card readers and portable SSD modules on a single high-performance base station, keeping all your portable memory needs in one place.

However, Micron decided to discontinue the Lexar brand by 2017, saying that it wanted to focus on higher value markets and channels. One of the reasons behind this move is the reduced popularity of dedicated cameras, especially as smartphones, with their built-in cameras, became more popular in the early to mid-2010s. Furthermore, Android smartphones started losing their expandable memory feature around 2015, with Samsung being the first one to drop it with the Galaxy S6.

These changing market conditions, alongside increasing competition, meant that Micron wanted to exit the consumer memory market and focus its attention on more profitable products. Fortunately, the company didn’t shutter the brand — instead, it offered the entire division for sale, with Longsys acquiring it completely in 2017.

Longsys is a China-based flash storage company founded in 1999, focusing on research and development, design, testing, packaging, manufacturing, and sales of storage solutions. It already had a strong presence in industrial and embedded storage solutions with its B2B Foresee brand, so the company saw a unique opportunity when Micron decided to sell Lexar. The purchase gave the Chinese company a chance to gain a foothold in Lexar’s market, while at the same time continuing the brand’s legacy of high-quality, high-performance removable devices.

A series of new reports from South Korea indicate that the government is planning to step in with measures to help insulate its population from the worst of the global RAM and NAND crisis, which is causing both individual PC components and PCs generally to soar in price. According to The Korea Herald, the government plans to reuse and recycle more computers used by public agencies, expanding programs that provide PC hardware to vulnerable groups. No Cut News further reports that the government plans to monitor markets and pricing, while even restructuring internet usage plans to guarantee minimum access.

According to the former, Korea's central government dumped 22,000 computers last year, with more than half of those being scrapped despite being in working order or eligible for basic tasks after servicing. The rest are sold or donated to various organizations and groups. Now, the government plans to increase the number of these PC are reused, while also expanding support initiatives that provide PCs to vulnerable groups. Alongside these measures, the Herald reports the government will also expand a subsidy program that provides cash to low-income households to help with the purchase of PCs for students.

As for the broader market, No Cut News reports that the government will introduce "comprehensive measures to reduce the burden of telecommunication fees and the prices of PCs and laptops." (Machine translated) According to the report, there are plans to restructure internet data plans from Korea's three major carriers, in a bid to guarantee that customers will still be able to access the internet at a pedestrian 400 Kbps, even after hitting their data cap, a measure designed to "guarantee basic communication rights."

As noted, extreme pressures on the market have led to skyrocketing prices for PC components like RAM and SSDs, while also driving up the price of laptops and pre-built PCs. To that end, the government reportedly plans to "monitor the distribution and supply and demand conditions of the PC and laptop markets to prevent unfair practices." The report says the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and the Fair Trade Commission will "inspect" the DRAM, PC, and laptop markets, investigating any possible illegal activity, "and take strict measures" if anything out of the ordinary is detected. That could be a remedy against PC hardware vendors who have drastically increased the prices of RAM and SSDs, possibly bringing some stability to the market.

The measures are being undertaken by Korea's Ministerial Task Force for Special Management of People's Living Costs, a body launched in February to help manage the prices of goods and services that directly affect people's livelihoods.

The AI buildouts consuming RAM and NAND supplies show no sign of slowing down, at least in ambition. Half of planned US data center builds have been delayed or canceled, limited by power infrastructure shortages and a lack of parts. As it stands, 32GB of DDR5 RAM, the sweet spot for enthusiast PC gaming, still costs an eye-watering $359. The cheapest $50 1TB SSD imaginable now costs nearly three times as much as it did this time last year.

A former president of Microsoft’s Windows Division has been reminiscing about the lean and efficient coding regime at Microsoft in the 1980s. Steven Sinofsky surprised some commenters, who were talking about modern software’s RAM and resource use, by recalling that from 1980 to 1990 “every Microsoft eng got a stop watch,” adding that “Extras were in the supply room.” Stopwatches were used for “everything,” Sinofsky went on to explain. “Scroll speed. Boot. Exit. Save. Compilation. Print.”

Core products of the ‘stopwatch era’ would be MS‑DOS, Windows, Word, Excel, and Office – as well as programming languages and tools. Windows work would involve versions one through three, but of course, this period predates Windows 95; the clue is in the name. Sinofsky indicates that the same resrouce efficieincy based ethic continued to at least the year 2000, though. “From 1980-2000 half of software engineering was managing resource (clock time, disk, and RAM) usage,” he said on social media.

Do people prefer ‘whizzy spinning’ things to raw speed?

However, the ex-president of Windows told of one retrograde action implemented in software purposefully. Despite his stopwatch indicating otherwise, user feedback the dev team received was that the compile speed under Windows for VC++ 1.0 was slower than prior releases. Implementing a “whizzy spinning line counter made of random numbers… slowed the compile speed down a few pct points but perception improved,” noted Sinofsky. Moreover, despite not liking reworking purely for perception, and actually slowing raw performance, he reluctantly kept the whizz in.

Interestingly, another well-known Microsoft / Windows veteran, Dave W. Plummer, responded to say that he was denied a free stopwatch in 1993. Actually, that is outside the freebie window, as told by Sinosfsky. Microsoft told Plummer that a stopwatch would be “too expensive,” he recalls. Humorously, Plummer says that “While I clearly resent it enough to bring it up 30+ years later, it went a long way toward setting the fiscal accountability I brought to the career.”

Microsoft’s new performance pledge

Sinofsky’s tale comes at an interesting point for Microsoft, particularly its Windows OS, which has been under heavy criticism for losing focus. Specifically, there’s a growing wave of resentment regarding the OS’s poor core performance, general resource hungriness, and devs throwing too much AI in the mix.

A couple of weeks ago, Microsoft’s managers finally decided to face up to this reality and penned a surprisingly detailed blog post, promising that the situation would change over the course of this year. It has now pledged to implement performance, overhead, and reliability improvements across a swathe of core services like Explorer and Windows Update. It will also improve resource use and be more purposeful about where Copilot integrates.

Microsoft’s signaling regarding its newfound efficiency thrust is still fresh, so we can only wait and see if any or many of these improvements materialize. But we’d like to know if, as part of the plans, devs will be given free stopwatches.