Newegg is one of the best places at the moment for deal bundles on otherwise expensive PC parts for a new gaming PC. With that in mind, you can pick up a brand-new AMD Ryzen 7 9950X3D with 32GB of DDR5 RAM and an Asus TUF Gaming X870E motherboard for $1,059.98.

● Check out this combo deal at Newegg

This deal saves you $128.99 compared to buying the parts separately. You're also getting a free Rosewill 360mm AIO liquid cooler thrown in for free, worth $89.99. More importantly, however, is the RAM. With this deal, you're bringing down the effective cost of the memory to just $351, or less if you count the free cooler.

Buying this RAM separately would cost you $479.99, while the cheapest 32GB DDR5 kit on sale anywhere right now is $438, so you're paying $87 less for RAM compared to what you'd have to pay elsewhere. That's a great deal considering how expensive RAM has become over the last year, especially if you need to build or upgrade your rig today.

The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D is no longer the fastest gaming CPU on the market, but it's still our favorite, with performance that's almost impossible to beat. It ships with eight cores, 16 threads, and a boost clock speed up to 5.2 GHz. The important stat, though, is 96MB of L3 cache. This is AMD's all-important 3D V-Cache technology in action. The extra cache provides a huge frame rate boost by giving the CPU more memory directly.

There's less need for it to drop down to slower system RAM while you're gaming, making frame rates higher and more stable. As the Bench charts below show, this is a CPU that, despite being marginally pipped to the post by newer CPUs like the 9850X3D, is still an absolute powerhouse for gamers.

Along with this world-class processor is a solid set of RAM for your rig. The V-Color Manta XSky RAM included here is a popular one among these Newegg bundles. You're getting two 16GB memory modules to run dual-channel, and it's fast DDR5 CL30 RAM, rated at 6,000 MT/s, with RGB lighting that you can configure. RAM prices are showing no signs of cooling, so getting RAM for nearly $90 less than you'd be paying elsewhere is a worthy option if you're building or upgrading a new PC.

Along with the RAM is an Asus TUF Gaming X870E-Plus WiFi 7 motherboard. This is an enthusiast-friendly board that's packed with a whole host of gaming features. Ready for an AM5 build, this motherboard has 13 USBs at the rear, including two USB-C ports that are rated at speeds of 40 Gbps. You're also getting four M.2 sockets for plenty of SSDs, and with the 9800X3D installed, two of them are rated for PCIe 5.0 speeds over four lanes. There's fast networking, with 2.5 Gb Ethernet and Wi-Fi 7 support included.

A nice extra, too, is that Rosewill AIO cooler. Worth $89.99 if you had to buy it, this 360mm cooler will help to keep your CPU cool, with three RGB fans and a built-in display that can show you your CPU's temperature, fan and pump speeds. No cost here: this one comes with the bundle for free.

Overall, the $1,059.99 sale price for this Newegg parts bundle means you're scoring a top-spec CPU with better-priced RAM than buying it separately before we even consider the motherboard and free CPU cooler. The $128.99 discount here isn't one you should ignore given current market prices, but with these bundles selling out fast, you'll need to be quick to secure it for yourself.

There's a great Newegg combo deal right now that'll net you half the parts you'll need for a new 4K gaming PC. For $1,090.98, you can pick up the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, one of the best CPUs you'll find for gaming, along with 32GB of Corsair Vengeance DDR5-6000 RAM and a mid-tier Gigabyte X870 Aorus Elite Wi-Fi 7 motherboard.

● Check out this deal at Newegg

The $138.99 saving you're making here means you're getting the RAM for $371, almost $70 less than the current low price for 32GB DDR5 RAM right now. If you count the free Rosewill ATX case you're getting here, too, worth $59.99, the RAM is just $311. These parts give you the foundation for a high-spec AM5 gaming PC that, coupled with a recent GPU that you'll need to buy separately, will smash through high frame rates at 1440p and 4K.

Starting out in this combo is one of the fastest and best of the current-gen gaming CPUs on the market, the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D. This eight-core, 16-thread Zen 5 processor has a base clock speed of 4.6 GHz and a max boost speed of 5.2 GHz and a 120W TDP. More importantly for gamers, though, is the L3 cache. This boosted 96MB L3 cache capacity is the reason AMD CPUs have become the dominant force in gaming right now. They're able to deliver faster, more stable frame rates as the CPU doesn't need to rely on the slower system RAM as often while you're gaming.

As the CPU benchmark data shows, the 9800X3D sits near the very top of the food chain right now. Only CPUs like the 9850X3D can beat it; that CPU is 3% faster at 1080p than the 9800X3D, but has much higher power demands. As it stands, the 9800X3D continues to be a firm favorite, and one that'll sit comfortably in high-spec rigs for a few years to come.

You're also getting RAM with this bundle, with 32GB of Corsair Vengeance RGB DDR5-6000 memory included, split across two 16GB modules. If you wanted to buy this RAM separately, it'd currently cost you a huge $509.99 right now. As we mentioned, however, this bundle's collective cost and $138.99 discount bring the effective price down by $138. This black kit matches the motherboard and has customizable RGB, which you can switch on and off. With speeds of 6,000 MT/s, this RAM sits in the sweet spot for gamers, with CAS and latency timings of 36-44-44-96.

As for the motherboard, the Gigabyte X870 Aorus Elite Wifi 7 is a solid mid-range performer for an AM5 gaming PC build. There's plenty of connectivity here, with 12 USB ports on the rear, including two USB-C 4 ports rated for 40 Gbps. There are also four M.2 slots, one rated for PCIe 5.0 with the 9800X3D installed, along with Wi-Fi 7 and 2.5 Gb Ethernet connectivity. There's also a five-year warranty for support.

The Rosewill mid-tower ATX case is a nice extra, and if you bought it separately, it'd cost you $59.99. It's a gaming PC case, with four 120mm fans, a tempered glass side and a mesh front to keep your fans free from dust. Luckily, it's all free here.

The $1,090.98 sale price for this Newegg combo bundle with the 9800X3D means you can save nearly $140 on the RAM compared to buying it separately. The $138.99 discount will help towards the cost of a new SSD or GPU, especially given how expensive PC components have become recently. These bundles sell out quickly, though, so you'll need to be quick.

The smartphone industry is expected to see a spike in reballed memory adoption. According to a report by global market intelligence and research firm TrendForce, the current penetration rate is estimated at around 3–4%, with reballed memory primarily used in entry-level and budget smartphone models. However, this figure is expected to rise to 7–9% in 2027.

Reballed memory is recycled memory salvaged from older or discarded devices. The term reball comes from the process itself, in which the solder balls on a used memory chip are first melted so the chip can be removed from the old device, then re-soldered to a new device, thus allowing the component to be reused rather than discarded. You can see the process in action in the video below.

This offers manufacturers a cheaper alternative to sourcing new memory chips, potentially helping them keep production costs under control. Currently, reballed 4GB LPDDR4X memory modules make up the majority of such components on the market, and they are used in 4G smartphones priced below CNY 1,299 (approximately $200).

This tactic is becoming increasingly important for smartphone makers, as customers are particularly sensitive to price increases in the budget segment. This leaves limited room to raise retail prices without affecting demand. Using reballed memory can help offset rising bill of materials (BOM) costs while allowing brands to keep entry-level devices affordable.

TrendForce expects DRAM prices to rise even further in the first quarter of 2027, which may put additional pressure on smartphone manufacturers. As a result, the use of recycled memory and other lower-specification components could gradually expand beyond the entry-level segment and into more premium smartphones. What is currently a cost-saving measure for budget devices could eventually become a broader strategy for manufacturers looking to manage expenses amid a prolonged period of high memory prices.

The rising cost of memory is also pushing PC enthusiasts and hardware hobbyists to explore unconventional ways to reuse existing DRAM chips. Recently, an electronics hobbyist converted a relatively inexpensive $120 DDR5 SO-DIMM kit into a desktop memory kit valued at around $1,000. The project involved salvaging an SK hynix 2x 16GB DDR5-5600 SODIMM kit purchased from Facebook Marketplace and reballing the chips onto custom desktop DIMM PCBs, with the resulting modules reportedly capable of reaching DDR5-7800 speeds.

Converting laptop memory into desktop DIMMs is technically demanding and requires considerable expertise and specialized equipment. Similarly, reballing memory for use in smartphones is far from straightforward, particularly given the tiny solder connections in modern BGA (Ball Grid Array) packages. Nevertheless, both developments highlight how manufacturers, repair specialists, and hardware enthusiasts are exploring alternatives to reuse existing memory to offset rising costs and limited availability.

A new GitHub repository dubbed ram-altman features a script to monitor your PC’s RAM usage and report back to the eponymous OpenAI boss. Sam Altman infamously described people having spare, underutilized DRAM in computers at home as “quite terrible” in a recent podcast. Thus, developer Iain Kay was inspired to write a bash script that emails the OpenAI boss once a day to report on any RAM that is underutilized. Clearly this is not a serious tool, or rather “The memory accounting is. The correspondence isn't,” says Kay.

ram-altman leans on the MemAvailable query, which returns the kernel's own estimate of how much memory programs can claim without swapping, explains the developer of this script. When installed, it checks every five minutes and emails Altman once a day if you are found to be wasting this precious resource.

The emails take the .CSV file logs of your RAM use throughout the day as the data source to compose a summary email. These script-generated messages rotate through eight subject lines, 10 humorous message boilerplates, and six signoffs. Sample emails can be seen on the ram-altman.lol website. Altman’s email address isn’t supplied as part of the script.

If your machine is using 90% or more of its RAM, then you won’t be reported to the OpenAI boss for wasting memory. Also, if you don’t want to disturb Altman, you can run the tests without emailing anyone with the terminal command: bash ram-altman.sh --dry-run

The developer isn’t too scathing of the OpenAI boss. Kay quotes Altman’s explanations that his remarks were taken out of context. Moreover, the dev doffs his cap to the artificial intelligence leader’s humorous display name change to ‘Ram Altman’ on X last week. That’s where the name for this script came from.

ram-altman is a free bash script available on GitHub. It runs natively on Linux. On Windows, you can use WSL to run it, but someone has ported it for PowerShell too. It won’t run on Mac, but Altman and his minions would find it inconvenient, at best, to remove your soldered-down Apple RAM.

The latest CPU-Z hardware survey data shows 32GB and 64GB memory configurations down 2.5% and 18% year on year, respectively. The driving factor is no mystery: High-capacity memory has become a luxury in modern PC builds. The AI rush is still gobbling up the global DRAM supply, so prices for the best RAM options across DDR4 and DDR5 have gone through the roof.

If you are not familiar with CPU-Z, it is a free program that gives you a detailed breakdown of the hardware inside your system. It only tracks systems where it is actually installed and running, so it does not report monthly retail sales figures. Do not take the data as sales figures in any sense. They represent CPU-Z's active user base.

32GB and 16GB are common configurations that have grown over the years. According to the gathered data, 32GB configurations lead CPU-Z's user base with a 37.2% share, with 16GB configurations close behind at 33%. Not a surprise, really, since applications and games have grown more memory-intensive. 16GB has been the baseline for a long time now, and 32GB is now the sweet spot for many people, even gamers.

On the flip side, 8GB configurations have been steadily declining. They make up only 11% of the surveyed systems. 8GB systems are rare nowadays. You may still find them in legacy systems, basic office machines, or extremely budget-limited builds where performance takes a backseat. Meanwhile, higher-end configurations, including 64GB and 24GB, are still in the minority at 7.3% and 2.3%, respectively.

For the first time, the CPU-Z developer recorded a noticeable decline in higher-capacity configurations. Specifically, 32GB configurations fell 2.5% year over year, while 64GB options dropped a significant 18%. This is likely due to the steep rise in memory prices, which has forced consumers to reconsider the cost-benefit of larger capacities.

As the price per gigabyte goes up, buyers are opting for more affordable capacities. Lower-capacity memory kits have seen a somewhat revival. The 16GB configuration, often considered the minimum, has rebounded by 12.9%. Similarly, 8GB configurations, which were previously in sharp decline, grew 5.5%.

Interestingly, 24GB configurations also increased by 19.7% and have become a compromise for consumers who need more than 16GB of memory but do not want to spend a lot of money on a premium 32GB memory kit.

How much money are you willing to spend during the Black Friday sales?

The current distribution between DDR4 and DDR5 memory types reveals that DDR4 remains the dominant memory standard at 54.5%. In contrast, DDR5, despite being the latest memory technology, is still in its early adoption phase at 32.9%. DDR4 has been the de facto standard for almost a decade now, so it will take time for DDR5 to overtake it.

Nonetheless, the noticeable 6% growth in DDR4 and 2.9% decline in DDR5 suggests budget-conscious consumers are sticking with platforms that still embrace DDR4, such as AMD's Zen 3-powered Ryzen 5000 (codenamed Vermeer) or Intel's 13th Generation Raptor Lake processors. CPU-Z's processor charts show a significant increase in Zen 3 chips, including the Ryzen 7 5700X, Ryzen 5 5600, and Ryzen 5 5500, with figures up to 42.8%, 36.1%, and 67.3%, respectively.

Although both DDR4 and DDR5 have increased in price, the former remains slightly more affordable. Companies are supporting the effort too, such as AMD rereleasing the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, vendors restarting DDR4 and DDR4 motherboard production, or Intel preparing rewarmed Raptor Lake Next chips for 2027.

A recent report from The Information suggested that TSMC is exploring 3D DRAM production at Nvidia's request as surging demand for AI hardware strains global DRAM supplies and drives up prices. If the proposal were to come to fruition, it could mean a new, albeit prone to cyclical risks, business for TSMC and could dramatically expand its role in the AI supply chain. For its part, TSMC states that it is a pure-play logic foundry and plans to remain a logic foundry, which essentially means a denial of the report.

"Please note that TSMC focuses on our core business at all times, which is dedicated IC foundry," a TSMC spokesperson told Tom's Hardware. "Our mission is to be the trusted technology and capacity provider of the global logic IC industry for years to come."

Despite the denial, according to two people familiar with the initiative cited by The Information, TSMC has begun preparing plans for 3D DRAM manufacturing following a request from Nvidia, its largest customer. The initiative is reportedly overseen by Hsu Kuo-chin, TSMC’s vice president responsible for advanced packaging and former head of Micron’s Taiwanese operations. The effort comes amid widespread memory shortages that turned memory from a commodity into a strategic asset that could determine whether a company can ship its products to customers or not.

Although TSMC works closely with DRAM producers as it packages memory into system-in-packages (SiPs) for its customers, the company lacks the expertise and production capacity to make DRAM, let alone 3D DRAM. Meanwhile, given that 3D DRAM is years away even for major memory makers, pursuing a 3D DRAM strategy cannot solve memory shortages for at least five years.

Unlike conventional DRAM, which arranges memory cells in a single plane, 3D DRAM places multiple levels of memory cells vertically to increase capacity per wafer. All three leading DRAM makers — Micron, Samsung, and SK hynix — are working on their 3D DRAM projects. However, Micron's DRAM strategy includes at least four more planar DRAM process technologies before 3D DRAM becomes a reality.

While TSMC has arguably the industry's best logic process technologies, DRAM production requires entirely different manufacturing processes, which TSMC would have to develop, should it pursue making memory for its customers. Meanwhile, producing 3D DRAM requires completely different fabrication techniques to construct multiple memory-cell layers while controlling defects and maintaining acceptable yields. It is hardly possible to develop a 3D DRAM manufacturing process without having a competitive planar DRAM process technology, and TSMC does not have one.

One of the options for TSMC to enter the DRAM business would be to acquire a small specialty memory producer that has its own fabrication capability. This would give TSMC a credible route into advanced DRAM manufacturing without having to develop the underlying memory technology and IPs from scratch. However, small makers do not have leading-edge commodity DRAM nodes, so TSMC would still need to invest billions of dollars and years of R&D into development of a leading-edge process technology for DRAM.

However, entering DRAM manufacturing would expose TSMC to substantial market risks. Memory shortages frequently encourage capacity expansions that eventually create oversupply, depressing prices and profitability. Such uncertainty could surely make TSMC think twice before going down the DRAM route. Furthermore, entering the DRAM business could also complicate TSMC's relationship with large DRAM makers in general, and SK Hynix, which partnered with the foundry in 2024 to manufacture logic base dies for next-generation HBM products, in particular.

TSMC’s potential entry into DRAM manufacturing could also raise antitrust questions, particularly if the company combines its dominant position in leading-edge logic manufacturing, leading position in advanced chip packaging, and ramping memory production. Regulators could examine whether such vertical integration would enable TSMC to favor its own memory products or disadvantage competitors that lack such a vertical integration. Then again, in-house DRAM development by TSMC could also strengthen competition by introducing another supplier into a market dominated by just three manufacturers.

Yet, TSMC does not necessarily need to manufacture DRAM to capitalize on growing demand for advanced memory. Instead, it could capture a larger share of the value generated by DRAM by producing sophisticated logic base dies for HBM, integrating memory with processors using its SoIC hybrid bonding technology, and developing customized memory solutions with partners such as GUC and established DRAM manufacturers. This approach would allow TSMC to expand its presence in the advanced memory market without investing billions of dollars in developing competitive DRAM process technologies from scratch and/or building additional fabs for tens of billions of dollars.

Team Group CEO Chen Ching-wen said during the company’s November 2 earnings call that the memory chip shortage is expected to become worse from the end of 2026 until the end of 2027. BigGo Finance quoted Chen as saying that there is “no downward price trend whatsoever,” and that some purchasers could face a scenario “even money can’t buy goods.” He also noted that the spread between spot and contract prices for memory chips ranges from 30% to 50%, meaning short-term supply is significantly more expensive than long-term contracts.

"We have contracts but can't get enough volume, so we have to go to the spot market and pay a premium to grab supply," the Team Group chief said during the briefing. Contract prices for 16GB DDR5 chips climbed from $8.70 in October 2025 to $48 by September 2026. This is an increase of more than 550% in the past 12 months, and it seems that the price hikes are not letting up. He also estimated that supply and demand will not balance until the latter half of 2028 or perhaps even later. “How can prices fall when there’s nothing left?” said the CEO.

The Chairman also noted that even though CXMT and YMTC have increased their market share to almost 10%, most high-end DRAM and NAND flash chips still come from Kioxia, Micron, Samsung, and SK hynix. Even then, the prices for the chips that these Chinese companies make still track the market closely, meaning they’re not the budget savior that many were expecting. As such, he expects that pricing for budget components will not ease until 2029, while high-end chips will continue to remain in short supply.

These estimates go against Acer CEO Jason Chen’s prediction that component pricing will reverse by the latter half of 2027. Chen suggests that only high-end chips, like LPDDR5X-9600 and Nvidia N1-series SoCs, will remain in shortage while mainstream parts will finally go down. PCs will still experience hikes between 5% and 20% until the end of this year, plateau during the first half of 2027, before finally going down. Chen claims that most major suppliers want to hype the shortage for as long as possible to preserve their margins.

Unfortunately, there’s no way for us to know which of these predictions will come true. While consumers would gladly want to have a break from the nearly continuous price hikes that PC parts and components have been experiencing over the past months, the AI data center build-out is apparently continuing, even as many Americans voted against it.

Last month, Micron disclosed its DRAM and NAND memory roadmaps for the next several years, revealing plans to use wafer bonding, new materials that enable making NAND cells smaller, High-NA EUV lithography, and detailing its moves toward 3D DRAM. Perhaps the most revealing part of Micron's story is that the company plans to expand its portfolio of custom DRAM and NAND products as AI developers increasingly require memory and storage solutions optimized for their unique processor architectures and specific workloads.

" DRAM is nearing atomic limits at this point: although we have confidence in several more planar nodes, we are very focused on making sure that we introduce 3D DRAM at the optimal time from a cost and performance point of view," said Scott DeBoer, president and chief technology and products officer at Micron, at the company's event earlier this month. "[With 3D NAND, we are] really focused on new materials densifying the cell architecture, and continuing to focus on that XYZ scaling going forward."

DRAM: 4F2 cells axed, High-NA EUV lithography, new materials, and 3D DRAM enable future scaling

In a surprising move, Micron decided to abandon plans to produce DRAM with 4F² memory cells, unlike its rivals at CXMT, Samsung, and SK hynix, citing the lack of a viable scaling path beyond where Micron is today. Instead, Micron's roadmap for the coming years includes wafer bonding, High-NA EUV lithography, new materials, and eventually 3D DRAM. The company plans to begin mass production of its next-generation 1δ memory in the second half of 2027, while subsequent 1ε, ζÅ, and ηÅ technologies are at various stages of development. In parallel, Micron is developing two generations of 3D DRAM that could eventually succeed conventional planar memory.

Micron's current 1γ (1-gamma) DRAM process technology, which is in high-volume manufacturing (HVM), is the company's first DRAM node to use EUV lithography. Previously, Micron had used multipatterning with DUV lithography and remained competitive with Samsung and SK hynix, which relied on EUV for critical layers.

Micron's next-generation 1δ (1-delta) fabrication process is currently in the yield ramp stage and is scheduled to enter mass production in the second half of 2027. The company expects the technology to increase bit density by mid-20% compared to 1γ, while advanced high-k metal gate (HKMG) CMOS, new materials, angstrom-level process control, and equipment intelligence should improve performance, power efficiency, and ultimately yields as well as costs.

Micron plans to manufacture 1δ DRAM in the U.S. and use the technology for next-generation DDR, LPDDR, graphics memory, HBM5, vertical HBM (vHBM), and vertical Edge Inference Memory (vEIM) products. Meanwhile, to make HBM5, vHBM5, and vEIM products, the node will also support additional features like through-silicon vias (TSVs) and other elements to improve thermal performance.

The subsequent 1ε (1-epsilon) process will rely on wafer bonding, which will enable Micron to produce different structures on separate wafers and then bond them together. This approach could increase flexibility in memory design and manufacturing, but Micron has yet to disclose its plans to implement wafer bonding, which structures it will bond, or what improvements in density, performance, and power consumption the technology will provide. The process is currently under development, and there is no announced production schedule.

Micron's ζÅ (zeta-angstrom) production node is currently in early development and will introduce High-NA EUV lithography to memory manufacturing, which will enable further reductions in critical dimensions. The company has not disclosed how many layers will require High-NA lithography, the expected density improvements, or when the technology will enter mass production. However, it is obvious that the node will not be here until at least 2030, years after Samsung and SK hynix adopt High-NA EUV at their DRAM fabs (planned for 2028).

The ηÅ (eta-angstrom) process represents the most distant generation on Micron’s disclosed planar DRAM roadmap and is currently in the pathfinding stage. After Micron inserts High-NA EUV lithography into its DRAM production flow, the company intends to bet on other methods of scaling. Although Micron mentions new materials, it hasn't identified them or explained how they will affect device structures. These could include new photoresists, deposition precursors, dielectric materials, or conductive materials that would enable the company to manufacture smaller transistors and capacitors, and ultimately increase DRAM cell density.

In any case, Micron's roadmap is focused on continuing development of DRAM based on 6F² cells, which differs from the plans of CXMT, Samsung, and SK hynix.

3D1 and 3D2: Transition to 3D DRAM is looming

In parallel with conventional DRAM development, Micron is working on two generations of 3D DRAM, currently called 3D1 and 3D2. Unlike planar DRAM, which primarily relies on smaller memory cells to increase bit density, 3D DRAM would use the vertical dimension to accommodate more memory cells within a given area. Micron intends to introduce the technology when it becomes competitive with conventional DRAM in terms of manufacturing costs and performance. The company has not disclosed architectures, layer counts, or density targets.

In fact, while Micron has outlined its future memory architectures through 2030, its DRAM manufacturing roadmap provides a firm production window only for the 1δ process, which is scheduled to enter high-volume manufacturing in the second half of 2027. The company has not disclosed production dates for subsequent planar DRAM nodes or either generation of 3D DRAM.

Custom HBM and vertical memory architectures

In addition to conventional DRAM, Micron plans to use its future manufacturing technologies for HBM4E, HBM5, HBM5E, and new vertically integrated memory architectures. Starting with HBM4E, the company will offer both standard and custom HBM products, which will be followed by custom HBM5E, vHBM, and vEIM (vertical Edge Inference Memory). All of these will mark the re-emergence of custom memory in mass-produced products.

Custom HBM4E (cHBM4E) will enable Micron's customers to shrink memory I/O width and/or integrate additional logic into the memory's base die to free up valuable die space for compute and optimize performance and power consumption for specific AI accelerators. According to Scott DeBoer, Micron’s president and chief technology and products officer, some of these functions would otherwise reside in the ASIC itself, so moving them closer to memory should improve overall system efficiency.

"When we co-design a base die, and the certain logic elements that are desired to be put in that base die are generally an offload from GPU circuitry anyway onto the base die to put it closer to the memory," said DeBoer. "Moving what makes more sense onto the base die will still be a reality in [the] vertical HBM timeframe as well."

To support these capabilities, Micron intends to use advanced foundry process technologies for the base dies of both standard and custom HBM products, although it has not disclosed specific nodes. For custom designs, the company will select the most cost-effective process that meets customer requirements. For example, Micron expects HBM4E to require more advanced CMOS technologies to meet its performance and power targets.

Further down the road, Micron intends to introduce vertical HBM (vHBM), which will stack memory directly on top of ASICs and CPUs rather than next to them on an interposer. This architecture promises substantially higher bandwidth, thanks to dense vertical connections (as well as significantly lower latencies) thanks to adjacent placement, but it is also set to create considerable challenges related to power delivery and heat dissipation. To address them, Micron plans to use hybrid bonding for advanced interconnects, integrated heat spreaders, and thermally aware designs. Interestingly, the company expects conventional HBM and vHBM to coexist in some designs, where vHBM provides maximum bandwidth, while traditional HBM serves capacity requirements.

Another technology under development is vertical Edge Inference Memory (vEIM), which shares many of its packaging and integration technologies with HBM, but targets applications that require power efficiency more than maximum bandwidth. Micron's 1^st Generation vEIM aims to deliver formidable HBM4-like 2 TB/s of bandwidth while consuming less than 1 picojoule per bit of data transfer energy.

Both architectures will require close cooperation with customers to optimize memory, logic, packaging, and thermal characteristics for particular applications, so Micron will need to work with its clients to make vHBM and vEIM successful. Interestingly, Micron's customer-specific development efforts extend beyond HBM and EIM.

For example, the company is collaborating with Meta to optimize LPDDR6 for data center applications, which primarily include reliability, serviceability, and availability. Micron expects LPDDR6 to reduce power consumption by approximately 35% compared to LPDDR5, which will be very important for dense memory deployments. The company also intends to develop DDR6 — which targets 2X DDR5 bandwidth — in cooperation with major customers to better understand and ultimately meet their needs.

Speaking of customer cooperation, DeBoer stresses that Micron now collaborates with customers from the earliest stages of product definition through joint design, development, validation, and volume production. According to the executive, this approach differs substantially from how the company worked with customers previously.

"Across our AI co-invention opportunities we are co-imagining, co-designing, co-developing, co-validating, and then delivering at scale," DeBoer said. "This opportunity is truly unique. It is very different than the way we interacted with customers even three or four years ago."

Advanced CMOS: More than 10X performance improvement

In addition to shrinking DRAM cells and developing vertical memory architectures, Micron is developing advanced CMOS technologies for peripheral circuitry. The company's roadmap includes several generations of DRAM CMOS logic with high-k metal gate transistors, followed by 1^st and 2^nd Generation 3D CMOS technologies.

Micron expects these advances to increase its CMOS logic performance by more than 10X between 2020 and 2030, which should help the company address the growing bandwidth and power requirements of AI-oriented memory products.

3D NAND: From next-gen 400L 3D NAND to AI-oriented NAND

Although Micron's event was mostly dedicated to the future of DRAM, the company also shared some details about its upcoming NAND innovations, which include 11^th Generation 3D NAND with 400 layers, post-G11 3D NAND, and AI-oriented NAND memory that either offers high bandwidth or high IOPS.

Micron's next-generation G11 (N170) 3D NAND technology represents a substantial departure from its current G9 (N160) process. The company plans to increase the number of active memory layers from 276 to more than 400, introduce wafer-on-wafer bonding, and implement an industry-leading memory cell pitch.

These improvements are expected to double the bit density of G11 3D NAND compared with G9 3D NAND, presumably from 21 Gb/mm² to 42 Gb/mm² in the case of 3D TLC devices, which should substantially reduce manufacturing costs per bit once the technology reaches mature yields.

In addition to increased storage density, G11 also targets a 50% increase in I/O speed compared with G9, which implies a potential transfer rate of approximately 5,400 MT/s. Furthermore, Micron expects to reduce data transfer energy consumption by more than 25% per bit, an important improvement for high-capacity SSDs and AI storage systems that tend to move huge amounts of data.

One of the most important changes with G11 is the adoption of wafer-on-wafer bonding, which lets Micron manufacture memory arrays and the periphery and I/O circuits on another wafer, then bond them together. Chinese manufacturer YMTC has used this method to maximize storage capacity and performance, so it is not surprising that Micron and other memory manufacturers are adopting the technique as well.

Micron expects to start mass production of G11 3D NAND in the second half of 2027.

Improving 3D NAND past G11: New materials and further XYZ scaling

Micron intends to continue improving 3D NAND beyond 11^th Generation through a combination of new materials, denser memory cell architectures, and more energy-efficient devices and data paths. Specifically, Micron is investigating high-mobility materials that could improve the electrical characteristics of future memory devices, as well as ultra-dense cell architectures intended to increase storage density beyond what an increase in active layers provides.

Meanwhile, more energy-efficient circuitry and data paths should help offset the growing power consumption associated with higher NAND capacities and faster interfaces.

"Beyond G11, we have a strong roadmap, not going to go into great detail on it today, but really focused on new materials densifying the cell architecture, and continuing to focus on that XYZ scaling going forward," said DeBoer. "[…] The current industry direction and Micron’s direction is scaling both by adding layers [and] also by shrinking the cell dimensions."

The company has not identified the materials it intends to introduce or explained how they will affect memory cell structures. Nor has it provided quantitative density, performance, or power targets for NAND generations beyond G11.

AI-oriented NAND: Higher IOPS and bandwidth

Although Micron is not ready to share details about its G12 or G13 3D NAND generations, the company disclosed that it is developing two specialized NAND architectures for AI applications.

The first — High-IOPS AI NAND — architecture focuses on maximum random I/O performance and uses SLC-based designs with small blocks to accelerate workloads such as vector searches, graph analytics, and AI context management. Micron envisions products capable of delivering approximately 25 million to 100 million IOPS, depending on their configuration, and expects to bring products based on this approach to market over the next couple of years.

The second — High-Bandwidth AI NAND — architecture prioritizes bandwidth over random I/O performance. Micron is investigating vertically stacked NAND devices connected through TSVs and equipped with a logic base die that resides close to AI accelerators, so from many points of view this concept resembles SanDisk's HBF. However, Micron does not believe that simply placing NAND stacks alongside AI accelerators on an interposer offers sufficient advantages. Instead, the company is exploring alternative integration approaches that bring NAND closer to compute resources, but don't necessarily consume valuable shoreline (the perimeter, or edge) of AI accelerators.

"[The High-Bandwidth AI NAND is] more costly and has to be implemented in partnership with customers in a way to ensure that they are meeting the mark and the cost point to drive the value proposition," DeBoer said. "We are enabling TSV-stacked NAND with a logic base die to bring memory closer to accelerators. We do not think placing it along the shoreline of the GPU has merit. Instead, we want to position it closer to the compute itself to take advantage of this high-performance NAND."

These specialized AI-focused NAND architectures will complement Micron's conventional SSD roadmap, which includes plans for drives with capacities of up to 512 TB in the foreseeable future.

Apple is about to feel the squeeze from rising memory prices, with the cost of RAM climbing just as the company heads into its busiest shopping season. According to Reuters, Apple expects to pay more for memory in the December quarter, with the CEO, John Ternus, describing the current price increases as “unprecedented. The company has so far managed to soften the blow by using memory bought at lower prices, cutting costs elsewhere and raising prices on some products. However, it is reported that its manufacturing bill has climbed by $33 billion in just a few months.

But that cushion is getting thinner, and Apple expects memory purchases to become even more expensive into 2027. “What we're seeing with memory pricing right now is unprecedented. And as we said earlier in the September quarter, we did see higher memory costs as compared to the June quarter, which were partly offset by the benefit of carrying inventory and lower costs on certain non-memory components. Now for the December quarter, we expect even higher memory costs, partly offset by a few factors. So as you know, we changed the price on many of our products, including Mac and iPad at the end of June and iPhone in September, and these price increases provided some offset.” Ternus said during Apple’s November 2 earnings call.

Memory is used across Apple's hardware lineup, so sustained price increases could affect manufacturing cost for several product categories—although Apple has not announced another round of price increases. Absorbing higher components could, however, indefinitely become difficult. Dave Nicholson, Chief Research Officer at the Futurum Group, also identified memory prices as a growing pressure point for Apple's margins and hardware pricing through the holiday season and into 2027. According to him, Apple is in a different position from companies pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into AI data center infrastructure. The impact of higher component costs is easier to quantify than the eventual returns on massive AI capital expenditure, he said.

And the warnings from Apple's suppliers suggest that the cost pressure is unlikely to ease quickly. Last month, Samsung, a major supplier of RAM(DRAM), NAND flash storage and OLED displays for Apple, said that memory demand would far exceed supply as AI infrastructure continues to expand. Its memory division also reported a quarter-on-quarter increase in DRAM average prices during the third quarter, while NAND prices rose by high-teen percentages. Senior executive vice president of its memory business warned the supply crunch could extend to 2028 and beyond. Elsewhere, SK Hynix delivered a similar warning, saying it had secured long-term agreements covering more than Half of its production capacity for2027 and 2028. Micron, the third major supplier for Apple aside from Samsung and SK Hynix, is also benefiting from the surging demand for memory. Its latest published outlook warns that supply shortages in memory and storage could take “considerable time” to improve.

We have previously reported several signs of the pressure now confronting Apple. In January, the company was already scrambling to secure memory supplies amid strong demand, with then CEO Tim Cook warning that rising prices could have a greater impact on earnings. By June, rising component expenses had translated into higher retail prices. Apple increased prices across several Mac and iPad models, including a $400 increase to the starting price of the MacBook Pro, due to the RAM crisis. In July, Cook described the memory market as a “hundred-year-flood” and said Apple expected to pay more for memory in the September quarter. The company had also increased its inventory to $11.09 billion as it built a buffer against supply and price pressures.

The latest Steam Survey appears to show that gamers blessed with systems packing 32GB or more RAM and 1TB or more storage are a dwindling breed. This survey is posted without comment by Valve, as usual, but appears to show a significant proportional rise in gamers using 8GB and 16GB RAM PCs, which occurs largely at the expense of the 32GB brigade. The latest stats also show a noticeable increase in storage capacity poverty in the last month. Are the symptoms of the AI industry-induced components crunch now becoming evident among the PC gaming public?

The AI-pocalypse delivered components crunch has been in the headlines for months but it is still jarring to see it impact the vast PC gaming landscape. When we’ve browsed desktop and laptop PCs for the best gaming PC deals over the past months, the trend is clear. Systems that look like they are designed for gamers or enthusiasts are now frequently fitted with just 16GB of RAM as standard, and also feature smaller storage devices that one might have expected. But to see the Steam Survey suggesting that the share of 32GB systems has now collapsed by -5.16% is startling. Only last month, 32GB was the most popular configuration among gamers according to the same survey.

RAM is probably the hardest-hit component segment of AI-driven demand so far. We maintain a RAM price tracking page at Tom’s Hardware and the current state of the market means that DIYers or upgraders need to spend about $250 for 16GB DDR5 or $450 for 32GB DDR5. Those prices change regularly, as well.

Moving onto the sudden recorded change in storage configurations in use by Steam gamers, and we see that folks with 1TB of total fixed storage space or above shrunk by 4.68%. As the categories are currently defined, this appears to show the reduction in the number of systems coming with either a 2TB and 4TB SSD as standard. That’s because the 750GB to 999GB category grew +2.36%, and Windows registers a '1TB' boot disk as a smaller (a quick check shows ours at 924GB). 250GB to 499GB total storage systems were also up a similar amount (+2.30%). Overall, it looks like systems being used for Steam gaming are increasingly fitted with these smaller capacity SSDs. Enthusiasts, gamers, and DIYers wanting to expand their storage at the best prices are advised to keep an eye on our frequently updated SSD price tracking page.

We are currently seeing some extraordinary things in the GPU market, with reports of RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 cards being removed from retail. In the Steam Survey this month the RTX 5080 is still at position 14. However, the joint most popular GPUs are the RTX 5070 and the aging RTX 3060 – both with 3.78% of the market.

We are aware that there are sometimes some strong undercurrents in the Steam Survey that cause unusual fluctuations in the figures. However, the numbers this month don’t look like they have been impacted by a Chinese user or Chinese internet café PC influx, which have previously shown odd trends (such as a rise in Windows 10 usage). Actually, the Steam Survey shows Chinese (Simplified) language users surveyed are sharply down this month, so the survey should more accurately represent the system configurations typical among gamers in the West.

Raspberry Pi boss Eben Upton has officially announced price rises for some 16GB products. Specifically, the price of the 16GB Raspberry Pi 5 is being raised by $80 to $385, and the 16GB Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 will go up by $40. In a glimmer of better news, the price of the Raspberry Pi 500+ all-in-one desktop, which also features a 16GB model, is being held, but it was already rather pricey.

Upton framed the decision to raise prices as being due to “the steep rises in the cost of memory over the past two years.” He explained that other computer makers have had to make similar decisions recently. That sounds fair, and he added that Raspberry Pi had been doing what they could to minimize costs passed on to customers.

The price rise of the headline 16GB Raspberry Pi 5 to $385 is effective immediately. As is the $40 increase to the CM5 16GB variant. Of course, both these 16GB devices have seen prior increases in price since being launched at $120 and $135, respectively.

Some moderately good news was that there would be no price increase today for the Raspberry Pi 500+ 16GB all-in-one keyboard wedge computer. Upton didn’t mention that this is already rather expensive at $485, though.

Indeed, there have been several waves of price increases affecting Pis since the components RAMpocalypse began. Only a month ago we saw a similar cost-of-memory post by Upton on the official blog, this time accompanied by news that there were price increases being implemented for the 2GB Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi 5 models. Prices of both rose by $12.50, to $67.50 and $77.50, respectively. Perhaps this price gulf between the 2GB and 16GB Pi 5 helps highlight the heavy impact of RAM pricing even more clearly than today’s blog. 1GB devices haven’t seen price rises recently.

The price rises, and comparison in prices between high-and-low memory density models makes it all the more important “to make sure you’re not paying for more memory than you need,” indicates the Raspberry Pi blog about the latest price increases. Sadly for the Pi business, hobbyists and makers already seem to be moving away from the full-sized Pi and CM products for many DIY projects.

The Pi/pricing relationship

Higher pricing is affecting all sorts of computer products, but it might have a particular impact on Raspberry Pi’s business. Generations of this device were explicitly designed around a strict budget constraint, and very famously stuck to a $25–$35 target price for many years.

Now the core Raspberry Pi business is being squeezed by simpler microcontrollers at the low end, where the use of Picos and ESP32 boards have become increasingly popular for small projects. At the other end of the market, with some Pis approaching $400 or $500, makers start to eye entry-level x86 SBCs and mini PCs. Even a cheap mini PC can be powerful with a stronger CPU, GPU, NPU, and more. Mini PCs can win on flexibility and expandability too, and there’s a wide variety to choose from capable of running the most popular and capable OSes and applications.

Dave Plummer, former Microsoft engineer and wizard of Task Manager, Windows Pinball, and now TMOG, has an interesting project in his hands once again. After seeing exactly how many zeros were in the price tag for a megabyte of memory for his vintage PDP-11, he decided to take matters into his own hands and conjure up a new RAM board.

The PDP-11 is from 1970, and later models could fit in as much as four megabytes of memory. Plummer enlisted the help of ChatGPT and the EasyEDA online circuit simulator, though he notes that he hadn't done complicated projects like this before. As several PDP-11 models used Q-Bus boards for main system components, he designed this RAM as a standalone card, then tested it on a backplane alongside another board containing the system's M8190 CPU.

Atop it, he placed a Lattice MachXO2 FPGA serving as a memory controller (model 2000HC, if you're wondering), connected to four ISSI 1 MB memory chips. After adding a U2S I/O chip, a bank of DIP switches, comm ports, and sprinkling a handful of capacitors, he had a complete circuit. The M8190 board design has a 22-bit bus and reserves the top 256 KB for I/O and ROM.

However, it wasn't a first-time-lucky project. Plummer encountered a few abortive starts, as he'd never flash-programmed an FPGA chip before. He fixed that after a few attempts, but then he fell into what appears to be a classic PDP-11 trap.

The machine's memory bus design means it can only access entire words (two bytes) at once, and treats the lowest bit in a memory address as a "lane" selector that picks between the low or high byte in the word.

When reading, the CPU will pick out the right byte itself, but Plummer's "memory controller" still needs to return two. Similarly, on writes, the bit selector must be read and then the proper byte selected so that only that will be updated, as the bus lines will still carry an entire word that could otherwise write invalid data.

Plummer seemingly wasn't aware of this before, and one commenter joked that he'd "built 4MB of memory that turned out to be 2MB", to which he replied that the memory "only returns every second word," matching the aforementioned design pattern. Although there are no further updates, since more commenters pointed this out, we assume that he implemented an easy fix in his FPGA code.

One person suggested that he sidestep the entire problem and implement his memory in software via a Raspberry Pi instead, wired directly to the PDP bus. Plummer replied that he'd basically done that already last week with a modern QBone DEC interface board, which in turn contains a Beaglebone Black atop it (similar to a Raspberry Pi).

Having jettisoned 4F² memory cells from its roadmap, Micron must use different methods to continue scaling its DRAM devices in the coming years to keep up with rivals planning to use smaller DRAM transistors towards the end of the decade. Instead, Micron intends to introduce wafer bonding with its upcoming 1ε DRAM process technology and adopt High-NA EUV lithography for subsequent generations. Meanwhile, the company is developing new types of memory, including vertical high-bandwidth memory (vHBM) and vertical edge inference memory (vEIM), which will be integrated directly on top of processors.

"DRAM is nearing atomic limits at this point," said Scott DeBoer, president and chief technology and products officer at Micron, during the company's event this week. "Although we have confidence in several more planar nodes, we are very focused on making sure that we introduce 3D DRAM at the optimal time from a cost and performance point of view."

Wafer bonding, High-NA EUV, and new materials

Micron's current 1γ DRAM process is already in high-volume manufacturing, whereas its successor, 1δ, is scheduled to enter volume production in the second half of 2027. The latter promises a mid-20% increase in bit density and is optimized for future AI memory products, including HBM5, vHBM, and vEIM. Beyond 1δ, Micron plans to introduce wafer bonding with its 1ε process, which is currently under development. However, the company has not disclosed how it intends to implement wafer bonding or what improvements it expects from the technology.

For subsequent generations — ζÅ and ηÅ — Micron plans to adopt High-NA EUV lithography (ζÅ, zeta angstrom, Micron's 1^st Generation sub-10nm-class DRAM node) and new materials (ηÅ, eta angstrom, Micron's 2^nd Generation sub-10nm-class DRAM node) to continue shrinking DRAM cells. For many of its upcoming fabrication technologies that will be used over the next five to 10 years, Micron is also collaborating with Albany NanoTech. Of course, as with all organizations like Albany NanoTech, we are mostly talking about fundamental, or pre-competitive, IP that could be used for DRAM production at some point.

 "Albany NanoTech, our announced focus on advanced lithography [is] really driving High-NA EUV roadmap for DRAM," said DeBoer. "In particular at Albany with our team there, focused on the next five to ten years."

Micron is also developing 3D DRAM technologies and lists two generations — 3D1 and 3D2 — in its roadmap already. However, the company has not disclosed its architectures or launch schedules, as it intends to introduce 3D DRAM only when the technology offers sufficient advantages in manufacturing costs, complexity, and performance over conventional planar DRAM.

"When we look at three 3D DRAM we have that on the roadmap, as I mentioned, and it is shown here in between one zeta and one eta," said Micron's CTO. "But in reality, this is a parallel path, and we will implement it [3D DRAM] in a fashion that is ideal for cost, complexity, and device performance."

Going vertical, becoming critical

Beyond developing new process technologies for its upcoming DRAM products, Micron is also working on all-new types of DRAM products that are tailored for very specific use cases, including vertical HBM (vHBM), vertical edge inference memory (vEIM), and various custom HBM (cHBM) implementations.

vHBM will place memory stacks directly on top of processors (such as AI accelerators and AI GPUs) rather than next to them. This approach promises substantially lower latencies and higher bandwidth thanks to shorter connections. However, placing memory above a processor creates significant thermal challenges and limits the number of memory stacks that can be integrated on top of an ASIC. Therefore, Micron expects vHBM to complement conventional HBM, which will continue to provide the bulk of memory capacity in many AI accelerators.

Another technology under development is vertical edge inference memory (vEIM), which shares architectural and packaging characteristics with vHBM but targets different applications. Whereas vHBM prioritizes maximum bandwidth for high-performance AI accelerators, vEIM is focused on energy efficiency for edge AI processors used in autonomous vehicles, robotics, and other power-constrained devices. Nonetheless, even the 1^st Generation vEIM targets formidable 2 TB/s bandwidth at <1pJ/bit energy, which is in line with what HBM4 currently offers (at 8 GT/s over a 2,048-bit interface). Micron intends to optimize these products with customers according to their bandwidth, capacity, and power requirements.

Both vertical memory architectures will require advanced packaging technologies, particularly hybrid bonding, which enables much denser connections than conventional microbumps. Thermal management will also be critical, especially for vHBM. To meet cooling requirements, Micron is developing specialized heat-spreading structures to transfer heat from hot regions of memory base dies through the DRAM stacks.

The company has not disclosed when vHBM, vEIM, or cHBM will enter commercial production. What is important about the development of such types of memory is that it indicates that future improvements in memory performance will increasingly depend on advanced packaging and closer integration with processors, which will require collaboration between DRAM makers and logic developers. In turn, this transforms memory from a commodity to a critically important ingredient of an ASIC design.

DRAM featuring 4F² memory cells has long been considered one of the holy grails of the DRAM industry, as they promise to reduce cell area by 33% compared with conventional 6F² designs and therefore enable building DRAMs with more memory cells in the same area. However, after working on 4F² memory cells for a couple of decades, Micron has concluded that the architecture offers no meaningful density advantages, increases manufacturing complexity and costs, and has fundamental scaling limitations. This has a dramatic impact on Micron's future plans.

"Micron invented 4F² DRAM," said Scott DeBoer, president and chief technology and products officer at Micron, during the company's event on Wednesday. "The path with 4F² DRAM is always been an option through time, and we have evaluated it and not pursued it due to increased complexity and cost through this past two-decade period of time."

Interestingly, both Samsung and SK hynix still have 4F² memory cells in their roadmaps (according to TechInsights), so Micron's rejection of the technology puts the company on a unique trajectory. Several years ago, the company delayed integration of EUV lithography into its manufacturing flow, contrary to what its rivals did, and still managed to retain competitive positions both in terms of costs and in terms of performance. Therefore, skipping 4F² memory cells is not completely surprising.

4F² is not the future of Micron's DRAM

The main attraction of 4F² DRAM is its theoretically smaller memory cell. The 4F² naming refers to a cell area equivalent to four times the square of the minimum lithographic feature size (F), compared with six times F² for conventional DRAM.

At identical feature dimensions, a 4F² cell occupies approximately 33% less area than a 6F² cell, which could theoretically increase the number of memory cells per wafer by 50%. Such an improvement would reduce manufacturing costs per bit and increase per-device memory capacity even without an equivalent reduction in feature dimensions. However, to make these advantages possible, DRAM makers must develop a suitable transistor architecture and a sufficiently compact capacitor arrangement. This is not easy at all.

The CTO of Micron says that the theoretical advantages of 4F² DRAM do not necessarily translate into higher memory density in practice. DeBoer explained that dimensions and pitch of DRAM capacitors, rather than the nominal area of DRAM transistors, ultimately determine how many memory cells can fit on a wafer. Both 4F² and 6F² transistor structures must fit beneath the capacitors, which means that reducing transistor area alone does not guarantee a corresponding reduction in overall cell size because transistors need a capacitor. Furthermore, Micron believes that 4F² introduces additional manufacturing steps and complexity that increase costs without delivering sufficient benefits.

"It is important to understand the capacitor pitch, the capacitor size, and dimensions, is what sets the DRAM bit density, not whether it is 6F², 4F², 8F²," DeBoer said. "From our investigation of this technology over the past couple of decades, it is a bit of a myth that 4F² actually provides anything versus 6F². It is capacitor pitch that defines the DRAM. You can build the cells, the transistors underlying them in different ways, but they still have to fit under the capacitor pitch, which sets the DRAM [cell size]. So, some of that is just smoke and mirrors in terms of talking about 6F² versus 4F²."

4F² memory cells may curb new process technologies

Instead of adopting the 4F² DRAM cell architecture, Micron plans to continue scaling conventional 6F² DRAM. The company believes it can increase bit density by reducing capacitor pitch and shrinking process technologies even without introducing a fundamentally different transistor architecture.

Advanced lithography, new materials, and wafer bonding should allow Micron to extend planar DRAM scaling for several more generations, according to the company. For example, its upcoming 1δ process technology, scheduled to enter volume production in the second half of 2027, promises a mid-20% improvement in bit density compared with its predecessor. Micron also plans to adopt High-NA EUV lithography for future DRAM generations.

Interestingly, DeBoer fully acknowledges that 4F² DRAM is technically feasible and that Micron itself has manufactured experimental devices based on the architecture. However, its manufacturing complexity and costs become increasingly problematic as feature dimensions shrink, so essentially Micron claims that it can either adopt 4F² or use more sophisticated process technologies, a claim that perhaps implies why China-based CXMT recently praised 4F². Although DeBoer did not identify any specific physical limitations involved, he stated that 4F² has no sustainable scaling path beyond a certain point. This suggests that Micron sees little value in introducing an intermediate architecture that would eventually require another major transition.

"When you look at a scaling path, you can go back a few nodes and absolutely, 4F² can be built back a few nodes, no question about it," DeBoer noted. "It is more complicated, it is more complex, it is more costly, but you can do that. When we look at scaling 4F² beyond where we are sitting today, there it is; it is physics. There are fundamental problems with 4F² scaling that ultimately will lead to 3D DRAM coming in instead of 4F²."

3D DRAM is the future

Indeed, Micron's preferred long-term solution is 3D DRAM, which would increase memory density by stacking memory cells vertically rather than relying exclusively on reductions in their lateral dimensions. Alongside development of multiple next-generation planar DRAM process technologies, the company is already developing multiple generations of 3D DRAM production nodes (which is not surprising, as 3D NAND nodes will rely on fundamental innovations developed for planar processes), although it has not disclosed when the new architecture will enter commercial production. DeBoer indicated that Micron will make the transition when 3D DRAM offers the right combination of density, manufacturing complexity, and cost.

Although both Samsung and SK hynix have 4F² DRAM products in their roadmaps, Micron believes that the assumption that reducing the nominal footprint of DRAM cells improves manufacturing economics is wrong and that extending 6F² scaling and eventually adopting 3D DRAM offers a better long-term strategy.

The two biggest NAND flash memory manufacturers on the planet, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, are reportedly working to upgrade their Chinese factories to produce more advanced chips for use in AI data centers, Reuters reports. The move comes as the two companies continue to fight off competition from the fast-growing Chinese memory makers like CXMT. Fierce competition in the lucrative AI RAM market has already seen manufacturers slash consumer-focused production to allow them to increase production capacity for the more advanced — and money-spinning — components.

Citing four people familiar with the companies' plans, the report claims that Samsung Electronics aims to switch its Xian plant to the production of 286-layer flash chips by the end of the year. SK Hynix has its sights set a little lower, targeting chips with 240 or more layers at its Dalian facility. That factory was taken over back in 2021, but a timescale for the new upgrades isn't clear.

However, while Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are well placed to deal with the growing threat from Chinese chipmakers, both are faced with additional complications in the form of U.S. regulations. Export controls on chipmaking equipment were applied in 2022, with the aim of slowing China's technological progress. Both companies, based in South Korea, must now get licenses in order to install U.S.-built hardware in Chinese factories. The report points to this as a reason for the recent growth of Chinese firms like Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. (YMTC). The company told investors at a recent IPO preparation meeting that it aims to become the world's largest NAND flash producer by the end of 2027.

While both Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix say that they are working in consultation with the U.S. authorities, there's little doubt that this extra step has hampered the companies' ability to upgrade their factories to better meet the new AI memory demand.

It's impossible to overstate just how key Samsung and SK Hynix are to NAND supply. Samsung's Xian factory produces around 40% of the company's global output. It currently produces chips that have around 200 layers, but Samsung's plans aim to boost that to 286 layers for V9 NAND chips. For its part, SK Hynix's Dalian plant currently produces chips with 192 layers, with the company's aim for 240-layer chips reportedly confirmed by three people familiar with the plans.

Meanwhile, CXMT, China's premier chipmaker, is looking to move beyond DRAM production. A report from September 2026 noted that it was eyeing production of 3D NAND memory for use in solid-state storage (SSD) products. The country's largest DRAM producer, CXMT, posted $22.41 billion in revenue and $11.57 billion in net profit in the first half of 2026 after years of losing money. But despite this purple patch, the company is still much smaller than the likes of Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron.

Micron faces a one-day labor stoppage at its Taoyuan operations in Taiwan on October 22, Reuters reports. Micron's employees are striking for concrete terms for this year's bonus and a clearer mechanism for sharing the company's future profits. The strike's teeth come from the resultant financial impact on Micron's operations, as semiconductor fabs are supposed to operate around the clock. The scheduled protest comes amid strong demand for memory chips and will have a minor impact on Micron's memory output.

The Taoyuan union wants Micron to present a specific proposal for this year's additional employee bonus and establish a transparent formula for distributing a portion of future profits. Previous negotiations between the company and the union ended unsuccessfully in September, which prompted employees to approve industrial action in early October. Nonetheless, the union stresses that the October 22 strike is intended to pressure Micron into reaching an agreement rather than terminate negotiations. The union is prepared to conclude a deal if the company presents terms acceptable to employees across its Taiwanese operations.

The situation could become more serious if employees at Micron's Taichung operations, its largest manufacturing site in Taiwan, decide to join the action. A separate labor organization that represents workers at that facility is scheduled to meet with Micron for mediation on October 22, the same day as the Taoyuan protest. However, the Taichung union has not yet authorized a strike.

Micron's fabs in Taiwan produce commodity DDR5 and LPDDR as well as expensive high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for AI accelerators. Amid record demand for memory of all types, even a one-day suspension of operations would have a material impact on Micron's output and earnings.

Modern semiconductor fabs are supposed to work 24/7/365, as many processes cannot be halted. However, if management has sufficient time and personnel to prepare, a one-day warning strike does not necessarily mean a complete shutdown of Micron's Taoyuan manufacturing operations, not to mention permanent damage to wafers or equipment. The actual consequences of the strike will depend on employee participation, which manufacturing operations are affected, and Micron's contingency plans. While it is likely that the output will drop, the decline will likely be negligible.

Micron employs approximately 15,000 people in Taiwan. The workers point to compensation arrangements at Samsung Electronics and SK hynix as examples of how semiconductor manufacturers can distribute profits among employees as AI-driven demand generates unprecedented cash flows for memory firms.

What if you could buy a cheap used DDR5 SODIMM (laptop memory) kit and transform it into a super-fast DDR5 desktop kit? That’s what electronics hobbyist Blighted Agent recently did when they succeeded in converting a SK hynix 2x 16GB DDR5-5600 SODIMM kit they got from Facebook Marketplace for $120 into a 2x 16GB DDR5-7800 desktop kit, claimed to be worth around $1,000. They also had to buy some blank DDR5 desktop memory PCBs from AliExpress for around $16 each, and a set of heatsinks for around $18.

In the above video, our hero says they bought the donor laptop 2x 16GB DDR5-5600 sticks for just $120, which is a bargain. With extra bits and pieces from AliExpress (desktop DDR5 PCBs, etc.), the total bill of materials came to $175. Blighted Agent comments that the SODIMMs used what he believed to be SK hynix A-die modules, which are the same as the ICs used in expensive desktop DDR5 modules like the G.Skill Trident Royal line.

The process began with taking the memory ICs from the donor modules using a hot air station. Then they were cleaned and had 0.45mm leaded solder balls added, using a DDR5 stencil, reballing jig, and hot air. Next, the blank desktop DDR5 PCBs were prepared. A little solder was added to the plethora of BGA connectors to be ready for the memory chips to connect to.

The old DDR5 ICs and the new desktop modules could now be mated, using flux, the preheater, hot air, and watching and prodding carefully with a dental pick. Blighted Agent’s experience lets him know when the BGA chips have successfully mated with the PCB. You can eyeball when they pop precisely into place due to surface tension, and offer up a modicum of resistance to pick prodding.

Finally, the enthusiast added the SPD chip and BIOS chip from the SODIMMs to the new desktop DIMMs. These new desktop DIMMs were quickly tested in a PC before they were finished off with carefully applied thermal pads and the fancy-looking heatsinks.

Blighted Agent felt lucky that there were no issues with the newly created desktop modules. There’s a lot of intricate things that can go wrong during such a process. The initial boot verification showed them recognized in his Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Apex Encore motherboard as two “SK hynix 16,384MB 5600MHz” modules, which was correct. Some tuning resulted in rock-steady performance at DDR5-7800 CL38 and 1.40V. This was verified by stress testing for 90 minutes, which the enthusiast reckons was ample for a gaming PC. It is very likely a better result than using those mechanical SODIMM-to-DIMM converters you can buy, which can be problematic.

Blighted Agent seems to specialize in BGA soldering work, and has also successfully upgraded several graphics cards with double the VRAM. Though videos like this are edited to be brief, and they make the process look easy, the TechTuber admits there is a lot that can go wrong during this kind of rework. Moreover, with RAM modules, they lack the testing equipment to locate an issue with any particular IC on the PCB. So, if this module didn’t work, they might have ended up in a world of pain, not knowing which memory chip had an issue due to either an internal fault or a BGA soldering glitch.

Looking around at used DDR5 SODIMMs, it looks like Blighted Agent was very lucky to get a used working 32GB kit for $120. I just checked eBay U.S., and the best deal there was $320. Meanwhile, the best price for a new 32GB DDR5-6000 kit seems to be $449 at the time of writing.

We reported on Russian enthusiast VIK-on succeeding in a similar project earlier this year, but all their costing was in Rubles, and they went the extra mile in flashing custom firmware so the remade modules would be auto-detected with 6400 MT/s XMP support on most motherboards. In late 2026, DDR5 RAM continues to be too expensive.

Right now, you can grab a budget-friendly, entry-level gaming PC at Best Buy for a very low price, especially given the current economic climate for anything gaming PC-related. On sale at Best Buy is the iBuypower Slate Gaming PC with Intel Arc B570 graphics for just $899. With $300 off its $1,199.99 list price, this is a superb deal for a 1080p gaming machine with DDR5 memory and 10GB of graphics VRAM.

● Check out this deal at Best Buy

This iBuypower's Slate gaming PC comes with a 10-core, 10-thread Intel Core Ultra 5 225F processor, an Intel Arc B570 graphics card with 10GB of VRAM, 16GB of DDR5 memory, and a 1TB NVMe SSD for storage. You will be able to play games in 1440p also with this rig, but you will have to tune individual game settings to get the best frame rates and performance. Ideally, this configuration supports 1080p gaming on higher settings.

The graphics card used in this prebuilt iBuypower gaming PC is the Intel B570 graphics card, which comes with a generous amount of VRAM considering the card's price. 10GB of VRAM is fantastic for 1080p gaming; it is more than ample to handle the textures and shaders on high and ultra settings, offering a great gaming experience at this resolution.

At 1440p resolutions with higher settings, this GPU may begin to struggle when that 10GB of VRAM gets used up and starts to rely on the CPU to compensate. The B570 is a budget graphics card from Intel and has come a long way since its launch performance, thanks to driver optimizations and compatibility with more game titles.

In the chart below, the B570 sits in the middle of the pack, competing with the Nvidia RTX 3060 12GB. You can also check out our Intel Arc B570 review for more detailed information on this GPU's performance.

This prebuilt gaming PC deal from Best Buy is one of the easiest ways to currently jump into the world of desktop PC gaming. The prices of individual components are very high currently, and with that comes the stress and added risk of messing something up trying to build the rig yourself. If you're not confident or familiar with building your own PC, buying a prebuilt comes with the added bonus of an easier warranty situation. Should anything go wrong with your computer, the whole system is covered, and you don't have to troubleshoot individual parts and manufacturers for an RMA.

Leading French eSports club Team Vitality has confirmed that its Paris HQ has been smashed up, with trophies, computer equipment, and more looted over the weekend. Thankfully, no team members or staff have been hurt. The team’s V.Hive premises were attacked by criminal opportunistic looters under cover of the widespread protests in France over issues related to school funding, living costs, and government spending cuts. Other shops, public buildings, and property have been smashed, looted, and sometimes burned.

Above, you can see the confirmation of the serious, unfortunate events seen over the weekend. “Our display windows were destroyed, and our trophies and computer equipment were stolen,” lamented the post [machine translation], while being thankful that no members, staff, or fans of Team Vitality were hurt. The bulletin ends with the news that the V.Hive will remain closed for now, until after damage has been assessed. More information is promised in due course.

There are a multitude of social media posts sharing images, videos, and pointing fingers at what they see as the cause of the protests, riots, and looting. Of course, fingers point in all directions, and unfortunately there are also reports of AI-generated rage-farming media, so keep a critical eye open should you dare to doom scroll.

Of course we’ve focused on the damage and looting of Team Vitality’s HQ due to the tech angle. The compendium of video clips shared by the news organization NEXTA provides evidence of the extent of the V.Hive attack. This 30-second clip appears to show rioters hammering at and kicking in the eSports HQ’s windows, taking items from the premises, and throwing gaming chairs onto bonfires in the street.

We also see accounts like ElBuni share clips of looters brandishing what appear to be eSports trophies from Team Vitality’s HQ (embedded above). The second clip shows looters with their hands inside gaming PCs opened up on the sidewalk. It looks like the hooded and gloved looter in the video is removing RAM sticks, an easily pocketable yet highly valuable PC component, as you will all know.

This morning, the French Prime Minister has called for local and partial curfews to contain the post-demonstration rioting. Meanwhile, there are concerns that there could be copycat behavior across Europe.

Are you looking to buy RAM for an upgrade or an existing PC? You've no doubt seen the news about the extortionate price rises on RAM and storage, thanks to the ongoing AI boom ruining the component market for PC enthusiasts; well, today, we have some slight light in the darkness, with a $108 price cut on some DDR5 memory from Corsair. You can pick up 32GB of Corsair Vengeance RGB RAM (DDR5-5600) for $409 direct from Corsair. I've checked against our own price tracking info and used various other online resources to confirm that this is indeed the cheapest available to purchase memory kit with these speeds.

● Check out this deal at Corsair

This 32GB kit comprises two 16GB matched memory sticks, both with RGB lighting running along the spine of the heat shroud. The Corsair Vengeance RGB RAM is DDR5 with speeds of 5600 MT/s and a CAS latency of 40. This kit comes with Intel XMP profiles that can be selected in the BIOS.

We can't compare prices of RAM now to those of even a year ago. That's just unrealistic in the current AI economic climate, and whether you love or hate AI, it's not going anywhere soon; the rollouts of large data centers and manufacturers focusing resources on profit-heavy AI component production will continue for the foreseeable future.

There's no denying that RAM prices are tough right now. All the signs point to prices going up even further as scarcity becomes more of an issue for anyone wanting to build a PC in the next few years. If you're waiting for a fall in price, or the AI bubble to burst, you could still be waiting for up to a decade for memory and RAM production to normalize to anywhere near previous figures.

If you desperately need RAM now, this is one of the better prices on a 32GB kit. There are faster memory kits available, but you have to, of course, pay more for them, and the performance upgrades in most situations won't even be perceivable for the average user.

Elon Musk has criticized memory makers for what he calls 'extortionate' pricing amid an unprecedented shortage of both conventional DRAM and high-bandwidth memory (HBM). Although Musk did not identify the companies he criticized, his remarks seem to be directed at Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, as he praised Micron for its more 'reasonable' approach at the same time. Interestingly, Micron also enjoys exceptionally high profitability: its latest quarterly gross margin reached 81%.

"Micron has been reasonable regarding future memory prices, while others have been extortionate, which is something today's customers will not forget," Musk wrote in a post on X. "Micron is making the smart move for long-term customer loyalty."

Musk did not provide specific details of said extortionate pricing or disclose terms offered by different memory suppliers (which tend to be confidential). Consequently, it is impossible to determine whether Samsung and SK hynix charge substantially more than does Micron for comparable products. Nevertheless, Musk's remarks suggest considerable frustration with the pricing policies of South Korean memory manufacturers.

Over the past several quarters, memory has transformed from an easy-to-obtain commodity to a strategic asset, and makers of 3D NAND and DRAM have certainly benefitted massively from this shift. Historically, memory makers have responded to strong demand and rising prices with aggressive capacity expansions, which eventually led to oversupply and falling prices. This time around, however, manufacturers have raised memory prices severalfold without comparable increases in production capacity. As a result, supply still lags behind demand and will continue to do so for years to come, which puts further upward pressure on memory prices.

What makes Musk's praise of Micron particularly interesting is the company's financial performance, which clearly suggests that the company is taking advantage of the situation in the market. In its fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, Micron reported revenue of $54.23 billion and a GAAP gross margin of 81%, up from 40% a year earlier. The company's cloud memory unit earned $16.283 billion, and its non-GAAP gross margin totaled 83%; its core data center storage business sold goods worth $18.002 billion with a 90% gross margin; while sales of the automotive and embedded units totaled $6.824 billion with gross margins reaching 84%.

Perhaps the most surprising part of Micron's last quarter report was its mobile and client revenue of $13.114 billion and non-GAAP gross margin of 90%, which means that Micron earned higher profit selling memory and storage for client devices than it did for selling memory solutions for data centers. Such results clearly indicate that even supposedly reasonable memory prices can generate extraordinary profits in the current market.

Memory manufacturers are increasingly shifting toward long-term supply agreements (LTAs) that guarantee future supply and provide customers with predictable prices of DRAM, HBM, and NAND. So far, Micron has signed 26 strategic customer agreements that cover more than 35% of its expected revenue through 2030. These contracts include $32 billion in customer financial commitments, most of which consist of cash deposits. The company acknowledges that its new agreements reflect higher prevailing memory prices, and it by no means is trying to sell memory at a discount.

Samsung has reportedly secured long-term contracts covering 75% – 80% of its planned memory output in 2027, according to South Korea's ⁠Korea Economic Daily (via @Jukan05). SK hynix is reportedly pursuing similar arrangements as AI infrastructure investments continue to absorb available memory capacity.

Market insiders and analysts expect memory supply shortages to persist through at least 2028, and that gives manufacturers considerable leverage in contract negotiations. Memory suppliers have little incentive to reduce prices and are eager to enjoy their position, but Musk's warning suggests that today’s pricing policies could influence customer relationships once supply and demand eventually return to balance.

The AI-induced PC component shortage, which has caused drastic increases in the cost of DIY building, continues to get worse. Since last year, RAM prices have increased by more than 500% and show no sign of slowing down. In August, we reported that DDR5 6000 RAM — the sweet spot benchmark for both performance and pricing — had reached $400; now, the price is $450.

• Save by going slower: CORSAIR Vengeance RGB 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR5 5200 - $399 at Newegg

As mentioned, because DDR5 6000 RAM is a de facto standard configuration and capacity in terms of performance, tracking the price of this particular spec has proven to be a strong barometer of the industry overall. While we track RAM prices across multiple models and kits, we also track the price of 32GB DDR5 6000 RAM daily.

We've been creeping closer to $450 for some time. As of today, the cheapest 32GB DDR5 6000 kit on the market costs $449.97, or three cents shy of $450. Cheaper RAM is still available; this 32GB DDR5 4800 kit is $399 at Corsair, but good, speedy RAM is now harder to buy than ever before. The 4800 Corsair kit once cost just $80.

As RAM prices and other component hikes have a knock-on effect on PC pricing as a whole, it was recently reported that PC shipments in 3Q26 have tumbled by a massive 20%, with the top three vendors shipping 11.6 million fewer units than the same period last year.

Combo deals remain a rare bright spot. Various Newegg bundles could save you as much as $358 when you buy RAM alongside a motherboard, CPU, and even an SSD, and we've seen a recent resurgence in stock on these.

Pre-builts also continue to offer some solace to wannabe DIY builders, with price hikes trickling down to systems more slowly. With industry figures warning that memory shortages could persist well into next year, or even last up to a decade, in the space of just 12 months RAM has gone from being a PC gaming commodity to a luxury few

CXMT expects to launch its first 4F² product, a server DDR5 RDIMM, by the end of the year, company president Cao Kanyu said in remarks reported by Yicai. The memory will be built on a denser cell layout, not yet commercialized, using vertical transistors to reduce the cell’s footprint by about one-third on paper. No speeds or capacities have been announced yet for the new product.

Cao spoke about the new RDIMM at the Integrated Chips and Chiplets Conference on Saturday. A 4F² cell is 2F by 2F at about two-thirds the area of current 6F² cells at the same feature size, and designs so far all stand the transistor up. The company has produced research and patent filings on the technology with papers in 2021, 2023, and 2025, and an 8Gb full-array research example was demonstrated at IEDM 2023.

Cao said CXMT’s version, the Vertical Surrounded Gate (VSG) transistor, has a channel that stands vertically with the gate wrapped around it, allowing stronger gate control with less leakage. Most importantly, standing the transistor up shrinks the cell. CXMT now has more than 300 published patent families tied to 4F², he added. The report says the industry as a whole is moving toward 4F² with 3D solutions that decouple DRAM and CMOS processes, combining them with wafer-level hybrid bonding, which allows logic and cell density to be optimized independently. Cao also covered CXMT’s own hybrid-bonding work, which began in 2019, with published patents.

Aside from this announcement, China’s primary DRAM maker has been in the news lately for its manufacturing and market-share gains. Its fifth-generation G5 DRAM technology platform, announced Sept. 20, is in mass production. TrendForce puts CXMT’s share of global DRAM revenue at 9.5% in the second quarter, up from 7.6% in the first, good for fourth place. Last November, CXMT showed off DDR5-8000 and LPDDR5X-10667. It has revealed itself as a manufacturer to be taken seriously by the biggest existing players.

Samsung showed off a 16Gb, 10nm-class 4F² DRAM design in its ISSCC 2026 paper in February. That one also used vertical-channel transistors (VCT), with the array bonded on top of the periphery using wafer-to-wafer hybrid copper bonding. The company claims the bonding raises dies per wafer by more than 20% with the same design rules. In April, The Elec reported that Samsung had a working 4F² VCT die on its sub-10nm “10a” process, with mass production targeted for 2028. Later South Korean reports clouded that date: the VCT version has since been split off as “D0a-V” with no timeline, and there is no firm timeline for adopting 4F².

SK hynix laid out plans at VLSI 2025 for a 4F² vertical-gate platform and 3D DRAM at nodes of 10nm and below, with circuitry bonded under the cell array. The April report also puts SK hynix’s 4F² debut at the 10b node, one step after Samsung’s 10a. Micron’s plans remain less clear, with no widely reported 2026 statement.

The announcement is perhaps more interesting for what wasn’t mentioned: capacity, speed, die density, process node, named customers, or intended volume. All we have is a date and a purported cell design, admittedly well-supported by the literature, but no product that has been tested by anyone outside of CXMT. Beyond Cao’s talk, CXMT hasn’t posted a release about the product in its Chinese or English newsrooms.

South Korean reports have said that CXMT’s initial products may only partly use 4F² and that producing stable units at volume is a separate challenge. With about 11 weeks left in the year, it will be interesting to see what CXMT actually delivers.

PC shipments globally have dropped by 20.1% year-over-year in the third quarter of 2026, a decline of 15.8 million units. According to research firm IDC Global, this marks a steeper decline compared to the 3.8% year-over-year decrease that the market experienced last quarter. It’s also down 9.1% from the second quarter of this year. Many research firms have been warning about this since late last year, with IDC warning that the PC market could shrink up to 9%, with the budget sector being hit the hardest. Some experts estimate that the situation isn’t expected to improve until 2029, with Tom’s Hardware readers saying that they won’t upgrade their systems in the next two years.

These price increases have been directly caused by the boom in AI data centers, with hyperscalers pouring massive amounts of money into the crucial HBM needed to support AI GPUs. This has led to memory manufacturers pivoting toward this technology, leaving less production capacity for consumer memory. One good example of this is Micron, which killed the Crucial RAM and SSD brand in late 2025 so that it can focus on data center production. As PC makers fight for a shrinking supply of memory chips, we saw memory prices climb by as much as 500%, with 128GB of DDR5 now costing as much as $3,399.

Manufacturers didn’t sit idly by and let the market take its course, though. Many of them stocked up on inventory in the second quarter of 2026 to try and head off the projected higher prices caused by the shortage, which directly led to the reduced shipments being reported. “What we’re seeing is the result of the strong first half pull-in. Vendors and channels loaded up on inventory early in the year to get ahead of price hikes, and that has thrown off the usual seasonality, where Q3 is typically larger than Q2,” said IDC consumer devices research director Jitesh Ubrani. “Channels are now worried about carrying too much inventory into a market where high prices are suppressing demand. That could translate into promotions and some short-term relief for consumers, but we don’t expect pricing anywhere near what it was a year ago. Prices will remain elevated. With macro conditions worsening, the risk is that the outlook for the next few quarters gets worse before it gets better.”

The top three PC vendors suffered the most, with Lenovo shedding 22.6%, HP shipping 30.9% fewer units, and Dell shipments contracting by 25%. On the other hand, Apple’s shipments shrank by 11.3%, while Asus’s numbers fell by 8.6%, with the rest of the market shipping 14% less year-over-year. Despite being hit the hardest, Lenovo, HP, and Dell still maintained their lead at 23.8%, 16.5%, and 12.1% market share, respectively.

Even though other industry leaders, including Micron, say that the situation will not improve for the next few years, Acer CEO Jason Chen went against the grain and said that these fears are just being hyped to protect the margins of memory chip makers. He estimated that PC prices will decline by the latter half of 2027 as Chinese memory chip capacity comes online, with only high-end parts like LPDDR5X-9600 and niche CPUs such as the Nvidia N1 and N1X remaining in short supply.

It's a reasonable assessment that everyone and their dog is tired of Electron-based desktop apps that pack a full web browser and waste gobs of RAM. Spotify lovers now have a reprieve from the memory blues in the form of the Spotifast client.

Spotifast is an OS-native application written in Rust, with an emphasis on lowering memory consumption and CPU utilization. The author claims that the app ought to use 150-200 MB of RAM, compared to the usual 600 MB to 1 GB that the official application chews through.

By default, Spotifast offers a reasonable facsimile of the standard Spotify UI, though with additional features including an EQ-like visualizer on the play bar, and dozens of keyboard shortcuts and playlist management features.

The alternative client also packs a bevy of add-ons, including dark, light, and custom themes, Milkdrop visualization support, and a Winamp mode that turns Spotifast's UI into the much-beloved player.

There's even support for Winamp skins in the .wsz format, too. Those features may be tugging at nostalgia, but they're also a breath of fresh air in this age of excessive minimalism.

To use Spotifast, you'll need to have a Spotify Premium account, as presumably the ad delivery of the free version is tied to the official client. Once installed, you'll configure Spotifast as a connected device and grant it permissions to your account.

For now, there's no support for lossless audio, but that's subject to change — the librespot library underpinning Spotifast's playback doesn't yet support DRM'd lossless files, but might add the feature at some point, as popular demand seems quite high.

You can download Spotifast for Windows, macOS, and Linux and let your machine enjoy some additional free RAM. Since the client is quite new, you might run into some turbulence — but development is active and going at a fast clip. Predictably, Spotify even extended a job offer to the author, who said they'd prefer to remain independent.

If you're in the market for a deal on DDR5 RAM during the Amazon Prime sales, Corsair might have the answer with a sale on 32GB of DDR5 5600 memory. Right now you can save $103 and grab this kit for $414.99.

• Check out this deal at Corsair

This is obviously a lot more expensive than the RAM prices from a year ago, but it's as good as it gets in today's market, with prices continuing to rise and showing no sign of letting up anytime soon. The cheapest DDR5 6000 kit — the sweet spot for AM5 gaming — is $437. For slightly more modest speeds, this is a decent saving, and the cheapest kit of this capacity and clock on the market. Crucially (pun not intended), this kit supports both AMD EXPO and Intel XMP, so will work with either platform for best speeds. If your rig runs with an Intel CPU, you can save $5 more with this kit.

There's no denying that RAM prices are tough right now. Unfortunately, all the signs point to things getting worse, rather than better, with some industry figures suggesting the RAM shortage could last an entire decade.

If you need RAM right now, either for a new build or to upgrade your existing system, then this is about as good as it gets.

Corsair is actually hosting a RAM sale across lots of its products, with savings of up to 30%. Prices remain high, but you can check out the whole sale here.

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

Despite being in the midst of an unprecedented memory chip shortage, it seems that gamers are still willing to invest in their gaming PCs to extract the best performance out of their favorite titles. The September 2026 Steam Survey results show that 42.22% of the surveyed units now have 32GB of system RAM — a 4.77% increase compared to the previous month — while 16GB configurations have shrunk by 3.38%, falling to just 37.82%.

We’ve also seen increases in “weird” memory configurations — 24GB has grown to 2.56%, increasing by 0.34%, while 48GB inched up to 1.46% after a 0.26% increase.

This comes as a surprise, as some manufacturers have reintroduced laptops with 8GB of RAM even as Microsoft called 16GB the new “practical starting point,” and recommended 32GB as the future-proof “no worries” configuration for gaming. It should be noted, though, that the company quietly erased this suggestion after it released 8GB base models for its Surface laptops a few months later.

It’s quite possible that memory capacities were always destined to increase for gamers, especially as titles become more demanding. Minecraft, which hasn’t updated its system requirements for 17 years and is known for being potato-PC-friendly, even increased its recommended memory to 16GB earlier this year, forcing players on older systems to switch to the Java Edition or play retro games instead. Because of that, the memory shortage may have merely postponed the inevitable reign of 32GB RAM on gaming PCs.

Another metric we’ve been following in the survey results is AMD’s slow but relentless march toward taking away Steam Survey market share from Intel. Team Red’s 48.37% market share across all platforms is the highest we’ve seen so far this year, with Team Blue now at just 51.63%. The May 2026 Steam Survey showed AMD at a little under 45% — at this pace, it’s possible that it will overtake Intel in just a matter of months.

If we break it down by operating system, 52.59% of Windows users are on Intel, while 47.41% use AMD. Intel may have an advantage here compared to the overall result, but it’s just a tiny margin, and the trend shows that AMD is gaining ground month after month. The difference between Intel and AMD is more glaring when it comes to Linux users, with an overwhelming 66.18% preferring Team Red over Team Blue’s 33.71%.

The Steam Survey is far from scientific and may not even reflect the broader movement of the overall PC market. But with Steam reporting a peak of more than 38 million concurrent players at the time of writing, the survey still offers a useful snapshot of what’s happening in the gaming PC market.

A YouTube channel best known for its skillful graphics card fixes has published its first RAM module repair video. Tony from NorthWestRepair’s latest video shows his attempts to mend a pair of high-capacity DDR5 sticks worth a purported $16,000. It isn’t the repair skills that are newsworthy here. Rather, it’s the shift in economics that makes the chuck-it-and-replace-it attitude to bad RAM a philosophy that simply doesn’t apply in 2026. The impact of the AI-pocalypse means that spending a couple of hundred dollars on repair labor to save a several-thousand-dollar DDR5 DIMM is now sensible. If you can repair RAM, you can now start a business.

Two DDR5 sticks were sent in to Tony, described as having physical damage. They are both ECC sticks, meant for servers, one with 128GB and the other with 256GB of DRAM ICs onboard. Tony sounded happy at the start of the video, as this is an excuse to use his Unified DDR Flasher Main Board, for which he had just acquired an RDIMM extension that works with these server sticks.

Initial close physical inspection didn’t reveal any conclusive evidence of the source of the problems. So, it was hoped electrical tests would provide more clues. A data line tester didn’t highlight any issues, though. Tony used flux and hot air to reflow the solder on the first DIMM, which is a far simpler process than a reball (where all the memory ICs are taken off, cleaned, and given new solder balls). Initial signs were that the module was now working OK. So, he moved to the next DDR5 DIMM.

The second DIMM “may have a faulty PMIC chip,” which is why it seemed more severely broken than the first module, Tony indicated. Powering on a system with this DIMM inserted showed no signs of life, and the DIMM didn’t even warm up (thermal camera checks). That contrasts with the first fix.

Because this DIMM is completely dead, Tony did some work on the non-DRAM chips like the PMIC and SPD EEPROM first. Then he decided to reflow some other chips, including memory ICs, like before, while the board was warm. Some ICs were also reballed after inspection, making Tony suspicious of them.

The repairer found a short circuit via voltage injection and thermal camera monitoring. This was fixed with a new capacitor and by fixing the short on the damaged edge of the PCB. Finally, a new PMIC chip ended the quest, and this second DDR5 DIMM powered on and trained successfully.

The repair is good to see, saving these valuable components from e-waste. However, the bigger picture is that repairing memory modules could now be a viable business. Previously, it didn’t make sense to spend a hundred or two on labor to fix a DIMM that would cost about the same or even less to replace with a new one. Now the repair fee might be just a fraction of a replacement price.

Micron released its fiscal Q4 2026 financial results on Wednesday, expectedly setting another record for revenue with $54.23 billion for the quarter, up nearly five times since the same period last year. Micron also hit a record 87% gross margin, the largest contributor to which was Micron's Mobile and Client (consumer) business unit. Further, Micron's client business was the only one that shipped less memory last quarter, despite bringing in the highest operating margin at 88%.

Micron's margins overall are up significantly year-over-year; Core Data Center surged from 25% to 85%, and Automotive and Embedded have climbed from 20% to 79%. The Mobile and Client unit also saw significant growth, with a 29% operating margin in fiscal Q4 2025, and now a margin of 88%. Cloud Memory margins grew, though not to the same extent as other units, moving from 48% to 76%.

The gross margins are interesting to look at, too. In a financial statement, the gross margin equals revenue minus cost of goods. Operating margin, on the other hand, equals revenue minus cost of goods and all other operational expenses. The operating margin simply excludes taxes and interest.

The gap between gross and operating margin is what's interesting in the breakdown above. The Mobile and Client unit has the smallest gap, with only a 2% difference. The Core Data Center unit matches the Mobile and Client unit with a 90% gross margin, but it has a lower operating margin at 85%. In other words, the cost of running Micron's consumer business is extremely low relative to the amount of revenue it currently generates.

It also saw the lowest amount of growth for the quarter, with revenue up 14% quarter-over-quarter. Micron says this was "driven by higher pricing, partially offset by lower bit shipments." Out of Micron's four business units, the Mobile and Client unit was the only one that shipped less memory in the past quarter.

For clarity's sake, a bit shipment is just a shipment. Micron measures shipments in bits rather than units. It's the capacity Micron has shipped in a quarter, not the actual number of DRAM or NAND chips.

Outside of Mobile and Client, Micron attributes higher revenue to higher pricing and bit shipments. The situation in the Mobile and Client unit echoes a sentiment we've heard elsewhere: growth in the consumer market is still happening, but it's driven by higher pricing, not growth in shipments.

Earlier this year, Intel's David Zinsner, chief financial officer, attributed a 13% YoY growth in Intel's consumer business to higher average selling price (ASP), not increased unit sales. Zinsner clarified that Intel "thought we had seen some inflation on our cost and needed to pass that on to the end customer."

Micron's outlook for fiscal Q1 2027 has revenue set at another record of $61.5 billion ± $1.5 billion, with gross margin rounding from 87% in fiscal Q4 2026 to 86.25%.

Another record quarter signals more squeeze on the DRAM and NAND markets. Echoing rival SK hynix, Micron says it expects memory and storage to be "much tighter" in 2027 and 2028, claiming that the company expects the industry to be supply-constrained in both years. That's despite a growth in supply that Micron anticipates.

The company says it expects industry NAND bit shipments to grow in the mid-20% range, and DRAM bit shipments to grow in the low-20% range. The industry broadly will produce more memory over the next two years, says Micron, but that still won't keep pace with demand.

Worrying still is this line in Micron's earnings slides: "we do not have line of sight to when supply and demand will return to balance." However, the company says it plans to increase its capital expenditure (capex) in fiscal 2027 compared to its prior estimates.

A "majority" of that increase is set aside for construction of additional clean room space, which Micron has set for 2028 through the end of the decade. Hopefully, that additional clean room space coming online will ease supply constraints, but we're still a long way from that point.

Micron said during its FY 2026 earnings call that RAM and storage chip shortages will worsen in 2027 and 2028, even as it announced a record gross margin of 86.25%. CEO and chairperson Sanjay Mehrotra said that the company has already sold most of its capacity for next year and that customers will have to pay more compared to 2026.

“In calendar 2027 as well as 2028, we see demand exceeding supply. In fact, we see greater tightness in the industry in 2027 and in 2028 versus 2026. Overall, supply-demand environment is only getting tighter,” Mehrotra said. “We do not have line of sight to when supply and demand will return to balance.”

The memory and storage industry is not holding back on increasing production, though, with Micron saying that NAND and DRAM shipments are expected to grow in the low-to-mid 20s percentage range for the next two years. However, it seems that this is not enough to match growing demand, as it expects “the industry to remain supply constrained in both years.” Still, it seems that manufacturers are prioritizing HBM demand for AI data centers, with the company expecting shipments of these chips to grow faster than conventional DRAM.

Micron and other chip manufacturers are bringing new factories online to increase output, but it’s going to take years before they can start producing chips. But even as we’re amid an unprecedented multi-year memory chip shortage, Micron also announced record financial guidance. It forecasted a record $61.5 billion FQ1 revenue and a gross margin of 86.25%, implying a gross profit of more than $53 billion. After accounting for an estimated $2.06 billion in operating expenses and a tax rate of around 15.5%, the company said its earnings per share sit at $38.15, plus or minus $1.00, for approximately 1.15 billion shares.

These are record numbers, but it’s not surprising given the amount of money being poured into AI data centers. It has gotten to the point where the memory workers from Samsung and SK hynix have demanded and received bonuses worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, with Micron’s workers in Taiwan threatening to strike if they do not receive a bigger slice of the AI pie. While this is good news for the average employee from these big companies, it’s unfortunately bad news for the average person who must pay for RAM and storage at higher prices.

Micron’s prediction goes directly against the Acer CEO’s prediction that PC prices will decline by late 2027, especially as Chinese RAM chips enter the market and consumers simply refuse to pay more for expensive memory chips. We can only wait and see which of these CEOs will be correct when it comes to DRAM and NAND pricing.

A PC RAM maker has honored its guarantee promises despite the memory kit in question’s price rising eightfold since it was bought. This is news in 2026, as we’ve heard of so many companies dealing with AI-inflated component pricing refusing to replace items, instead refunding the original purchasing price despite the products now being worth many multiples of the original price. These glad tidings come via Redditor Double-South8863, who says their $150 G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo RGB 64GB DDR5-6000 RAM kit, now priced at $1,200 on Amazon, was back at full capacity after the company replaced the stick. They received the replacement within two weeks.

“I will never buy any RAM other than G.Skill for as long as I live,” pledged Double-South8863 on Reddit. They informed their fellow social media posters that one of the 64GB RAM kit’s sticks died at the beginning of September. After some A/B testing, they were sure one of the 32GB sticks was dead.

On September 8, about a week after the issue first reared its head, Double-South8863 decided to start an RMA process and get the dud G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo RGB 32GB DDR5-6000 stick replaced. They remember buying this highly desirable RAM kit online in May 2025 for the princely sum of $150. Now it is worth a king’s ransom at $1,200 on Amazon, and price tracker sites show it's even been as high as $1,300.

Perhaps the Redditor was aware of the reports of companies and their dastardly deeds regarding RMAs, as they are active on the PCMR subreddit. However, they optimistically went ahead and completed the RMA paperwork, then received instructions, including a shipping address to initiate the warranty exchange. Double-South8863 says they mailed the misbehaving memory module back to G.Skill on September 15. The Redditor’s post celebrating G.Skill’s customer service, proclaiming that they were now a “customer for life,” was published on September 26.

If you check the G.Skill site, you will note that this RAM-first firm still offers a limited lifetime warranty on all its popular RAM kits. Please note that, according to the official terms, this lifetime warranty “automatically terminates upon discontinuation or end-of-life ("EOL") designation of that specific model by G.Skill.” That means you shouldn't expect to swap out a faulty DDR5 module for a replacement for the whole of your natural life.

PC enthusiasts and DIYers are having a hard time right now as several key components required for performance builds are at all-time-high pricing. Meanwhile, those with a working setup pray that nothing will go wrong with the precious equipment they already have. Sadly, things do break, some components more than others. However, warranty obligations seem to have come under increased strain in recent months as consumer product scarcity means component makers can’t or won’t follow RMA norms that had been established for decades. Some of the worst cases we’ve seen involve PCs and component makers trying to refund the original (low) prices paid, substituting failed parts with non-equivalent parts, or even worse.

Micron is reportedly pulling the plug on its 2 GB (16Gb) GDDR7 memory chips, ending production and sales of both the 28 Gbps and 32 Gbps variants. According to an X post by UNIKO’s Hardware, the chips — some of which shipped on some GeForce RTX 50 graphics cards — are now designated as “End of Life” on Micron's site. Tom’s Hardware can confirm that the pages for module norms return “No results found.”

Micron just began supplying its 2GB GDDR7 to Nvidia earlier this year, with Samsung and SK Hynix being the main GDDR7 suppliers. As a result, Micron's 2GB module only shipped on a few Nvidia models, such as retail variants of the GeForce RTX 5060. Samsung and SK Hynix cover the vast bulk of 2 GB GDDR7 modules for the standard RTX 50 retail lineup, so the risk of immediate shortages is minimal. Micron’s uncompetitive position in the 2 GB segment also appears to have made a fast exit logical to free up fabrication capacity.

The company is reportedly shifting its focus toward higher-density 3 GB (24 Gb) GDDR7 chips. These larger packages are considered impractical for Nvidia's RTX 50 lineup because they are more expensive and result in less conventional consumer memory capacities. However, they yield higher profit margins and are actively utilized in Nvidia's high-end RTX PRO Blackwell GPUs tailored for generative and agentic AI workloads.

Micron’s decision follows the ongoing trend of memory suppliers prioritizing AI-facing technologies over their consumer and retail counterparts. The company exited its Crucial consumer memory and SSD business earlier, explicitly saying that surging AI data-center demand had prompted it to prioritize larger strategic customers in faster-growing segments.

Memory prices are at record highs due to demand from the AI sector and are not going to drop any time soon. In fact, the cost of manufacturing memory chips on a per-area basis can be higher than the price of silicon processed using TSMC's N2 and N3 fabrication technologies, which are used to make compute chips, according to an observation made by Kurnal Insights. While the comparison has merit, it has an important caveat.

Based on media leaks, Kurnal from Kurnal Insights considers that a 300-mm wafer processed using TSMC's N3 technology costs $20,000, which translates to approximately $0.283 per mm² when the wafer price is divided by its area. For TSMC's N2, the analyst assumes a considerably higher wafer price of $30,000, or around $0.424/mm². These calculations are based on unofficial information and do not account for unusable wafer edges, dicing, test structures, defects, or yield, so they should be viewed as nominal wafer-area prices rather than the actual price of usable silicon.

The calculation for DRAM works differently. Kurnal assumes a DRAM price of $1.50 per Gb and then multiplies it by the bit density of different generations. At 0.219 Gb/mm², 1y DRAM works out to $0.329/mm², whereas 1z DRAM with its 0.273 Gb/mm² density reaches $0.410/mm². Finally, 1b DRAM at 0.436 Gb/mm² produces a figure of $0.654/mm², considerably higher than the nominal $0.424/mm² calculated for an N2 wafer.

There is an important distinction here. The N2 and N3 numbers represent assumed prices charged by TSMC for processing a wafer, whereas the DRAM figures represent the potential selling value of the memory contained within a square millimeter of silicon, thus illustrating how much revenue a DRAM maker can theoretically get from a given die area at the assumed memory price.

Interestingly, Kurnal Insights' $1.50/Gb assumption is almost exactly in line with the current spot price of DDR5 eTT memory. According to DRAMeXchange, 16Gb DDR5 eTT chips carried a session-average price of $24.80 on September 21, equivalent to $1.55/Gb. At that price, 1b DRAM with a density of 0.436 Gb/mm² would be valued at approximately $0.676/mm², just 3% above Kurnal's $0.654/mm² estimate.

It goes without saying that producing DDR5 memory is considerably cheaper than making logic chips using TSMC's N3 process technology. However, with DRAM in short supply, memory makers are getting considerably more money for their silicon than they did historically.

There are a few important caveats that make the comparison somewhat less straightforward. The calculations do not account for packaging costs, with logic requiring more expensive techniques. Additionally, TSMC manufactures chips on a contract basis, and the actual price of a processed wafer depends on the volumes, customer, and other commercial terms. Thus, comparing estimated TSMC wafer prices with DRAM spot prices is not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison. Even TrendForce notes that DDR5 spot procurement remains limited and transactions are sporadic, which means spot prices do not necessarily reflect the prices at which Micron, Samsung, and SK hynix sell the bulk of their DRAM.

Therefore, contract DRAM prices would provide a considerably better basis for an economically meaningful comparison. However, we do not know contract prices, and while they are clearly higher than historical memory prices, they may not be as high as spot prices. To that end, we cannot state for sure that DRAM makers get more money for their wafers than TSMC does for its logic wafers.

Raspberry Pi users are effectively being blocked from swapping the RAM chips on their SBCs for repairs or upgrades. In a reply on the firm’s forums, Raspberry Pi Engineer & Forum Moderator PhilE told users that the company has been “locking devices to their original RAM size” for some time. This decision was made for the sake of device reliability, says the rep. However, the move seems to go against the grain for a company so involved in the maker, DIY, and tinkerer side of computing.

PhilE explains the problem that faced Raspberry Pi and some users, airing the company’s side of the argument. “If labor is cheap enough then there may be a minor financial gain in buying a part with say a 2GB part, swapping it for an 8GB part of dubious origin, and reselling it as an 8GB device,” says the forum mod. “However, this brings an element of risk to the user - the board hasn't been tested by us - and is a potential support burden for us, with customers complaining of unreliable devices. We therefore remove the commercial incentive by locking devices to their original RAM size.”

In addition, the Pi’s firmware currently “program in some other device attributes, meaning that switching parts of the same size may not work,” says PhilE. This isn’t great for genuine users who might want to tinker with or upgrade the RAM chips or have to replace an IC for repair. The forum mod underlines the effective block by telling would-be RAM MacGyvers to “don't waste your time trying - it won't work.”

Some readers might feel sympathetic towards Raspberry Pi’s RAM tinkering blockade, given PhilE’s reasoned explanation. One surprising aspect of the decision, though, is that the firmware locks of RAM IC swaps began to roll out in updates from late 2024 onwards. So, this change was made well before the crazy RAM chip pricing upswing precipitated by the AI data center boom. Also, it means that if you want to sidestep this RAM tinkering block, you would need to grab and flash a pretty old firmware to your Pi model (if available).

Naturally, the Pi community isn’t celebrating this RAM upgrade/repair block. Some high-profile Pi advocates like Jeff Geerling suggest that implementing a ‘warranty bit’ (similar to older models), or a one-time firmware flag to void support for modified boards, would have been a more agreeable path for Raspberry Pi to take. Here’s a lookup table that you can use to check your Pi’s factory RAM configuration.

China's DRAM champion CXMT has begun mass production using its 5th-generation DRAM process technology.

CXMT says its new process technology — G5, as the company calls it — reduces DRAM’s active-area half-pitch to 11.95nm using quadruple-patterning lithography. The 11.95nm half-pitch corresponds to an active-area pitch of 23.9nm, something that puts this particular dimension roughly in the range of other advanced 10nm-class DRAM technologies. However, it cannot be directly translated into a conventional DRAM node designation. Separately, CXMT says its DRAM-optimized high-K metal gate (HKMG) process reduced the height of the core cell array to 6,762nm.

The company also says it modified its process flow and introduced unspecified new materials to enable storage capacitors with a depth-to-width aspect ratio of about 45:1.The figure is certainly difficult to compare directly with competing DRAM process technologies, but SK hynix says that capacitor aspect ratios will need to exceed 100:1 as DRAM critical dimensions eventually fall below 10nm.

A 45:1 aspect ratio means CXMT’s storage capacitors are 45 times deeper than they are wide, which is what enables the company to reduce DRAM cell area and fit more memory arrays onto a wafer and retail predictable capacity. However, increasingly high aspect ratios make etching, deposition, mechanical stability, and ultimately high-yield manufacturing considerably more challenging.

The first disclosed mass-produced devices using G5 are said to be 24Gb LPDDR5X devices, which have already entered mass production. The chips offer 50% more capacity than CXMT's previous comparable products and are available in two package formats for different mobile-device designs. According to the Chinese report, the 24Gb LPDDR5X products are already entering mainstream Chinese flagship smartphones.

A nanometer caveat?

Meanwhile, there are some important caveats.

First up, CXMT's 11.95nm figure represents the active-area half-pitch rather than a conventional process-node designation, so calling G5 a 12nm process is a large degree of simplification at best.

Secondly, the two revealed physical dimensions do not mean technological parity with the latest DRAM processes from Micron, Samsung, and SK hynix, as density, capacitor scaling, transistor characteristics, power consumption, and, arguably most importantly when it comes to commodities, yields matter.

Thirdly, CXMT says G5 provides at least 50% more gross dies per wafer than G4, but without actual numbers, this is obsolete. CXMT also did not disclose yields, which makes it impossible to determine the increase in productivity, not to mention known-good dies or the actual manufacturing cost per bit. Yet again, even a claimed 11.95-class DRAM node is an achievement.

Acer chairperson and CEO Jason Chen is expecting that prices for components will start reversing in the latter half of next year. According to DigiTimes, Chen told reporters that only high-end DDR5 parts like LPDDR5X-9600 and niche CPUs like Nvidia’s N1 and N1X chips are in short supply. Since supplier pricing lags consumer pricing by about a few months, he also added that PC prices will still rise between 5% and 20% towards the end of this year, plateau by the first half of 2027, before finally declining after years of AI-drive hikes.

The AI boom has driven shortages for various PC components, beginning with GPUs in late 2022, before expanding to memory chips by late 2025. This made memory prices climb 500% in 12 months, although the increases have seemingly cooled as consumers refuse to absorb further hikes. Some memory companies like SK hynix are saying that the shortage will be worse next year and that it won’t be until 2030 before pricing will start to normalize. The Adata chief even said that the DRAM shortage would last another 10 years. This is plausibly true, especially as HBM demand from AI hyperscalers remains strong, and the various memory chip fabs under construction aren’t expected to come online until the 2030s.

However, Chen disagreed with this take. He said that the major memory suppliers naturally want to keep their margins as high as possible for longer, “so they keep putting out the message: let me tell you, prices won’t come down until the year 20-whatever.” The Acer chairperson argued that there’s already ample memory and SSD supplies, while the purported CPU shortage is now limited to specific models. He also added that Chinese memory makers churning out cheaper alternatives would disrupt the market — something that SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won feared. In fact, Acer, alongside HP and Asus, has started using CXMT chips in some of its products, while some Lenovo models sold in Germany were found to have YMTC SSDs.

Nevertheless, he says that price increases are becoming their own trend, saying that SSDs, PCBs, and fiberglass cloth used in motherboards are seeing their own hikes. “A lot of people come and tell us they want to raise prices, and we find it a bit baffling — this needs to go up, too?” Chen said to the reporters.

The overall tenor from Chen is good news, though, if computer manufacturers could finally lower prices after years of shortages and expensive parts.

It's been quite a week over on Tom's Hardware Premium: let's go through all of the articles that we've published throughout this week so far.

Kicking things off with a bang, Valve officially released the Steam Frame, its latest VR headset, which adds functionality that allows the headset to act as both a standalone and PC VR headset. Our VR expert Brandon Hill reviewed the headset itself and managed to interview the engineers at Valve about their efforts on the new hardware and the software powering the company's next generation of Virtual Reality.

• Valve Steam Frame interview — why it costs up to $1,300, Snapdragon power, and 10x foveated streaming

Reporter Chris Stokel-Walker investigated the deepening DRAM and NAND crisis, honing in on how SLC and NOR Flash are the next products that have been affected by the ongoing demand for AI. Featuring expert interviews and a grim outlook on the electronics the world relies on, he explored how the ongoing data center gold rush is leaving other supply chains decimated in its wake.

• NOR Flash and SLC NAND production are under threat as capacity gets routed to more profitable products — 'severe undersupply' threatens everyday electronics

Nanya-backed company PieceMakers debuted on Taiwan's stock market this week, making a bold bet that it's not just HBM that's useful for integration in AI devices. Instead, the company offers a different look at how hybrid-bonded chips might also be useful for inference chips. We've broken down exactly how the company views the future of memory for inference accelerators.

• PieceMakers bets edge AI devices will diverge from reliance on HBM — custom-designed memory fuses DRAM stack directly to the processor using hybrid bonding

Next up, AI leaders butted heads this week over alleged safety concerns about new, advanced models. It all started with one ex-OpenAI and Anthropic worker warning that the technology could endanger human existence and 'kill us all' by 2030. In response, AI leaders like Dario Amodei and Sam Altman have committed to delivering safe AI and 'pacing the frontier' of AI development, while figureheads like Mark Zuckerberg and Jensen Huang argue against the claim that AI models would do such drastic things, so long as they are developed responsibly.

• AI leaders clash over safety fears after Anthropic whistleblower says AI could 'kill us all' by 2030 — OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI figureheads call for external governance, while Jensen Huang says worries are 'made up'

Despite the company's CEO telling us all that responsible AI development is indeed necessary, Anthropic published its economic forecasts on how widespread usage of Artificial Intelligence might impact the economy. Despite forecasting that GDP growth in the U.S. might shoot up by as much as 32%, it also warns that other 'knowledge workers' might be left in the lurch, with unemployment rising as the technology threatens to displace professional workers.

• Anthropic says AI can boost U.S. GDP by 32%, up to $44.4 trillion in four years — economics model predicts that displaced employees 'may have to switch to jobs like electrician and nurse'

An investigative report has detailed exactly how advanced AI accelerators are reaching Chinese shores through a series of shell companies. We go over the specifics of two reports and see exactly how supposedly export-controlled accelerators are allegedly being funneled through illicit channels in an economy where compute and powerful silicon create AI kingmakers.

• Investigative report details how export-restricted Nvidia AI chips reach China — public records reveal how Chinese entities skirt US sanctions

Despite the country's access to advanced AI accelerators through illicit channels, some leading frontier companies out of China are also allegedly using distillation attacks to learn how leading Western AI models think, and how extracted thinking traces and grey-market user logs are being used to train cheap models originating from the Eastern hemisphere.

• US frontier AI companies warn authorities over sophisticated distillation attacks — China warns of 'countermeasures' if America tries to constrain domestic AI models

If you'd like to read any of the articles above and gain access to Bench, you'll need to purchase a subscription. Your support goes a long way in helping us to publish deeper, more insightful stories that might otherwise fall outside of our regular areas of coverage.

The memory chip that makes a router remember how to be a router is a world away from the sleek GPUs that are attracting eye-popping investments and alarming valuations, as well as sending stock markets shooting upwards. They’re small, historically have been cheap, and are based on technology that has been around for years.

But despite being a world away from GPUs, the price of these often overlooked chips is skyrocketing, thanks to the all-encompassing memory price crisis caused by the AI boom.

While public and press attention has focused on the expensive chips, there’s an equally large impact beginning to be felt on older, less attractive memory chips. HBM is vital for AI accelerators, while DRAM and high-capacity NAND are being swallowed up by rapidly expanding data centres. A June report from Morgan Stanley reckons memory prices have risen more than sixfold over the last year, breaking with decades in which memory became steadily cheaper as production increased.

It’s not just HBM and DRAM that’s being affected. The crunch is also spreading down into much older forms of memory, including NOR flash and single-level cell, or SLC, NAND. Morgan Stanley expects NOR flash to remain undersupplied through 2026, while JPMorgan has warned its forecasts don’t fully capture a potential supply crunch in SLC NAND. The effects are already showing up in prices. TrendForce says contract prices for both NOR flash and SLC NAND rose by more than 100% during the first half of 2026, while it expects SLC NAND prices to rise another 120% to 170% in the second half of the year compared with the first half.

Picking winners

An increase in prices will have an impact on the tech we use day in, day out. NOR flash is commonly used to store boot and program code, and is a core part of automotive, industrial, and networking equipment. SLC NAND is deployed across a number of uses because of its reliability and endurance when placed in embedded hardware with long lifespans.

Both are vital. And both are being overlooked in favour of higher-margin chips — pushing the supply crunch to tech that previously never faced any issues. “The SLC NAND market is probably under a billion dollars a year,” said Jim Handy, a semiconductor and SSD analyst at Objective Analysis, in an interview with Tom’s Hardware Premium. That tiny scale adds up to a big problem, because it disincentivises any new investment.

“What you've got going on is a purely economic phenomenon,” said Handy. Hyperscalers and cloud providers are “all trying to outspend each other”, pouring unprecedented sums into semiconductors to build AI infrastructure. That willingness to spend big means the most profitable customers naturally move to the front of the queue.

Companies including Nvidia, Broadcom and Marvell need huge amounts of semiconductor manufacturing capacity for chips destined for AI systems. “They’re sucking up all of the wafers,” says Handy. “And then the companies who make NOR flash and SLC are having a hard time getting wafers to build their product, and so they have to raise prices.”

The problem is even starker in the NAND market. Bryan Ao, research manager at TrendForce, told Tom’s Hardware Premium in an interview that major NAND manufacturers, including Micron, Kioxia and SK Hynix, have been cutting the wafer capacity devoted to SLC because they can make considerably more money using it for newer NAND technologies. Ao estimates that a 12-inch wafer devoted to mainstream NAND can ultimately generate close to $20,000 in revenue. Use the same space to produce SLC and the figure is closer to $6,000 to $8,000.

Even if they wanted to, smaller SLC suppliers in China and Taiwan can’t just spin up new production. Lead times for some semiconductor manufacturing equipment have stretched to between 12 and 15 months, said Ao. The result is what he calls “severe undersupply”.

Big prices, big returns

BNP Paribas forecasts the average NAND price will hit $279.50 per terabyte during 2026, up from $73.10 in 2025. JPMorgan expects the memory shortage to persist for at least another two years, with customers getting just 70% to 80% of their orders fulfilled. TrendForce says manufacturers are shifting capacity towards advanced, higher-value memory products, with mature processes increasingly squeezed as a result.

There are some alternatives available. Kioxia says its serial SLC NAND is an alternative to NOR flash. But moving an existing industrial or networking product onto a different chip can itself require engineering work and qualification. Nor is there much incentive for memory manufacturers to fix the problem by building new SLC capacity – which means manufacturers are unlikely to invest billions in capacity whose useful market may disappear. That creates an unusual trap: there may not be enough demand to justify new factories, but there is still more demand than the shrinking supply can satisfy.

Hardware manufacturers can eat the higher component bill and accept lower margins, or pass it on. “We'll just have to either have lower margins, or we'll have to raise the prices to the consumer,” Handy said.

An ongoing issue

The problem is one that seems to have no solution – at least in the short term. Ao expects memory prices to remain high over the next five years and does not expect them to return to 2023 or 2024 levels. That broadly fits with the structural nature of the shortage identified by TrendForce, which says there are no significant capacity expansion plans for NOR flash or SLC NAND.

Handy sees one possible way out, but it is hardly reassuring. “As long as the race between the hyperscalers keeps up to spend, then it will continue to be an issue,” he said.

Handy compares the AI buildout to the internet infrastructure boom of the late 1990s. Rather than enough capacity eventually arriving to restore balance, he thinks spending may simply overshoot what the market can economically support.

“I'm expecting the same kind of a thing to happen here that we've got too many people spending too much money on AI, and not really making any return on it yet,” he said.

Until then, the least exciting memory chips in a computer may become some of the hardest to replace. Or, as Ao put it: “Pretty much we have to get used to this high price, no matter which segment of memory.”

We've talked about the RAMpocalypse extensively, but there's seemingly no end to the continuing rise in memory pricing at the moment. Luckily, Corsair is keeping its store stocked with some gamer-friendly Vengeance RAM, with a 32GB DDR5-6200 set for $419.99, or a slower option for $409.99, offering the best price on these kits in the current market.

● Check out this deal at Corsair

No, we're not talking record-low pricing here, but memory prices aren't a joke right now. AI is pushing them higher and higher, and after $400 for 32GB DDR5 was breached recently, you won't find better-priced DDR5 RAM elsewhere. You'll need a kit like this if you're planning a new gaming PC build or upgrade.

The Corsair Vengeance range continues to be a popular option among gamers, and while we've not given this particular kit a test, the similar spec'd Corsair Vengeance RGB DDR5-6000 C36 performs well. You're getting even faster RAM here, at 6,200 MT/s. It isn't the fastest, but this is priced right in the middle of slower kits that range from 4,800 to 5,600 MT/s, so you're at least getting better bang for your buck.

This particular kit comes with two 16GB modules, with those rated speeds of 6,200 MT/s. It's significantly faster than older DDR4 RAM modules, which typically cap out at 3,600 MT/s. It has CAS latency and memory timings of 36-46-46-100, comes in a black colorway, and has a solid aluminum heat spreader to keep things cool. 6,200 MT/s is a good speed for a gaming RAM kit, and while you can get faster, you'll typically pay more.

That said, every dollar counts when gaming PC builds can go for thousands more than they did last year. You can save $10 and get this DDR5-5600 Corsair Vengeance 32GB kit for $409.99. Like the DDR5-6200 model above, this has two 16GB modules, but with a slower speed of 5,600 MT/s, with CAS latency and memory timings of 40-40-40-77. It also comes with adjustable RGB lighting, a feature missing on the spec above, if you want a more colorful kit. You're probably better off spending the extra $10, but if you're building a mid-tier or budget PC, the speed difference isn't likely to matter as much, but any extra savings might.

The $419.99 price for this 32GB Corsair Vengeance DDR5-6200 RAM is the best price you'll find for RAM with these speeds and capacity, although you can go a little cheaper with the $409.99 DDR5-5600 kit instead. Corsair even has cheaper, and slower RAM, but these two offer the best value for performance that you'd expect for a DDR5 gaming PC build. You'll want to grab this deal while you can before the RAM prices inevitably go up even more.

Micron this week introduced its first 512GB DDR5-9200 memory module that is designed for servers used for applications that demand a lot of memory. The new modules — which are currently being validated by AMD and Intel with their next-generation server platforms — will enable server makers to build machines with up to 12TB of fast memory. What remains to be seen is the price of such modules and servers.

To build its 512GB DDR5 RDIMM, Micron uses advanced packaging that stacks multiple DRAM dies vertically and connects them using through-silicon vias (TSVs). The company does not disclose which memory devices and how many of them it uses, but claims that a single 512GB RDIMM consumes over 60% less operating power than four 128GB modules — based on 16.0W for one 512GB module compared with the 44.2W total for four 128GB modules — which suggests that we are dealing with fairly advanced ICs.

Micron's 512GB module is not the industry's first 512GB DDR5 RDIMM — that achievement belongs to Samsung — but it is certainly the industry's first 512GB module certified to operate with a 9200 MT/s data transfer rate with standard 1.1V voltage (which implies on usage of Micron's 16Gb DDR5-9200 devices made on its 1γ (1-gamma) fabrication process that uses EUV lithography and consumes 20% less power than predecessors, though we are speculating).

Truth to be told, 512GB DDR5 memory modules are rather niche products, which is perhaps why Samsung's 512GB RDIMMs formally introduced in 2021 have not become widespread even after AMD and Intel introduced processors with over 100 cores. Micron positions its 512GB DDR5 RDIMM primarily for servers running analytics, in-memory databases, simulations, virtualization, agentic AI, and other workloads demanding high-core-count processors and plenty of memory. As processors with 200 or more cores emerge, 512GB modules may become more relevant as 12TB of memory in a server running two 256-core CPUs means 24GB per core, which no longer looks particularly excessive for applications like in-memory databases, analytics, or caching.

Micron claims that in memory-constrained Spark Support Vector Machine (SVM) analytics workloads, systems featuring 512GB memory modules can provide up to 1.4 times the performance of configurations equipped with 256GB DDR5 modules, though the company does not disclose how much memory in total these systems use. Micron also says the higher-capacity memory can increase throughput and concurrency for memory-intensive database and caching applications such as RocksDB and Redis.

AMD and Intel are working with Micron to qualify the new modules for their upcoming server platforms. Micron plans to begin volume production of its 512GB DDR5 RDIMMs sometime in the second half of 2027 and intends to align the schedule with customer requirements.

One of the more pressing questions about Micron's 512GB DDR5-9200 memory modules is their price. A 256GB DDR5-6400 RDIMM currently retails for around $19,000. Given the unique proposition that 512GB modules have for memory-constrained applications, such modules can cost significantly more than 256GB memory sticks, which will not help their broad adoption.

With the ongoing memory shortage, smaller smartphone and laptop manufacturers are reportedly looking at new ways to tackle the problem. While some are changing how they design their products, others are placing orders months in advance and are even forced to test incoming memory chips to make sure they are not fake. A Reuters report suggests that more than the price, availability has become a bigger problem, with manufacturers struggling to secure enough chips in the first place. Still, device makers like Fairphone say that memory now makes up nearly 60% of a device's bill of materials.

Back in July, memory maker SK Hynix’s CEO Kwak Noh-jung said that 2027 will be the "worst year" for the ongoing memory shortage and expects the memory crunch to last until 2030. For smaller manufacturers, however, simply paying more for memory isn't always enough. The situation is particularly difficult for budget-oriented phones and laptops, where memory makes up a much larger portion of the overall product cost.

According to Raymond van Eck, CEO of repairable-phone maker Fairphone, memory can account for almost 60% of the bill of materials in phones costing around $400. That itself is worrying, as a recent Counterpoint Research report expects global smartphone shipments to fall 13.9% this year to 1.08 billion units, marking the largest annual decline on record.

Finnish phone maker Jolla has designed two motherboard versions, allowing it to switch between combined packages for discrete chips depending on availability. The company is also testing samples from every batch it receives to ensure new memory isn't being sold as refurbished hardware.

Similarly, laptop manufacturer Framework has been able to rely on its highly modular approach where customers can install memory salvaged from older laptops or opt for second-hand units, giving the company and its users another way to deal with limited supply. The company is also placing non-cancellable orders well in advance, even when it doesn't know the final price or exact delivery volume.

Back in July, it nearly doubled memory pricing for 32GB and 64GB variants of the Framework Laptop 13 Pro after receiving a cost update from its LPCAMM2 supplier. However, after sourcing new inventory at a reduced cost, the company recently announced a price drop for the same, including retroactive orders that have already shipped.

We're seeing 32GB DDR5 RAM prices regularly push above $400 now. That's just where the market is, and as unfair as it might seem, the world is still turning, and people still need memory for their PC upgrades. Luckily, this TeamGroup T-Force Delta RAM deal drops the price to $389.99 at Newegg, as long as you use the coupon code LUYRF228 at checkout.

● Check out this deal on Newegg

Deals like this continue to be the best way to pick up new RAM as the ongoing global DRAM shortage, caused by the AI boom, rolls on. We're not going to see lower prices for RAM or SSDs any time soon. Deals like this aren't ground-breaking, and we're nowhere near record lows, but they're the best prices in a difficult market. Sans a time machine, or going second-hand, you won't find better pricing today than this.

As for this particular RAM kit, it's a good option for a mid-tier build. It's DDR5-5200, meaning speeds of 5,200 MT/s. That isn't the fastest RAM on the market, by any means, but it's certainly an upgrade over older DDR4 modules, which would usually see speeds of around 3,600 MT/s at best.

You're getting two 16GB DDR5 modules here, with CAS and memory timings of 40-40-40-76. This is perfectly fine memory for workstation and gaming use, with built-in RGB lighting to spice up your build. Yes, it won't be the fastest you've used. If you need to max out a build with the best speeds and lowest latency, you'll need to look for higher-end DDR5 memory instead.

Luckily, you have options there. The next best option with faster speeds is this alternative kit, also from Team Group, for $415.99. The Team Group T-Force Vulcan has CAS and memory timings of 38-46-46-84, with speeds of 6,400 MT/s. Much faster, so ideal for a higher-end rig, but it lacks the RGB lighting. That might be a trade-off you're willing to accept if you've got the extra $27.

Honestly? The best option here, if you do have the extra cash, is the T-Force Vulcan for $415.99. It's faster, only slightly more expensive, and it's still a bargain compared to rival kits that can go as high as $600 or $700 at the moment. That said, a new PC build or upgrade on a budget requires a few compromises, and unless you're pushing your PC to its limits, the Team Group T-Force Delta RAM kit for $389.99 is a solid option.

Either choice is a deal worth considering in this awfully expensive market that PC builders face at the moment. AI isn't going anywhere, and we're probably going to see prices this high, if not higher, for some time. Deals like these, even if they aren't world-beating, are still the best way to get RAM at the moment.

A computing enthusiast has shared images of a fat stack of DDR4 RAM sticks that they found at home. VastOption8705 told other tech fans on Reddit that they “found 10k worth of RAM sitting in my garage.” We count 30 sticks of DDR4-2666, and three sticks shown separately are all 64GB modules. If they are all 64GB modules, that number of sticks would add up to 1,920GB of RAM…

How did this huge amount of RAM end up in VastOption8705’s garage? The story goes that the Redditor was allowed to keep an old server from their workplace. Such 'generosity' isn’t unheard of, and it might have actually saved the company some recycling fees.

Is server DDR4 useful?

Numerous comments on the Reddit post jokingly pitch for RAM stick donations. But they might be barking up the wrong tree. Looking more closely at the sticks, where the labels are clearly readable, reveals that they are Samsung 64GB DDR4 ECC registered DIMMs (RDIMMs).

These kinds of RAM sticks are commonly used in servers built around Intel Xeon, AMD Epyc, or AMD Threadripper platforms. Sadly for their market value and the folks on Reddit hoping for some spare RAM, they aren’t consumer PC friendly. Even if you have a DDR4-supporting motherboard, these ECC RDIMMs will be both physically and electrically incompatible with your home creator/gaming PC.

Pricing and the Australia question

A quick poke around eBay U.S. listings shows that a single 64GB DDR4-2666 stick like those shown can be bought for between $350 and $425. So, we could roughly value the 30 sticks at $12,000 if a price of $400 per stick were achieved. The OP’s touted $10K valuation wasn’t far off. But if VastOption8705 lives in Australia, as they seem to, and guesstimated the value in Australian dollars, AU$10,000 currently equates to ~US$7,200 – quite low.

If you have spare RAM in your garage, don't share your address on public forums. The best I could find is a pair of 8GB DDR4 SO-DIMMs in my drawer. I also had some 30-pin SIMMs, SDRAM, PowerMac ROMs, and DDR3 modules probably worth just pennies, despite the RAMpocalypse.

Earlier this year, V-Color announced its 1+1 DDR5 filler memory kits to help suspend disbelief and offer psychological salvation against rising memory prices. These kits mix real DDR5 sticks with dummy modules that don't actually have any RAM inside — just working RGB — to give you the illusion of a fully-slotted motherboard. Today, the kit is finally available to buy in the UK and Europe, with just the filler sticks on their own also listed for sale in North America.

V-Color has two different DDR5 products: Manta XSky and Manta XFinity, the latter being the higher-end model. The 1+1 kit is only available for the Manta XSky variant and only in the UK and Germany; not yet in the US. The 0GB kits (where both sticks are dummies) are available in both the Manta XSky and XFinity models across multiple regions. Pricing starts from $43 and goes up to almost $300, so let's break it all down.

In the UK, Overclockers currently has the 16GB 6,000 MT/s CL30 kit listed for 210 GBP, or $285, in black and white colorways. You get a single 16GB stick with those specs and a filler module to occupy two slots on your motherboard. There's a slightly more expensive 16GB 6,000 MT/s CL28 kit as well, selling for 219 GBP, or $297. Once again, you can choose either the black or white color, and you get 1 real stick of RAM and one filler.

• V-Color (1+1) Manta XSky RGB 16GB C30 6,000MHz - Black
• V-Color (1+1) Manta XSky RGB 16GB C30 6,000MHz - White
• V-Color (1+1) Manta XSky RGB 16GB C28 6,000MHz - Black
• V-Color (1+1) Manta XSky RGB 16GB C28 6,000MHz - White

In Europe, using Geizhals, we were only able to find one in-stock listing of the 16GB 6,000 MT/s CL28 kit for 330 Euros, or $384, in the black colorway. The same kit with CL30 speeds can be had for 220 Euros, or $256, but it's out of stock on CaseKing, the one Germany-based store in the entire EU with these products. We'll remind readers that there are no North America listings for V-Color's 1+1 DDR5 kits as of now.

But we did spot plenty of 0GB kits on Newegg and Amazon. These kits don't offer any real RAM whatsoever and are purely meant for decorative purposes. You can only use these if you already have working RAM in your system and two extra slots left to populate on your motherboard. Amazon has the Manta XFinity variant listed for $57 in either black or white, while Newegg is selling the Manta XSky model for $44 in white.

• V-Color Manta XFinity DDR5 RGB Filler Solution - Black (Amazon)
• V-Color Manta XFinity DDR5 RGB Filler Solution - White (Amazon)
• V-Color Manta XSky DDR5 RGB Filler Solution - White (Newegg)

CaseKing in Germany is selling the Manta XSky filler kit for 50 Euros, or $58, but we weren't able to find any other listing across Europe. The prices for these kits across the world are not much higher than their regular, non-filler counterparts, so you might as well spring for these until the RAMpocalypse settles down. Just don't forget that you'd still be limited to single-channel memory with the 1+1 kits, which isn't that big of a deal when it comes to DDR5, especially if you have an X3D CPU.

The saga involving Chinese DRAM maker CXMT's alleged theft of Samsung's trade secrets is going strong. The South Korean court case already includes multiple convictions, two of which carry prison sentences for ex-Samsung engineers. The latest chapter is a doozy, though. Korean publication NoCut News spilled the chips on Project Hefei, a purported CXMT roadmap outlining long-term planning about said technology "acquisitions," personnel poaching, and production tape-out — all key pieces that may have directly led to CXMT's ascension to 10% of the global DRAM market.

According to leaked court documents, the prosecution says that Project Hefei was CXMT's entire DRAM development plan and was spearheaded by the firm's head of development (formerly Samsung's DRAM development lead), around August 2016 — not much longer after CXMT itself was created in June 2016.

In brief, the purported plan was to nab Samsung's Process Recipe Plan (PRP) by September 2016, poach key Samsung engineers by October 2016, have R&D complete in July 2017, and start making DRAM wafers by August 2018 at a rate of 10,000 a month. NoCut says the PRP dataset comprises 620 steps in DRAM manufacturing and includes data on equipment, consumables, and production methods.

The report states that in August 2016, CXMT first attempted to make wafers of 18nm chips by relying on the collective memories of the Samsung engineers it had hired away. Those recollections apparently proved insufficient, so after allegedly gaining illicit access to Samsung's PRP, CXMT prepared its own document in September 2016. The leaked data even included specific equipment suppliers and model numbers.

CXMT's "new" PRP was then handed out to key specialists, many of them ex-Samsung engineers, whom the prosecution says ought to have immediately recognized the data as originating from the Korean firm. The document apparently included notation and notes on process developments that were all unique to Samsung. A convicted ex-Samsung researcher with the surname Jeon, previously sentenced to 7 years in prison for manually copying parts of the PRP before leaving for CXMT, testified in this case as a witness.

The whole CXMT debacle has been playing out in South Korean courtrooms since January 2024 and is arguably far bigger than just "a company stole some tech from another." A decade ago, most of the DRAM market was taken by the Big Three: Samsung, Micron, and SK hynix. CXMT was created in June 2016 in Hefei (hence the project name), with a modest government investment of around $1.9 billion USD, allegedly with no R&D facilities whatsoever or any plan for research.

Going from zero facilities and institutional expertise to DRAM wafer production in little over two years would be an unprecedented feat, and presumably nigh impossible without the alleged IP theft; getting just the memory fab up and running usually takes two to four years, let alone any time for research. The firm claimed in 2019 that it designed its then-new 8 Gb DDR4 chips entirely in-house as a "leapfrog, independent" technology and began selling DRAM chips locally.

Then the AI locusts charged in and ate every chip on the planet. This demand resulted in explosive growth for CXMT, from an estimated 4% of the global DRAM market in Q2 2025 to around 10% in Q2 2016, marking the first time in over a decade that the Big Three held less than 90% of the pie.

Production capacity expanded to three 12" wafer fabrication facilities, expected to churn out a collective 350,000 wafers until the year is done — close to the same figure that Micron produces, of 375,000 to 385,000. CXMT is also planning to open a second fab in Beijing, aiming to produce over 600,000 wafers per month once it's online.

Furthermore, CXMT's gains aren't coming just from its DRAM market share. Revenue grew 716% in Q2 2026 alone, and its IPO on the Shanghai STAR Market in July 2026 saw its stock climb 466%, netting the firm a cool $8.6 billion USD and making it the most valuable chipmaker in the Chinese stock market.

About 70% of that money is reportedly going towards further expansion of DRAM production, rather than pricier, more complicated HBM. However, the firm has supplied HBM3E samples to Alibaba's T-Head and Cambricon, even as Samsung and SK hynix enter HBM4 production.

As of the South Korean prosecution's last tally in December 2025, Samsung's damages due to CXMT's alleged machinations ascended to "at least tens of trillions of won." A back-of-the-envelope extrapolation, considering quite a while has passed, might suggest a figure in the range of ₩40 trillion, or $29.5 billion, and rising exponentially.

The lasting impact on the memory market and technology in general is going well beyond plain number descriptors, though. All things considered, if the allegations are true, then CXMT's machinations resulted in a geopolitical-scale economic event. Dr. Evil would be proud.

The goal of next-generation HBM5 memory specification is to double performance and increase power efficiency compared to HBM4E, Samsung announced at the 'Memory Executive Summit,' an event that precedes 'Semicon Taiwan 2026.' Considering that it is barely realistic to double the data transfer rate of HBM4E in just one generation, the comment made by Samsung may imply that HBM5 will double the number of interface pins to boost bandwidth.

The goal of HBM5, which is currently under development, is to double the performance and improve the performance per watt by 20% compared to the HBM4E generation, according to Choi Jang-seok, the head of the product planning team of the memory business department of Samsung Electronics DS division. Previously, Samsung announced that its HBM5 memory stacks will feature a heat path block (HPB), which will reduce thermal resistance by 20% and simplify cooling of HBM5 modules.

Doubling HBM5’s per-stack memory bandwidth would result in peak bandwidth of around 4 TB/s per stack already in 2028 – 2029. TSMC expects AI accelerators to get to 20 – 24 HBM5/HBM5E per package configurations by the end of the decade, which means that these systems-in-packages will get a whopping 80 TB/s – 96 TB of memory bandwidth just several years down the road.

Although both DRAM makers like Micron, Samsung, or SK hynix as well as developers of HBM controllers and PHYs like Cadence, Rambus, or Synopsys already offer HBM4/HBM4E controllers and interfaces rated for 16 GT/s data transfer rates, the official JEDEC transfer rate for HBM4E will be around 12 GT/s.

If Samsung expects HBM5 to deliver twice the bandwidth of HBM4E, the HBM5 specification must either double the per-pin data transfer rate from 12 GT/s to 24 GT/s, double the interface width from 2,048 to 4,096 bits, or combine a wider interface with a higher data transfer rate. Increasing HBM5 memory stack interface width to 4,096 bits has so far been envisioned by KAIST and Marvell; however, this is certainly not an even semi-official confirmation of the specification's target.

From a performance-per-watt perspective*, widening the interface is generally easier than doubling the per-pin signaling rate. Higher per-pin speeds require faster drivers, receivers, clocks, equalization, tighter timing margins, and a more sophisticated PHY since maintaining signaling integrity at speeds well beyond 20 GT/s is not easy. But while a wider HBM interface moves more bits in parallel at a lower speed per wire, going from 2,048 to 4,096 pins means twice as many TSV/I/O paths, drivers, receivers, bumps, more complicated routing, and extremely complicated base die. So while a 4,096 I/O at moderate speed is probably best for pJ/bit, the interface/package complexity gets so extreme that it may offset the gains. Furthermore, such a wide interface Perhaps a 3,072-bit interface combined with a moderate increase in data transfer rate would be a reasonable engineering compromise, though engineers involved in JEDEC’s decision-making process may think otherwise. In any case, for now, any discussion of HBM5 specifications remains speculative.

Nonetheless, the target to double the bandwidth of HBM4E (2 TB/s per stack) within one generation is clearly a very aggressive one.

*It should be noted that achieving a 20% higher energy efficiency can be achieved not only by increasing performance, but by improving DRAM process technology, optimizing base die, lowering TSV I/O voltages, architectural changes, or power management.

The RAMpocalypse means that, unfortunately, memory has become one of the most expensive parts in a new gaming PC build or upgrade. The ongoing global DRAM shortage means that you're going to need to pick up deals as they pop up. They're not ground-breaking deals or record lows, but they're the best prices in the current market. That's where this PNY DDR5 offer comes in, bringing the price of 32GB DDR5 down to just $399.99.

● Check out this deal on Amazon

Believe it or not, this is where we're at with DDR5 RAM kits right now, and without a time machine (or buying second-hand), you're not going to find better pricing. This is the cheapest kit on sale at this spec and capacity, and after prices recently shot up past $400, it's a good offer to see it drop back below for the time being.

Our RAM price tracker shows how bad the market is for memory right now. You won't find a single option hitting below its record-low price floor, with many of the most popular models out of stock, too.

With this PNY kit, you're getting two 16GB DDR5 modules in this kit, capable of running at 5,600 MT/s, with CAS and memory timings of 46-46-46-90. This is high-performance RAM, suitable for gaming and workstation use. It isn't the fastest, but it'll do the job, as long as you're not looking to match the speeds (and higher prices) you'll find in higher-end DDR5 memory.

Unlike some of the RGB-packed options that gamers sometimes prefer, this PNY kit is pretty bare-bones as far as design goes. There's no RGB lighting at all, with just a black PCB finish and no heatspreaders. This is an install-and-forget kit that isn't meant to be flashy.

The $399.99 sale price for this PNY Performance DDR5 32GB memory is the real factor here: it's a price that simply can't be beaten right now. If you're building a new PC or upgrading your existing one, this PNY kit is a deal worth considering in the current market.

Best Buy has stepped onto the stage with a huge selection of deals in its seasonal Labor Day sales, with decent price cuts on computers and tech. A standout budget-friendly offering is the iBuypower Slate Gaming PC with Intel Arc B570 graphics at just $899. Much cheaper than a Steam Machine and a perfect starter gaming PC for 1080p gaming, this cheap gaming PC deal gives you $300 off its $1,199.99 list price.

● Check out this deal at Best Buy

iBuypower's Slate gaming PC comes with a 10-core, 10-thread Intel Core Ultra 5 225F processor, an Intel Arc B570 graphics card with 10GB of VRAM, 16GB of DDR5 memory, and a 1TB NVMe SSD for storage. This is a great combination of parts for a 1080p gaming rig, and at just $899, it defies the current economic climate when it comes to PC pricing.

The heart of this PC is the Intel B570 graphics card, which comes with a generous amount of VRAM. For 1080p gaming, 10GB of VRAM is more than ample to handle the textures and shaders on high and ultra settings, but as with any other GPU, it will start to struggle in 1440p gaming when that VRAM gets swallowed up and starts using the CPU to compensate. The B570 is a budget graphics card, but it has come a long way since launching, thanks to driver optimizations and compatibility with more games.

You can see in our below chart from our rasterization benchmarking game suite that the B570 sits in the middle of the pack, competing with the Nvidia RTX 3060 12GB. You can check out our Intel Arc B570 review for more detailed information on this GPU's performance, where we put it through its paces in our suite of benchmarking tests.

Buying a prebuilt gaming PC is currently much cheaper than trying to construct your own gaming PC, thanks to the skyrocketing price of memory and storage. PC builders are able to grab these parts much cheaper than normal consumers can and have managed to offset the price rises with their stocks of components. This, however, cannot last, so you're definitely better off grabbing something soon, before the inevitable increase in prices.

Prebuilt gaming PCs also come with the added bonus of an easier warranty situation. Should anything go wrong with your computer, the whole system is covered, and you don't have to troubleshoot individual parts and manufacturers for an RMA, either.

For just $899, this is a superb deal for a starter gaming PC if you're just getting into PC gaming, or feel like stepping away from the higher prices on game consoles and digital game prices. PC gaming is currently much cheaper for game purchases, too.

China's DRAM champion ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) has started risk production of HBM3E memory, The Information reports. Although CXMT remains a generation behind the big three memory manufacturers, which are mass producing HBM4, it goes without saying that reaching the HBM3E milestone highlights the company's rapid technological progress.

Specifications of CXMT's HBM3E products are unknown, though keeping in mind that we are dealing with risk production, specifications of actual HBM3E products from CXMT may differ from risk production samples. Meanwhile, general JEDEC specifications are well known: HBM3E modules feature a 1,024-bit-wide memory interface, supports data transfer rates up to 9.6 GT/s per pin, and can stack 8 or 12 memory devices. Depending on the exact speed bins, HBM3E can provide up to 1.228 TB/s of memory bandwidth.

Capacity of actual memory stacks depends on the number of DRAM dies used in that stack: HBM3E products can offer 24GB of capacity using an eight-die stack or 36GB using a 12-die stack when built with 24Gb DRAM devices.

Several Chinese developers of advanced processors are already evaluating CXMT's HBM3E with their processors, including Alibaba Group's T-Head and Cambricon Technologies, according to the report. If testing and qualification proceed as planned, these companies could begin using CXMT's HBM3E in commercial products as early as next year.

Since every HBM package requires multiple large DRAM dies, growing HBM output could consume considerable DRAM manufacturing capacity, which is when CXMT's aggressive capacity expansion will be useful.

CXMT's manufacturing of HBM3E is important for multiple reasons and arguably the HBM3E generation itself matters less than CXMT's ability to manufacture usable HBM at all.

Firstly, HBM is one of the critical components of modern AI accelerators, so if CXMT's HBM3E qualifies with processors from Cambricon, T-Head, and other Chinese designers, China becomes less dependent on Micron, Samsung, and SK hynix for building high-performance AI hardware.

Secondly, despite being a generation behind HBM4, HBM3E is still very capable memory and can provide several TB/s of bandwidth, sufficient for powerful AI accelerators. In fact, many Chinese developers of AI accelerators do not necessarily need HBM4/HBM4E to build useful AI systems.

Thirdly, HBM is substantially harder than making ordinary DRAM. CXMT needs not only competitive DRAM dies, but also high-yield stacking, through silicon vias (TSVs), very fine interconnects, thermal management, packaging, and testing. Reaching HBM3E risk production proves that China's memory ecosystem is advancing beyond simply manufacturing commodity DRAM.

Finally, there is also an important geopolitical angle. Export restrictions constrain China's access to advanced AI processors and HBM, so a combination of Chinese-designed accelerators, CXMT HBM3E, and advanced domestic packaging indicates that China becomes one step closer to semiconductor self-sufficiency.

G.Skill, which makes some of the best RAM on the market, has announced the Flare X5X series of DDR5 memory kits. Like the Trident Z5 NeoX, the new Flare X5X leverages AMD's EXPO ULL (Ultra Low Latency) technology, which features optimized memory subtimings to maximize performance on Ryzen processors, especially those without 3D V-Cache.

G.Skill offers a plethora of different DDR5-6000 memory kits across its Trident, Ripjaws, and Flare lineups. It also offers variations that specifically cater to Intel and AMD processors. Historically, the Flare series targets AMD platforms.

The Flare X5X will initially launch at DDR5-6000, since many consider it the sweet spot for AMD's Ryzen chips. Like the other offerings, the Flare X5X debuts with a 32GB memory kit, made up of two 16GB memory modules.

As with any AMD EXPO ULL memory kit, it is difficult to tell the Flare X5X apart from the vanilla Flare X5 since we are not accustomed to listing specifications beyond the main memory timings. In the case of the Flare X5X, the memory kit has its timings configured to 36-36-36-96 at 1.35V, the same as the normal Flare X5 memory kit. The memory subtimings are tighter on the Flare X5X because of AMD EXPO ULL.

G.Skill Flare X5X Specifications

With memory timings of 36-36-36-96, the Flare X5X is not the best AMD EXPO ULL memory kit G.Skill offers. The company sells more optimized variants, including 26-36-36-32, 28-36-36-32, and 30-38-38-32 at 1.45V, 1.40V, and 1.35V, respectively. It is plausible that G.Skill will offer similar configurations for the Flare X5X down the line.

When AMD first announced it, the chipmaker confirmed that EXPO ULL memory kits would be priced similarly to regular EXPO memory kits. However, because of the memory shortage and leftover stock, the price difference was substantial. Pricing for AMD EXPO ULL memory kits has somewhat stabilized over the last few months, so the price tags are falling in line with what AMD anticipated.

G.Skill has not shared the pricing for the Flare X5X DDR5-6000 C36 32GB (2x16GB) memory kit. However, we should have a pretty good idea of what it will retail for by looking at G.Skill's other memory kits on the market. For instance, the Trident Z5 NeoX RGB DDR5-6000 C36, a less optimized version of the C30 version we have reviewed, sells for $10 more than the normal Trident Z5 RGB DDR5-6000 C36. In a perfect world, the Flare X5X DDR5-6000 C36 may sell for around $509.99, $10 above the standard Flare X5 DDR5-6000 C36.

G.Skill will roll out the Flare X5X series in phases so that availability will vary by region. It should not be long before we find the Flare X5X DDR5-6000 C36 memory kit at all major U.S. retailers.