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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The maker of XMG gaming laptops and Schenker workstations said the prices for DDR5 SO-DIMMs have increased sixfold since July 2025, and it believes RAM will be in short supply through 2027 and beyond. The company said this in the r/XMG_gg subreddit, where the company also announced a price increase of $113 (€100) and $228 (€200) for most of its gaming laptop models, plus a massive $342 (€300) hike for one professional laptop.

This dramatic DDR5 SO-DIMM price jump tracks closely with desktop RAM, which experienced a similar 500% climb in the past 12 months. But what’s also concerning is that other components have increased in cost, too. Aside from RAM and SSDs, XMG noted that PCBs, electronic components, CPUs, graphics cards, and video memory are also facing similar cost pressures, resulting in higher costs. The war in the Middle East has compounded the situation, especially as increased oil and fuel prices are making air freight costs higher, while also increasing insurance premiums for sea cargo traveling from Asia to Europe via the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.

Because of this, the company says it was forced to increase the prices of several of its models. It also reminded customers that its margins are fixed and that the resulting hikes are solely driven by higher upstream costs. A company representative also said, “If relevant input prices fall again, we will reflect this in our retail prices as well — just as we have done in the past.” This is similar to Framework’s pricing strategy, where it recently cut the memory prices for the Laptop 13 Pro after it was able to find another source for cheaper LPCAMM2

The post also gave a bearish outlook on the memory situation, echoing Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra’s words that the DRAM shortages will go well into 2027. This contrasts with Asus CEO Jason Chen’s prediction that component prices will start reversing in the latter half of 2027, and that the long-term predictions of high memory costs are just chip makers wanting to retain high gross margins for as long as possible. Chen said that Chinese memory makers increasing their production would help ease the shortage and that price increases are reportedly cooling as consumers refuse to pay more. Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing which of these two perspectives is correct, and we can only wait and see what happens with memory prices over the next 12 months.

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.

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.

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.

When it comes to building a gaming PC, DDR5 RAM clocked at speeds of 6,000 MT/s is often touted as the sweet spot for specs. While slower and faster speeds are available, it's very much the benchmark for both price and performance, which is why it's noteworthy that this particular configuration now costs $400, a more than 400% increase from the low prices we've seen in the past.

• $401 for Corsair Vengeance 32GB DDR5 600 ($215 off)

In addition to our ongoing RAM price tracking, we perform daily spot checks on pricing for discounts or deals for 32GB (2x16GB) of DDR5 RAM, given its aforementioned significance as the "benchmark" when it comes to capacity. In recent weeks, the price of 32GB DDR5 6000 RAM has been creeping ever closer to that unfortunate $400 milestone, and in the last few hours we've just crossed the threshold. That's not to say that prices might fluctuate back down in a day or two, but generally the traffic is only moving in one direction.

You can buy 32GB of DDR5 RAM at slower speeds for less — this Corsair Vengeance DDR5 4800 is "just" $359 — but good RAM is now harder (and more expensive) to come by than ever before.

According to data from PCPartPicker, this particular 32GB DDR5 6000 kit from Corsair has been as little as $80 in years gone by at Newegg, marking a full 400% price increase on the lowest we've ever seen on this model.

RAM prices elsewhere have climbed by as much as 500%, with 128GB of DDR5 now costing $3,399 in stores. The causes of the PC component crisis are numerous and well-documented. AI buildouts are consuming much of the world's NAND and flash manufacturing capacity, which is having a knock-on effect for consumer production. Famously, Micron even wound up its consumer brand Crucial in favor of serving more enterprise customers.

All signs point to the memory shortage, and thereby pricing, getting worse in the coming months. As such, bundles and pre-built PCs remain one of the only ways to insulate yourself from cost increases if you're in the market for new hardware. As mentioned, slower memory speeds are available at lower prices, but compromising for 4,800 MT/s RAM to save $40 when building a PC is an extremely tough state of affairs.

Bad bots account for 91% of the traffic reaching one retailer's DDR5 memory product pages, roughly 10 automated requests for every legitimate visit, according to a LinkedIn post this week from Jérôme Segura, VP of threat research at bot-mitigation firm DataDome. The figure updates research DataDome published in March, which measured the ratio at about 6:1 across several e-commerce sites.

Over the same period, the cheapest 128GB DDR5-6400 kit tracked by Tom's Hardware has reached $3,399, ten times its record low pricing. The Thales 2026 Bad Bot Report puts bad bots at 40% of all web traffic, less than half the share Segura reports on DDR5 listings.

DataDome's March report documented a single operation that generated more than 10 million blocked requests, with a one-hour sample showing 91 DDR5 listings each polled around 551 times, or once every 6.5 seconds. The requests carried cache-busting parameters to defeat cached stock data and targeted industrial module makers such as Micron and Apacer, as well as DIMM socket suppliers Amphenol and TE Connectivity, alongside consumer brands.

Segura wrote on LinkedIn that retailers carrying memory should assume their "traffic analytics are probably understating the problem significantly."

Keep in mind that the 91% figure comes from one unnamed retailer, and DataDome hasn't published a sample window or its methodology. DataDome also sells the product that blocks this traffic, and page requests ultimately aren't purchases, so the ratio measures monitoring pressure on listings rather than how much stock bots actually end up securing, which can’t easily be quantified.

Apacer CEO C.K. Chang said in July that DRAM supply to independent module makers could fall to 30% of 2026 levels next year, and TrendForce expects conventional DRAM contract prices to rise another 13% to 18% in Q3 after roughly 60% in Q2. Hyperscale buyers have reportedly placed deposits against most of 2027's DRAM output.

A 32GB DDR5-6000 kit that averaged $72 this time last year now averages $392 on PCPartPicker. While graphics card and console scalping in 2020 and 2021 ran against scheduled restocks that eventually outpaced resale demand, no equivalent restock date exists for consumer DDR5 before 2027 at the earliest.

Framework stopped selling standalone RAM in November last year, citing scalpers, and Micro Center sells its CPU, motherboard, and 32GB DDR5 bundles in-store only with a one-per-household limit. Newegg and Amazon have run repeated CPU-plus-memory bundles that price a 32GB kit well below its standalone cost, which ties each kit to a processor a reseller then has to move as well. On eBay, we found G.Skill's Trident Z5 Neo 32GB kit listed at $836.54 in December against a $429.99 retail price, roughly double, and about seven times the $117.99 it sold for before the shortage.

There was a time when PC RAM and storage products were sold with lifetime warranties. Replacement of these components was an inconvenience at worst, with parts exhibiting great reliability and sold at trifling prices. In 2026, the tide has fully turned, and we see even the largest businesses wriggling to avoid warranty repairs and replacements with little shame. Yet another anti-consumer case in point is shared by GRINZ_DOCTOR on the Mildly Infuriating Subreddit. It appears to be a bizarre episode where Best Buy ‘repaired’ an under-warranty laptop by simply removing one of its SODIMMs, testing it worked reliably, and then sent it back to the customer with half the memory it originally shipped with installed, confusion possibly caused by a purchase made from a third-party seller.

You can see at the top of the letter from Best Buy/Geek Squad, dated August this year, the device sent in for warranty repair was a “Lenovo – Upgraded – Legion 5 15.1-inch WXGA Gaming Laptop, Intel i9-14900HX, RTX 5070, 64GB DDR5, 2TB SSD, +1TB dock station, Win 11 Pro” laptop in black, available to buy at Best Buy in the exact configuration. One possible reason for the mishap is that the linked product here is sold by a third-party retailer, PC Heaven, which offers "professionally customized and upgraded configurations." Upgraded in the product listing may be a giveaway that this is, in fact, one of PC Heaven's souped-up options.

GRINZ_DOCTOR sent the eight-month-old 64 GB laptop in for attention after beginning to experience repeated blue screen crashes. The notes mention that underlying software issues were basically ruled out ahead of the warranty return, as reinstalling Windows didn’t help.

Amputation was the chosen 'cure'

The technician accepted the Legion 5 in good cosmetic condition with “no visible wear or damage.” After investigations, the blue screen issues were clearly pinned on RAM, as the Best Buy tech closed the case with repair notes as follows: “Unit has two 32GB sticks for a total of 64GB; this unit only accepts 32GB RAM maximum. One stick of 32GB has been removed and sent back to client with unit.” Before ending the note with the punchline “Unit passed all tests.”

Of course, we don’t know exactly what was done by the repair tech during their fault-finding and resolution process. While GRINZ_DOCTOR insists they bought the unit as described on the upper section of the document with 64GB pre-installed, a product you can still get on Best Buy right now, it seems the most likely explanation for the snafu is that the customer bought an upgraded model from a third-party reseller. Best Buy's insistence that the laptop only supports 32GB of RAM does clash with the user's report that the laptop worked for eight months. Moreover, this certainly doesn't change the fact that they simply took the RAM from the machine without the customer's input. Best Buy also continues to list a configuration of a laptop on its website that the company admits is unsupported by the hardware.

Plenty of commenters have advised escalating the issue with Best Buy. They are advised to go to the store in person and keep escalating until a proper remedy - meaning a new working second RAM stick, or a like-for-like laptop replacement - is done. However, if they did indeed buy a third-party offering, their options may be limited.

Earlier this month, we reported on Micron offering pennies on the dollar for Crucial RAM returns. Meanwhile, in NAND-land, SK hynix reportedly ran out of replacement SSDs and is instead insisting on original purchase price refunds.

Since late 2025, RAM, storage, and graphics card prices have shot through the roof, making items that were once affordable out of reach for many people. Anyone still in the market for those parts has to rely on combo deals for any reasonable pricing. Newegg has an excellent 3-item combo running where you essentially get the 16GB of DDR5 RAM for FREE with a huge $274 discount. For only $658.99, you get the powerful Ryzen 9 9900X processor, a quality Asus X870E-Plus Wi-Fi 7 motherboard, and 2x8GB Team Group DDR5-5200 RAM, along with a free Cooler Master 240mm AIO.

● Check out this deal at Newegg

The star of the combo has to be the ‘free’ RAM. The combo offers 16GB (2x8GB) of TeamGroup’s T-Force Vulkan DDR5-5200. And while the RAM speed is outside of AMD’s sweet spot, you’d be hard-pressed to notice a performance difference without looking at a frame counter. These black, non-RGB sticks will also look great with the included motherboard. If you apply the ~$274 discount to the RAM, you’re getting it for free. And if 16GB isn’t enough, buy the same kit again net 32GB for only $240.

Although we didn’t review AMD’s Ryzen 9 9900X, we know the non-X3D chips, like its big brother, the Ryzen 9 9950X, were generally well received by our reviewer and the public alike. Its strong multicore and single-threaded performance, native AVX-512 support, and backward compatibility with AM5 motherboards make this CPU an excellent choice for someone who uses their PC for more than just gaming and can make use of the additional cores and threads, as you can see from our benchmark data:

The Ryzen 9 9900X is a 12-core, 24-thread processor built on TSMC’s 4nm FinFET process (6nm for the I/O die) with a base clock of 4.4 GHz and boost up to 5.6 GHz. It has a TDP of 120W and is relatively easy to manage the thermals, even when overclocking the fully unlocked processor. While overclocking isn’t what it used to be, you can still squeeze out a couple of hundred more GHz, and sometimes you can get there, even when lowering the voltage. In short, there’s a lot of performance out of the box, and even a bit more headroom left if you want to overclock.

Last, the Asus TUF Gaming X870E-Plus Wifi 7 is a solid all-around motherboard for the AM5 platform. It delivers sufficient power to support flagship-class processors and easily handles the 9850X3D in the combo, even with some overclocking. It comes with four M.2 sockets (one PCIe 5.0) and two SATA ports for storage, fast networking with integrated Wi-Fi 7 and 2,5 GbE, ample USB ports on the rear IO (13, including two USB4 40 Gbps Type-C), and a quality audio solution based on the last-gen Realtek flagship (ALC1220P). Asus’ AI solutions (AI Cache Boost, Overclocking, Cooling II, and Networking II) and the DIY-friendly design make it easy to build and get the most out of your system.

If you’re in the market for an AM5-based system that isn’t based on an X3D chip, this $658.99 combo (an incredible $274 savings) is one of the better deals available at Newegg right now. And you even get a free 240mm Cooler Master AIO. Getting RAM for what essentially amounts to ‘free’ is not something we see frequently. You can even upgrade to 32GB and still find yourself well ahead versus buying alone. Get this deal while it lasts.

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan has revealed that new memory architectures — once thought a commodity business — are now strategically interesting and one of his pet projects, while speaking about the comeback of the American chip industry. He further noted that the memory industry is ripe for innovation, and also hinted at exploring ways to stack memory on top of a CPU.

After years of being a commodity, memory became a strategic asset in recent quarters and will likely remain one for a while, so suddenly, leading makers of 3D NAND and DRAM became highly profitable companies, something the Intel CEO is keenly aware of:  "I used to be, 'do not invest in memory because it is a kind of commodity business,' but now it has become different," Tan said. […] "There is a lot of new technology coming out. So, we are kind of looking at one of my pet projects, some of the new memory architecture. I think you just saw the news: I hired my good friend, Seok-Hee Lee, who used to run SK Hynix. So, you kind of know something that I am thinking about. We are not ready to unfold it."

Tan did not reveal anything about the pet project and did not even specify whether the project is one of his personally favored strategic initiatives at Intel, or an initiative in one of the companies that he has invested in. He did mention that stacking memory on top of a CPU could make a lot of sense, though did not elaborate. Tan's remarks also follow the revelation of an Intel XBM patent that does away with the silicon interposer of HBM.

" I think CPU and memory, I think there are a lot of ways we can really do stacking together," Tan said. "And also try to find some new architecture for memory. I think in some way the memory, a lot of innovation are not there. So, there is some really good area."

Not everyone in the industry remembers, but Intel started as a memory company in 1968 and was quite a successful memory maker until the eighties, when Japanese companies took the lead, and Intel had to exit the market completely after suffering severe losses. Since then, the company has attempted either to return to the memory market with NAND and Optane, or at least to capitalize on a new type of memory with RDRAM. In all three cases, the company abandoned its memory initiatives without incurring significant losses.

Given the current profitability of 3D NAND and DRAM makers, producing memory is certainly a good business again and will remain profitable for some time. However, to re-enter it, companies like Intel would need capital to build at least one fab, R&D to develop competitive process technologies, and time. While licensing a technology — assuming that a company has capital — is an option, we strongly doubt that at this point Intel may be inclined to invest capital in memory and not in its core products and foundry businesses. Furthermore, it is unclear how investors react to such investments given the fact that the company struggles to become a strong competitor in the foundry market and has exited 3D NAND and 3DXPoint/Optane businesses after failing to achieve strategic targets.

Following its massive $8.6 billion initial public offering (IPO) in July, ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) began considering building its sixth DRAM fab in China to boost memory output in the coming years, Reuters reports. If all announced projects proceed as planned, the company's production capacity could more than double in the mid-term future, the report claims. Meanwhile, investment banker Dan Niles believes China could capture 30% of the DRAM market by 2030, according to P Equity Research.

Growing at a rapid pace

CXMT currently operates three 300-mm DRAM fabs: two near Hefei and one in Beijing's Yizhuang district. Unofficial reports claim that each fab is capable of processing around 100,000 wafers per month, so the company's output may be around 300,000 wafer starts per month (WSPM).

The company is pursuing an aggressive expansion strategy and is currently building additional fabs near Shanghai and Hefei, according to Reuters. The company's sixth fab will reportedly be located in Beijing's Yizhuang area, adjacent to its existing facility. Once these projects are fully operational, the company’s total manufacturing capacity could exceed 600,000 WSPM, which will double its current output, according to Reuters. Meanwhile, researchers from Citrini believe that CXMT could exit 2026 with a capacity of 350,000 WSPM, which is just 25,000 WSPM shy of what Micron targets by the end of the year. Citrini Research models that by 2030, CXMT will have production capacity of around 950,000 WSPM.

Building three big DRAM fabs is a big deal, from both financial and execution points of view. However, it is not a secret that virtually all fabs owned by Chinese companies are built using money from local and federal governments under the 'Hefei model,' which aims to transform cities into economic juggernauts by leveraging high-risk projects. So it is not surprising that both Shanghai and Beijing have provided financial assistance and other forms of support to attract CXMT to their regions, according to Reuters.

CXMT's existing Beijing fab, operated by Changxin Jidian, received backing from E-Town Capital and Beijing E-Town Technology, both affiliated with the Yizhuang development zone, according to a person familiar with the matter cited by Reuters. In fact, the district has evolved into a relatively major semiconductor manufacturing hub that already hosts CXMT, SMIC, Naura Technology, and Xiaomi, the report claims.

The right timing

The proposed fab would be located in Beijing's Yizhuang district, roughly 20 kilometers southeast of the city center, where CXMT already operates a 300-mm DRAM manufacturing facility. The planned production capacity and total capital investment for the project have not yet been disclosed, although Reuters points out that a leading-edge DRAM fab typically costs well over $10 billion.

Sources cited within the report said the company is seeking at least 60 million yuan ($8.9 million) in financial support from the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, and additional state-owned technology companies have also expressed interest in participating. Discussions remain preliminary, and neither the overall size nor the structure of the financing package has been finalized.

From CXMT's point of view, this is the right time for financial influxes as the company can sell all of its DRAM output at good prices to a variety of customers. Those being domestic PC and server makers (including Lenovo), and global brands such as Micron, Samsung, and SK hynix, which prioritize shipments of their DRAM output to the AI sector.

Apple, Dell, and HP have all reportedly qualified CXMT's memory and are ready to deploy it in their devices sold in China, while Acer and Asus have already begun to use DRAM from the Chinese maker. If CXMT signs long-term supply contracts with the world's leading PC makers, it is nearly guaranteed to sell out its output to these vendors in the coming years, which justifies investments in its expansion.

30% of DRAM market by 2030?

Dan Niles, founder of Niles Investment Management, believes that many investors underestimate how much share CXMT could capture over the coming years and how much share China may seize in the coming years.

His argument stems from historical DRAM market leadership shifts. In 1975, U.S. companies controlled 95% of the DRAM market, with Intel alone holding 75%. Japan then turned DRAM into a commodity business, increased its share to 80% by 1985, while the U.S. fell to 10% and then just 2% by 1990. Then South Korea repeated that playbook in the mid-1980s and eventually displaced Japanese suppliers, and today it accounts for roughly 62% of the global DRAM production.

With Micron's investments of hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. DRAM capacity, the country is set to regain its massive presence on the global DRAM scene; China could capture 30% of the market by 2030, according to Niles.

China already consumes around 30% of global memory output, as it produces hundreds of millions of PCs and smartphones both for domestic and global consumption; it is reasonable to expect the country to produce as much commodity memory locally as possible. Keeping in mind China's push for semiconductor self-sufficiency and willingness to invest huge amounts of money in domestic fabs, it is possible to expect the country to rapidly gain DRAM output and share. China is already pushing its chipmakers hard to start DRAM production, and the government reportedly asked CXMT to share its process technologies with others.

Not that easy

There are multiple factors — both technological and political — that may, if not stop, but greatly slow down CXMT's and China's DRAM expansions in the coming years.

First up, there are export controls in place that prevent Chinese entities from getting sophisticated wafer fab equipment required to make DRAM using 18nm-class process technology or more advanced. If the proposed MATCH Act passes, then limitations on Chinese companies will get more severe, which will reduce their expansion ability.

Secondly, even if CXMT (or another Chinese DRAM maker) finds a way to produce more advanced DRAM using relatively outdated tools (i.e., use old tools for sub-16nm nodes), they will need to acquire those tools in quantity to increase their output. Meanwhile, companies like ASML have relatively limited production capacities, and CXMT is certainly not the only memory maker seeking to expand its production capacity in the coming years. While SMEE and SiCarrier are developing lithography tools in China, they will be unlikely to ramp up production of immersion DUV scanners to higher levels any time soon.

Thirdly, building fabs is one thing; operating leading-edge DRAM production at high yields is another. China has recruited engineers from Micron, Samsung, SK hynix, and TSMC for years, but scaling from three to six or more fabs requires thousands of experienced process, yield, device, lithography, and integration engineers. Building fabs adjacent to existing sites enables CXMT and other chipmakers to share experience and knowledge internally, which helps to develop experienced talent. But will it be enough for the long term?

Next, expanding wafer capacity alone is insufficient. DRAM producers must continuously migrate to finer process technologies (e.g., 16nm-class, 14nm-class, 12nm-class) to remain cost-competitive. If export controls delay access to equipment or materials needed for these nodes, Chinese fabs could end up producing more wafers at a higher cost per bit than competitors.

Finally, some American lawmakers want to prohibit U.S.-based companies from acquiring memory from CXMT and other Chinese vendors. They have every reason to believe that China wants to take control of a sizeable DRAM market share in a bid to use it in its strategic interest and have leverage over the market, something the country already has with rare earth metals. If the lawmakers manage to turn the proposal into law, demand for CXMT's and other China-made DRAM will drop. It will probably be sufficient inside China, but whether it will be enough to justify 10 or more big DRAM fabs is a different question.

Storage and memory manufacturer Lexar has listed a new 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5-7200 CL38 memory kit in China with a price tag of 3,999 yuan (roughly $592). Part of the second-generation Thor RGB series, the kit features a sandblasted aluminum heat spreader, thermal pads, and eight LEDs that support a variety of RGB lighting effects. It is rated for 38-48-48-86 timings at 1.40V and supports both Intel XMP 3.0 and AMD EXPO profiles.

Lexar says the modules use carefully selected domestically produced DRAM, although it does not specify the actual manufacturer. While there is no confirmation, the company may be using DRAM chips made by CXMT (ChangXin Memory Technologies). Lexar has also published a compatibility list covering 43 motherboards, including 30 Asus models and 13 MSI models across Intel Z890, Intel B860, and AMD B850 platforms. The compatibility list also includes supported boards for a faster 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5-7600 CL38 memory kit.

Interestingly, none of AMD's X870 or previous-generation motherboards appear on the list. That said, the kit should work on most DDR5 boards that Lexar hasn't tested, but the absence of AMD's flagship consumer chipset from the compatibility list is a bit odd. Notably, major motherboard manufacturers, including MSI and Gigabyte, have already started optimizing their motherboards to support CXMT memory ICs.

A few months ago, Corsair began adopting CXMT DDR5 chips in select memory kits, including its popular Vengeance lineup. Likewise, major PC manufacturers such as HP and Dell have started qualifying CXMT DRAM, while Acer and Asus have reportedly asked their Chinese manufacturing partners to source locally made memory chips.

The arrival of CXMT-made DDR5 chips earlier this year raised hopes that a new DRAM supplier could ease supply constraints and eventually lower memory prices. So far, there seems to be little evidence of that happening. At around $592, Lexar's new DDR5-7200 kit is priced in line or only slightly below many comparable 32GB DDR5-7200 kits currently available in the U.S. Similar kits from brands such as G.Skill, Corsair, and Kingston are currently selling anywhere from $585 to $700.

There’s been a shift toward using a single DIMM of DDR5 to skirt the worst of the RAM pricing crisis. AMD has suggested to us previously, at least, that it’s an option PC builders are exploring, and it’s a wrinkle that’s shown up in dozens of prebuilts; one that we’ve been careful to avoid when recommending products, particularly during peak shopping events. But just how much gaming performance are you giving up with a single DIMM when using one of the best CPUs for gaming?

The conventional wisdom is that you’re giving up quite a bit of performance, resting on the ideas of previous DDR generations, where going down a single stick will cut your bandwidth in half. The same is true with DDR5, but things are a bit messier, which we’ll dig into later.

At a high level, using a single DDR5 DIMM doesn’t compromise gaming performance by nearly as much as you might expect. We saw drops of around 8% to 10% across Intel and AMD CPUs, and less than a 5% difference with AMD’s Ryzen 7 9800X3D.

A proper dual-channel configuration is still the way to go for optimal performance. However, our testing shows that even a single DDR5 DIMM offers superior performance to dual-channel DDR4 on CPUs that support both memory generations.

Using a single DIMM isn’t ideal, and it brings up compatibility issues if you plan on adding another DIMM down the line (another area we’ll touch more on in-depth later). But as a stopgap measure amid surging DRAM prices, a single DIMM of DDR5 holds up surprisingly well in gaming scenarios, and it represents a nice on-ramp into a DDR5 platform while prices are out of control.

Testing single-DIMM DDR5 in games

The geomean below speaks for itself. Moving down to a single DIMM drops some performance, but it’s not nearly as stark as I expected. There are some important notes about how we tested before dissecting the results, however.

As usual, we tested at 1080p with a mixture of High and Ultra settings, using Nvidia’s RTX 5090 Founder’s Edition to minimize the influence of the GPU. That’s even more important here, as we’re not evaluating CPUs but the memory that feeds the CPU. We're looking at a separate GPU and CPU here, as well; dual-channel memory is vital if you're using an iGPU.

We also wanted to create a realistic testing scenario. Assuming you’re going for a 2x16GB configuration, that means starting with a single 16GB DIMM, not a 32GB one. That’s what we did here. Our single-DIMM configurations run with just 16GB of memory, while dual-DIMM configurations run with 32GB. Capacity isn’t a major limitation for our testing here, though it will pose performance issues if you’re running several applications alongside your game.

The Ryzen 5 7600X was our biggest loser, dropping 10.9% of its average performance across our 13-game geomean with a single 16GB DIMM. The Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, meanwhile, dropped 8.7% of its average performance, while the Core i5-14600K similarly dropped 8.3% of its performance. The 1% lows are especially notable here, scaling with average performance rather than falling off a cliff.

Unsurprisingly, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D fared the best, dropping just 2.8% of its performance on average. As you’ll see through our individual game tests, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D shows identical performance with two DIMMs and a single DIMM in multiple games. The large and speedy L3 minimizes the impact of using a single DIMM, giving AMD’s 3D V-Cache CPUs another notch in their belt (as if they needed another).

Our other geomeans don’t say much. A single-DIMM configuration consumes a few watts less, leading to slightly lower efficiency when balanced against the lowered performance.

007 First Light, the newest game in our test suite, shows good scaling across our test pool, so it’s a good place to start. The Core Ultra 7 270K Plus dropped 8.9% of its performance with a single DIMM, while the 9800X3D dropped 6.5%. The 14600K is worth highlighting here. A single DIMM lost us 7.9%, but that’s still better than dual-channel DDR4, and by a decent 6.8% margin.

This trend is fairly consistent, too. Starfield is punishing for single-DIMM configurations, with the 14600K losing 10.6% of its average performance. Even then, a single DDR5 DIMM is 6.9% faster than dual-channel DDR4. Intel platforms can scale up to high data rates, and we use 7,200 MT/s for Intel chips. With slower speeds, the performance will equalize. Still, I’d strongly consider a single DDR5 DIMM if you’ve been eyeing an LGA 1700 platform with DDR4, assuming you’re primarily focused on gaming.

Starfield shows the benefits of 3D V-Cache in this single-DIMM configuration clearly. While the performance losses with other CPUs are brutal in this title, the 9800X3D dropped just a few frames, a 1.6% decrease in average performance.

Doom: The Dark Ages is similarly harsh on single-DIMM configurations. The Ryzen 5 7600X dropped 17.3% of its average performance, and the 270K Plus fell by 14%. The 9800X3D holds up well, however, with just a 4.2% average performance loss. Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 (in the gallery below) shows a similar dynamic.

However, the addition of 3D V-Cache mainly helps in these games where we see bigger losses with other CPUs. There are several games in our suite where the performance loss between a single DIMM and dual-channel configuration was minor, particularly in GPU-heavy titles. The Last of Us Part One shows that in action.

Similarly, the performance loss is minor in Counter-Strike 2, just a handful of frames even north of 600 FPS. Even the Core i5-14600K, which was hit the hardest by far, dropped just 5.9% of its average performance (and it’s still faster than a dual-channel DDR4 configuration).

You can browse the results of the other games we tested in the gallery above, though they tell much the same story as the titles we highlighted. The two biggest learnings from this testing are that a single, fast DDR5 DIMM often outpaces dual-channel DDR4, and that AMD’s 3D V-Cache can smooth over the rough edges of using a single DIMM, particularly in those memory-sensitive titles.

How we tested

We tested on our normal test bed that we use for CPU reviews, with the only difference being dropping one of our DIMMs. As usual, we enabled XMP/EXPO for testing, both on single- and dual-DIMM configurations, opting for higher speeds on Intel platforms. AMD’s sweet spot is around 6,000 MT/s.

The data rate is noteworthy for the DDR4 comparison, in particular. With slower DDR5, we expect the delta between dual-channel DDR4 and single-DIMM DDR5 to decrease.

In addition to enabling XMP/EXPO, we disable Virtualization-Based Security (VBS), enable Resizeable BAR, and disable any automatic overclocking features that aren’t covered by warranty, including AMD’s Precision Boost Overdrive and Intel’s Extreme performance profile.

Complexities of DDR5

DDR5 has much higher data rates compared to DDR4 (2x or more), and that’s the result of significantly more complexity on DDR5 DIMMs compared to DDR4. Notably for this testing are the two 32-bit subchannels of DDR5, as well as enlarged prefetch and bank groups. You are getting half the total bandwidth with a single DDR5 DIMM, absolutely, but it’s a little more nuanced than simply running your memory in a single-channel configuration.

DDR4 uses a single 72-bit channel, and 64 of those bits transfer data (the additional 8 are for ECC). With DDR5, you get two 40-bit subchannels, 32 of which are used for data transfer. Critically, these subchannels have their own Command/Address (CA) interface, allowing them to operate independently of each other.

In addition, DDR5 doubles the prefetch size to 16N, doubles the number of banks and bank groups, and increases burst length from 8 bytes to 16 bytes. The math here is straightforward enough. With DDR4, you can transfer 64 bits of data over the interface at a burst of 8 bytes, giving you 64 bytes of data and aligning with cache line sizes. Each of the subchannels in DDR5 can transfer 64 bytes of data, as well, with a 32-bit width and burst length of 16 bytes.

It’s pseudo-dual-channel memory on a single DIMM. There are two independent memory operations that can happen each cycle, both of which transfer 64 bytes of data. That is a big reason why even a single DDR5 DIMM (particularly one with a higher data rate) can outpace even a proper dual-channel DDR4 configuration.

The common wisdom about using a single DIMM comes mainly from previous DDR generations, where you can only get that single 64-byte transfer each cycle, necessitating a second DIMM to have two independent operations.

Let me be clear: two DDR5 DIMMs are still better. Instead of two operations per cycle, you can perform four. The main difference is that, for modern CPUs and games, just those two operations give you the vast majority of your performance, and you don’t run into a massive performance bottleneck as you do with just a single operation via DDR4. After all, there are still a lot of DDR4 systems out there.

On the issue of compatibility

The elephant in the room with upgrading to a DDR5 platform with a single DIMM is compatibility. If you get a single DDR5 DIMM now, you should plan to add another in the future. Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of easy answers when it comes to combining two DIMMs that aren’t in a kit together. It should work, but mixing and matching can lead to stability issues and/or lowered performance.

Generally, combining two DIMMs of the same spec should work. For instance, if you bought this Patriot Viper Venom DDR5-6000 CL30 DIMM to start your new build, and then bought a second one later, it should work. “Should” carries a lot of weight on its shoulders, however. Maybe Patriot sources DRAM from multiple places, or your second DIMM’s timings don’t completely align with your first. That could cause stability or performance issues.

There have been some attempts to get past this hurdle, such as the ROG Certified program with select Asus motherboards, but it’s impossible to know for sure if two separate DIMMs will work together or not without testing. The best you can do is to make sure you buy the same brand of memory, with the same spec, if you add a second DIMM. Make sure to keep your receipt handy in the event you need to return it, as well.

Once you have your second DIMM, make sure to test it first at stock JEDEC speeds/timings (no XMP/EXPO). Run games or applications you normally run, and then use a utility like MemTest64 to check for stability. I’d recommend keeping your PC running in this state for a few days to see if any BSODs, application crashes, or poor performance issues pop up. After that’s done, repeat the process with XMP/EXPO enabled, assuming you’re using matching DIMMs (incompatible XMP/EXPO profiles won’t work together).

Assuming DRAM prices continue at an elevated rate before you upgrade, you may want to consider investing in a dual-channel kit down the line and selling your single DIMM. Even kits can run into compatibility issues, though the likelihood is far, far lower.

Unless you already have a kit of DDR5, or deep pockets for PC hardware, you’re stuck right now. Despite seeing some of the best CPUs for gaming released just in the past year, the DDR5 tax represents a major hurdle to building or upgrading your PC. Intel’s LGA 1700 CPUs hold an unintended solution, offering support for both DDR4 and DDR5. We wanted to see if this on-ramp to a next-gen platform was really as smooth as it looks at first glance.

The idea is simple. If you already have a DDR4 kit, you can upgrade to a relatively new CPU while keeping the door open for a transition to DDR5 without buying a new chip. It’s inexpensive, and a bit more of a practical solution than upgrading to DDR5 with a single DIMM and worrying about pairing it with another later.

Our testing shows how much of a performance difference there is with DDR4 in games. We’re focused on games here for a few reasons. First, in non-gaming applications, memory speed is highly dependent on the specific workload you’re running. Games, despite using different engines, are largely similar workloads that stress the hardware in similar ways. Further, those workloads are continually evolving as new games, new technologies, and new hardware targets are released.

We kept our testing focused on Intel’s LGA 1700 CPUs because they’re the only options that give us a true apples-to-apples comparison between DDR4 and DDR5. We don’t have any AMD CPUs in our test pool because there aren’t any chips that support both DDR4 and DDR5. This isn’t intended to be a competitive analysis between AMD and Intel. That conversation opens up a much broader conversation about total platform cost.

Testing DDR4 vs. DDR5 on Intel’s LGA 1700 CPUs

To test DDR4 and DDR5’s gaming performance, we ran Intel’s main LGA 1700 stack through a 15-game gauntlet of benchmarks. Notably, we don’t have results for the Core i9-12900K, as our sample has a janky memory controller that won’t boot on DDR5 systems. You can read a full breakdown of how (and why) we tested in the way we did in the section below.

We ran all of the games through our 16-game benchmark suite, though we cut Doom: The Dark Ages from the results here. An update for the game rolled out mid-way through testing and skewed our results, so we’re omitting it. The 15 remaining games still paint a clear picture of the performance difference between DDR4 and DDR5.

As usual, we tested with the RTX 5090 Founder’s Edition at 1080p with a mixture of High and Ultra settings. We test at 1080p to maximize the differences between CPUs, and it remains the most widely-used resolution for gaming. Deltas between CPUs will decrease as the resolution climbs and the GPU becomes a larger influence in performance.

Below is our geomean from testing across the suite. Given that we’re looking to compare a single CPU’s performance with DDR4 and DDR5, we’ve highlighted some CPUs with the same color (13700K is always dark red, for instance, while 14700K is always dark blue).

The chart above is a bit difficult to parse, mainly because we’re often jumping several entries to get to a comparison point. For the stack of chips we tested, here’s a clearer overview of the performance difference with DDR4:

As we’ll get into with the individual game tests below, the drop in performance between DDR4 and DDR5 can be much larger than the comparison in our geomean (and, in turn, smaller in other games). What’s important for the overall performance drop is the trend as we move to newer chips. You can see a 9% drop grow to 14%, as DDR4 becomes a more significant bottleneck when the processor it’s feeding becomes more powerful.

That trend is one of the main driving forces behind our look at DDR4 and DDR5 gaming performance today. We looked at DDR4 and DDR5 performance extensively near the Alder Lake launch, and even more recently last year, evaluating performance across a wide range of applications. The testing here is focused solely on gaming to answer a critical question of building a PC today: Are you really giving up that much gaming performance with DDR4?

The answer is, yes, you’re giving up around 11% to 14% of your gaming performance overall when the memory is the only variable that changes. That’s a consistent drop, as well. Older titles care see less of a benefit from DDR5 generally, but we saw a steady decrease of around 11-14% across the games we tested, with some titles pushing above a 20% drop.

007 First Light is the newest game we tested, and it outpaces our averages. The 14900K sees a 16.5% drop with DDR4, while the 13600K drops 12.7% of its performance. Especially among the most powerful CPUs here, you can see DDR4 level off performance in a way that’s undesirable. The 14900K, for instance, is just 1.7% faster than the 13900K with DDR4, but it’s 4.6% faster with DDR5.

Similarly, in Crimson Desert, you can see the 13700K lose 13.7% of its performance with DDR4, and the 14600K drop 13.2% of its performance. It’s worth noting that neither of these games are particularly sensitive to memory speed. You can see in our recent Ryzen 7 5800X3D re-review that even a boost from 3D V-Cache doesn’t give CPUs with a robust memory chain an automatic advantage.

Perhaps the most consequential of the newer games we tested is Marvel Rivals, not only because it shows a much larger gap between DDR4 and DDR5, but also because it’s the most-played game in our test suite by a long shot (short of Counter-Strike 2). For weaker chips like the 12600K, the gap is 13.9%, just slightly above our geomean. For the more powerful 14700K, however, it shows a gap of 25.3%. Even the 14600K drops 17.4% of its performance with DDR4.

Counter-Strike 2 is less extreme, perhaps as a consequence of having such a high floor for average frame rates. You can see that the Alder Lake chips don’t care much about DDR4, with the Core i7-12700K performing identically across both memory standards. That gap grows with more powerful CPUs, however, with the 14700K creeping up toward a 10% delta.

In Spider-Man 2, we can see more consistent drops across the stack of chips we tested, with most CPUs dropping around 18% of their average performance with DDR4. That’s true even on the weaker 12700K, which lost 15% of its performance. The 14900K, meanwhile, was 18.7% slower with DDR4.

Even in an older, GPU-heavy title like Cyberpunk 2077, we can see a consistent drop. You can see in this game that we become completely bound by the GPU at the top of the rankings, but that’s a level these chips can’t hit when paired with DDR4. The 14700K drops about 14% of its performance, and the 13600K, about 13% of its performance.

You can browse through our remaining benchmarks using the gallery above, but most games tell a similar story. The gap between DDR4 and DDR5 persists, of course, but there’s another angle to look at the data. DDR4 flattens off performance, creating a bottleneck with faster CPUs. That could be justification for buying a weaker chip if you can only afford DDR4 memory right now.

Outside of performance, one important aspect of using a DDR4 system compared to DDR5 is power consumption. With DDR4, power consumption of the CPU increases, as you can see in the chart above. The jump is generally only a few watts, but it’s worth noting nonetheless. In games, we’re well below the operating temperature of all the chips in our test pool, but when pushing toward maximum power draw, DDR4 will post yet another limitation.

How (and why) we tested DDR4 vs. DDR5 now

DDR5 is way too expensive, and Intel’s LGA 1700 CPUs represent a unique value proposition given the unprecedented increases in memory prices over the past several months. The idea is that you can upgrade to a newer platform while sticking with DDR4, giving you a stopgap for an eventual DDR5 upgrade. It seems Intel recognizes this value proposition, as well, as it’s reportedly slated to launch Raptor Lake Next CPUs on the LGA 1700 socket.

We tested the main stack of chips, short of the Core i9-12900K, as described above. We didn’t test variants like KS releases to keep our testing focused, as well as lower-end SKUs like the 12100F or 14400. The memory controllers in these lower-end chips are weaker, sustaining lower DDR5 speeds, so expect less of a difference in performance with them.

Below, you can see the test benches we used. In addition to keeping hardware consistent, we use a frozen OS image with an identical software stack. We’re running the same version of the same apps on the same OS update, with identical drivers.

In the BIOS, we enabled XMP for both kits of memory. We also tested with Resizeable BAR turned on, and Virtualization-Based Security (VBS) turned off. Most motherboard vendors off a profile with the power limits removed on Intel CPUs, which can push the processor outside of warrantied specifications. We stuck with the default “Performance” profile for our testing here.

Is DDR4 still worth it?

It makes sense that we’ve seen a shift back toward DDR4. Although DDR4 prices have risen in lockstep with DDR5 prices, they started from a much lower base. A kit of DDR4 today is not much more expensive than a DDR5 kit of similar capacity a year ago. And, with estimates that the memory shortage could persist through 2030, there’s a strong argument for going with a DDR4 system if you’re in need of an upgrade.

The performance trade-off alone isn’t as big of a problem as it appears at first glance. You’re going to lose about 15% of your average gaming performance with Intel’s LGA 1700 CPUs (particularly Raptor Lake chips). You’ll spend more than twice as much on a 32GB kit of DDR5-6000 as you will on a 32GB kit of DDR4-3200, as you can see in our RAM price tracker. And, you might already have a DDR4 kit, cutting that cost completely out of an upgrade. Dollars spent for performance gained, DDR4 makes complete sense.

However, performance isn’t the only factor at play, and that’s the unfortunate reality of using a DDR4 platform right now. It’s a dead end, both for performance and upgrade potential. As we saw in our recent testing of the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, there’s a performance wall in games with DDR4, one which the 5800X3D often runs up against. The memory is a bottleneck, and it doesn’t seem like there’s a way around that problem without upgrading to DDR5.

We also aren’t seeing any new DDR4 CPUs, at least right now. AMD re-released the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, and there are murmurs of Raptor Lake Next. But given the current landscape, we don’t expect a CPU that will radically change the performance you can get out of a DDR4 platform.

Instead of sticking with DDR4 for a better CPU, the best course of action right now is to bite the bullet on DDR5 and buy a weaker CPU, particularly if gaming performance is your main concern. Given that memory prices are out of control, there are excellent deals on DDR5 CPUs right now, allowing you to offset the cost of an upgrade and giving you a kit of DDR5 to carry forward in future builds.

As an example, AMD’s recently-released Ryzen 7 7700X3D is $80 cheaper than the re-released Ryzen 7 5800X3D, despite coming in nearly 20% faster in average gaming performance. The $230 Ryzen 5 7600X3D shows similar gains, and it’s even more affordable.

In Intel’s camp, the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and Core Ultra 5 250K Plus represent some of the best all-around value in the CPU world right now, with compelling gaming performance and chart-topping application performance, all for around $300.

You will spend more on a cheaper CPU and a kit of DDR5. There’s no indication that the memory shortage is ending soon, however. We’ve actually seen prices continue to increase despite the surge leveling off. Opting for DDR5 today buys you better gaming performance, but more importantly, it gives you a kit of memory that you can continue to use as new CPUs and platforms are released.

One of the common misconceptions in today's memory market is that once memory modules based on chips from CXMT enter the consumer market, there will be cheaper alternatives to memory sticks running DRAM from the Big Three. While availability of CXMT-powered modules certainly impacts average selling prices, these products are not cheaper than those based on ICs from Micron, Samsung, and SK hynix even in China, as noticed by @harukaze5719.

A 64GB DDR5-5600 RDIMM based on memory from Samsung or SK hynix costs 18,595 CNY ($2,745) at JD.com, whereas a module featuring the same capacity and specification, but using DRAMs from CXMT is priced at 18,999 CNY ($2,805), according to observations by @harukaze5719. It is noteworthy that a Samsung 64GB DDR5-5600 RDIMM made by Samsung and sold by Samsung costs $2,425 at Amazon.com in the U.S.

While the $60 difference seems significant, it is really just 2.2%, which can be considered negligible at these sky-high prices. Nonetheless, many expect CXMT-based memory modules to be cheaper than those carrying chips from Micron, Samsung, or SK hynix, so observing that they are even a bit more expensive than offerings with ICs from renowned manufacturers may be a bit surprising.

Indeed, because CXMT produces memory chips using an outdated fabrication technology, its DRAM ICs consume more power than those made using the latest manufacturing processes, have lower performance potential, and mediocre overclockability. Furthermore, the Chinese government heavily subsidizes both ChangXin Memory Technologies and Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC), which enables both to sell their memory at lower prices although their actual costs may be higher compared to those of the Big Three.

As a result, it is reasonable to expect CXMT to charge less for its chips compared to chips from renowned producers. Truth to be told, we do not know CXMT's quotes, they may be as high as those from other manufacturers and the only reason why module producers buy them is that they are the only chips available. Furthermore, companies tend to price products based on what the market will bear, not strictly on production cost or their characteristics. In fact, as everyone is capacity constrained these days, there is little incentive for CXMT to price its DRAMs significantly below those from renowned makers. However, while CXMT may indeed charge less for chips (e.g., because the Chinese government issues an appropriate directive), this lowers costs for module makers, but has a limited effect on retail prices of actual DIMMs or RDIMMs.

Whether potential savings reach end customers depends on market competition, supply-demand conditions, and the pricing strategies of module makers, distributors, and retailers. Furthermore, when prominent companies like Apple, Dell, or Corsair use a memory chip SKU, this one must pass rigorous validation processes and is usually tested in-house, or by contract manufacturers, which adds to costs and somewhat erases the price difference between suppliers.

As a result, CXMT memory chips may make the lives of hardware makers easier, but are not expected to impact the retail prices you pay.

You're probably already well aware of the three largest memory vendors: South Korea's SK hynix and Samsung, and the United States' Micron. There's a fourth player up and coming in the market, though, and that's China's ChangXin Memory Technologies, more commonly known as CXMT. CXMT is pumping out RAM as fast as it can to soften the effects of the RAMpocalypse on domestic (to China) consumers, and it's also expanding capacity quickly. Given these factors and the size of the Chinese market, it should come as no surprise that motherboard vendors, including Gigabyte, are advertising fresh support for the chip.

MSI appears to have been the first major motherboard vendor to publicly promote BIOS optimizations specifically for CXMT DDR5 memory, initially through China-market BIOS releases and later with global announcements. What Gigabyte is saying is a little different: not only is CXMT RAM supported on Gigabyte motherboards for both AMD's Socket AM5 and Intel's LGA 1851, but it's supported at impressive speeds of up to 8200 MT/s on select boards.

As proof, Gigabyte offers up a CPU-Z screenshot showing a pair of 16GB Lexar modules equipped with CXMT chips achieving a speed of 8200 MT/s with a CAS latency of just 40 cycles on one of its B850M FORCE motherboards. We have to remark that Gigabyte doesn't show the voltage required to hit these speeds, likely for good reason, but the firm did it without disabling the chip's integrated graphics. That doesn't prevent the chips from posting an excellent AIDA64 latency of just 65.4 nanoseconds on the monolithic Ryzen 5 8600G used for the test. For context, typical EXPO kits usually run around 80ns, JEDEC timings are more like 100ns, and LPDDR-based systems rarely come below 110-120ns.

As Gigabyte says, "CXSH (CXMT) chip-based memory offers a welcome additional source of supply for consumers." (CXSH is the JEDEC manufacturer ID code for CXMT) Gigabyte specifically notes that it is modules with 16-gigabit and 24-gigabit ICs that are supported; that means 16GB and 24GB single-rank modules, or 32GB and 48GB dual-rank modules.

While CXMT memory is certainly a welcome additional source of supply, it's also not really clear how much of that memory is actually making its way outside of China, particularly to the US and Europe. CXMT isn't on the US Commerce Department's "Entity List" yet, so the firm's parts aren't actually banned, but the company is once again considered a Chinese military company by the Department of Defense after being briefly removed from the 1260H list in February. Lawmakers here in the states, likely laden with donations from the big three memory firms, want to see CXMT banned, while US tech companies like Corsair, HP, and Dell are already integrating ChangXin RAM into their products, and Apple wants in, too.

The reality is that, as a DIY builder, you are fairly unlikely to know or care if your memory is manufactured by CXMT. You don't usually buy RAM directly from SK hynix, Samsung, or Micron (certainly not since Micron unceremoniously executed Crucial); you buy your RAM from Silicon Power, G.SKILL, Patriot, Corsair, or one of the many other vendors who assemble DIMMs. If the RAM runs at its rated specifications, there's not a lot of reason for the individual consumer to care where it came from. It's nice to hear that the new chips are officially supported by familiar mainboards, though.

As Apple and other American companies seek to use memory chips from China-based CXMT and YMTC amid massive supply constraints, U.S. lawmakers want to ban exports of Chinese memory chips to the U.S., citing concerns of weakening domestic and allied suppliers and indirectly supporting the development of 3D NAND and DRAM by Chinese companies, reports the Financial Times.

John Moolenaar, Republican chair of the U.S. House China Committee, and Democratic Congressman George Whitesides asked Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to prevent U.S. companies from purchasing semiconductors from businesses included either on the Pentagon's Chinese Military Companies blacklist or the Commerce Department's Entity List. They also called on the administration to add CXMT to the Entity List and impose additional restrictions on YMTC.

"Dependence on Chinese memory manufacturers creates an unacceptable risk for U.S. national security, economic security, and supply chain security," the letter by Moolenaar and Whitesides reads.

Apple has been seeking approval from the Trump administration to source memory from CXMT amid a severe global DRAM supply crisis caused by the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure. Corsair, and some other suppliers of branded memory modules and SSDs have been using DRAM from CXMT and 3D NAND from Yangtze Memory for some time now.

"We are alarmed that Apple and other U.S. tech companies seek to purchase memory from Chinese semiconductor manufacturers, including those with ties to the Chinese military," the U.S. lawmakers wrote.

DRAM maker CXMT is already on the Pentagon's Chinese Military Companies list, whereas 3D NAND producer YMTC is already in the DoC's Entity List. Their presence in the lists does not outright prevent American companies like Apple from buying their products, but at a significant political risk.

Technically, American companies could buy chips from CXMT and YMTC to use inside products bound for China or other countries and continue to use memory from traditional suppliers in products aimed at the U.S. market. To prevent this, Moolenaar and Whitesides also urge the American government to coordinate with Japan, South Korea, and the EU to prevent CXMT and YMTC from taking advantage of the current supply shortage to establish themselves in allied supply chains, which they believe could ultimately leave the West strategically dependent on Chinese memory.

Moolenaar and Whitesides argue that purchases from Chinese memory manufacturers could indirectly support technologies applicable to China's military.

"Leading Chinese memory manufacturers are all closely intertwined with the Chinese military; thus, every memory purchase by a U.S. company will directly subsidize the People’s Liberation Army's development of this critical dual-use technology," the letter stresses.

The lawmakers argue that CXMT and YMTC could repeat China’s playbook in solar, steel, telecom, and EV markets: use state subsidies to undercut foreign rivals, weaken their investments, and ultimately exploit the resulting dependence for strategic leverage. That said, using Chinese memory now could permanently weaken Western production capacity and leave the West strategically dependent on China for a critical component of AI infrastructure, Moolenaar and Whitesides believe.

Homegrown DDR5 memory from China, manufactured by ChangXing Memory Technologies, has been making the rounds lately as more and more vendors start legitimizing it. However, new testing from overclocker Safedisk, shared by Uniko's Hardware, purportedly shows that it actually carries inferior performance compared to similar options from SK Hynix, alongside significant variance in the silicon between different batches.

CXMT began producing DDR5 in late 2025 despite lacking any cutting-edge EUV lithography tools. Fast forward to today, and reports of the company matching Micron's memory capacity by this year are now floating around. If true, China would become the second-largest memory maker in the world. At such scale, it's no wonder that many companies in China have already started sourcing CXMT-made RAM to fill the gap in the consumer market.

Throughout 2026, we've seen motherboard manufacturers verify CXMT's DDR5 with official BIOS optimizations that allow it to run beyond 8,000 MT/s at this point. OEMs such as Dell and HP are using CXMT RAM in their region-bound systems, and even proper PC hardware companies like Corsair are using CXMT modules. Lexar, Kingbank, Netac, Asgard, Gloaway and more are also producing retail DDR5 kits with CXMT chips.

As such, the testing features a Kingbank 48GB (2x24) DDR5-6000 kit running at CL36 and found several weaknesses despite successfully achieving an 8,600 MT/s overclock at CL44. The first revelation is that CXMT modules don't scale with voltage, meaning you can't just increase voltage in hopes of achieving higher clocks. CXMT's DDR5 apparently doesn't respond well to tuning sub-timings either, forcing you to remain stuck with baseline CAS latency (or higher, like in this case).

Different batches of CXMT-equipped memory perform differently, too, so silicon lottery plays a much bigger role than it would with other vendors. Speaking of which, SK Hynix-made DDR5 modules allegedly performed better at identical clock speeds, while CXMT's modules were less susceptible to overclocking in general. We didn't get any comparative benchmarks for any metric, so take these claims with a grain of salt.

Overall, if the testing is to be believed, it serves as counterprogramming against the popular narrative forming around China as the savior of consumer interests. CXMT's strength lies in the fact that it doesn't have to cater to opulent AI clients as much as the Big Three, which reduces opportunity cost, allowing CXMT to produce more DDR5 memory. That doesn't mean it would be cheaper, though, or at least no evidence has suggested that so far.

CXMT has remained limited to the Chinese region for now, and breaking through to the Western market would mean impressing a lot of skeptics. Not only would pricing play a big factor, but the reliability of a new DRAM manufacturer would raise serious concerns. Stories like these certainly don't help, but with CXMT's IPO on the way, it's only a matter of time before it becomes a serious mainstream contender.

ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), China's largest DRAM maker, is on track to match Micron's production capacity in 2026, if Citrini Research's forecasting models are correct. If this happens, China will become the world's second-largest DRAM production base in the coming years.

The bottom-up model estimates that CXMT will finish 2026 with approximately 350,000 wafer starts per month (WSPM) of DRAM capacity, which is just 25,000 WPM less than Micron. According to the analysis, the federal government is pushing CXMT to share its DRAM technology with JHICC, Swaysure, and YMTC's subsidiary XMC to ease domestic shortages. All three companies have either built DRAM capacity already, or will do so in the short-term future, the report claims.

Swaysure has completed construction of a 140,000-WSPM fab in Shenzhen, while JHICC's Jinjiang complex contains enough cleanroom space for 120,000 WSPM, and the initial 60,000-WSPM phase is expected to receive equipment by the end of 2026. YMTC is also projected to operate about 50,000 WSPM of DRAM production at Wuhan Fab 3. If all these facilities initiate operations in the coming years, then China will have a total DRAM capacity of 600,000 WSPM (not counting Samsung's and SK hynix's fabs in China), which is dramatically lower compared to South Korea, but ahead of Japan, Taiwan, and the U.S. combined.

But China is not going to stop developing its DRAM industry, and by 2030, its total capacity will increase to around 1.41 million WSPM, according to Citrini. CXMT alone is projected to build new production capacities in Beijing, Hefei, and Shanghai, to expand its production capability to 950,000 WSPM in 2030, assuming everything goes as planned.

The supply model assumes that about 400,000 WSPM of CXMT output will remain on D1a, another 400,000 WSPM will migrate to D1b, and roughly 150,000 WPM will produce D1c devices.

Enough fab tools?

Citrini admits that producing China's outlook is considerably more difficult than predicting the development of established DRAM makers. On the one hand, there is rapidly expanding fabrication infrastructure in China, abundant state-backed financing, and government-directed technology transfers. On the other hand, among the key near-term limitations remains lithography equipment availability, particularly if the proposed MATCH Act restricts sales of advanced immersion DUV tools to select Chinese companies.

However, the author expects SMEE's domestic immersion DUV scanners to enter volume production around late 2026 or early 2027 following beta testing, as well as SiCarrier/Yuliangsheng introduce its own production-ready DUV platform in 2028. Perhaps a bit optimistically, the analysts predict that availability of lithography tools is not expected to constrain Chinese production beyond 2028, at least for mature logic and DRAM nodes. Yet, for obvious reasons, if the MATCH Act works as planned and disrupts supply of advanced immersion DUV tools to DRAM makers, production capacity expansions will not occur in the next couple of years, the report suggests.

Still, both SMEE and SiCarrier will need time to ramp up production of their lithography systems, whereas DRAM makers must learn how to use them efficiently, so we would not be as optimistic as the authors and would not expect Chinese tools to produce meaningful DRAM volumes before the early 2030s. Still, the key takeaway here is that China is on track to become a major DRAM maker rather sooner than later.

Unprecedented demand

Citrini Research projects total DRAM demand to reach 157.5 exabytes (EB) per year by 2030, including 75 EB of commodity DRAM for agentic AI CPUs, 25 EB of commodity DRAM for conventional cloud servers, 20 EB of commodity DRAM for client devices, and 37.5 EB of HBM4E as well as HBM5 for AI accelerators (15 EB and 22.5 EB, respectively).

Meanwhile, Citrini expects the whole industry to only produce around 37.5 EB of HBM4E/HBM4 memory (mostly by Micron, Samsung, and SK hynix) as well as 91.3 EB of commodity DRAM (including output in China) in 2030, leaving a deficit of 28.7 EB, or roughly 25%.

That said, the rapid expansion of DRAM production in China could be the industry's best hope to maintain relatively low prices of memory, something that will be particularly beneficial for the market of consumer devices that are sensitive to memory prices, analysts from Citrini believe. Yet, the author argues that most of this new capacity would satisfy China's own demand rather than eliminate the global shortage. Furthermore, even if companies like CXMT can expand their fabs faster, that additional capacity will mostly be consumed by domestic needs, according to Citrini.

It should be noted that to make more memory, DRAM makers need more fab tools, primarily 193nm immersion scanners. Yet, companies like ASML, Canon, and Nikon cannot increase output of immersion DUV systems quickly as these are extremely complex machines containing tens of thousands of parts. While Chinese memory companies certainly pin their hopes on local producers like SMEE and SiCarrier, neither has delivered a single commercial immersion system, and after they do, it will take them years to ramp up production of such tools.

ChangXin Memory Technologies, or CXMT, has just received official validation from MSI for its high-speed DDR5 memory modules. The manufacturer has released new beta BIOSes across its AM5 lineup, unlocking stable frequencies up to 8,200 MT/s for 3GB CXMT chips on dual-DIMM motherboards. Previously, RAM using these modules was limited to around 6,800 MT/s despite the hardware itself being capable of much more.

The test BIOS comes from MSI China — there's no announcement on global channels for some reason, and it's only available for select motherboards at the moment. MSI tested region-bound retail kits from Lexar and KingBank on boards with both two slots and four slots, but we only have screenshots for the former, courtesy of Videocardz.

One test was conducted using 24GB sticks (2x24) on the MEG X870E Unify model and a Ryzen 7 9700X CPU. This was mostly a standard kit since it came with a 6,000 MT/s EXPO profile. The other config consisted of 16GB sticks (2x16) with an EXPO profile already running at 7,200 MT/s, so it was somewhat cherry-picked silicon, paired with a Ryzen 5 9600X on a MAG B850 MPower motherboard.

The results showed that on dual-DIMM motherboards, 24Gbit (3GB) modules from CXMT were able to clock up to 8,200 MT/s, passing MemTest with 101% coverage. Conversely, 16Gbit (2GB) chips were also stable at 8,000 MT/s on the same test bench with 101% coverage. Moving over to quad-DIMM, the patch notes for the BIOS say they've "also been raised to DDR5-7200," where the limit was stuck at 6,800 MT/s prior.

This is not the first time MSI has optimized Chinese RAM for some of its motherboards. Earlier this year, the company did the same thing for Intel's 800-series models in China. Anyway, these specific BIOSes are meant for the AM5 socket and they're based on existing stable releases — just patched with unlocked memory overclocking features. More motherboards should be supported soon, but for now you can check out the MSI China's community release channel if you want to try one yourself.

SK hynix this week announced that it would invest an additional KRW 100 trillion ($64 billion) in its Cheongju campus to expand production of 3D NAND and HBM packaging at the site. Given the vast investment, expect the company to add some massive production capacity, but unfortunately that production capacity is going to kick in only several years down the road. But that investment pales in front of the company's plan to invest $712.5 billion in its South Korean operations.

The massive KRW 100 trillion ($64 billion) in its Cheongju campus investment is only a part of SK hynix's grand plan to invest KRW 1.1 trillion ($712.5 billion) in a variety of projects in South Korea. In particular, the company intends to invest KRW 400 trillion ($259.5 billion) in its all-new Southwestern semiconductor cluster as well as KRW 600 trillion ($389.3 billion) in its Yongin site. While the Cheongju investment is considerably lower than investments in other campuses, it is the only project that is actually detailed enough.

$64 billion go to Cheongju to support NAND and packaging

SK hynix claims that it intends to build a 3D NAND fab, install manufacturing equipment, and expand its advanced packaging capabilities for HBM back-end processing at its Cheongju campus in the Chungcheong region. The company intends to start building its M17 fab next year, so the earliest timeframe it comes online is sometimes in 2029 at the earliest. The fab will cost around KRW 80 trillion ($51.8 billion), whereas the new P&T7 packaging and test facility will cost KRW 20 trillion ($12.945 billion).

SK hynix's campus in Cheongju houses some of the company's primary fabs that manufacture 3D NAND flash, including M11, M12, and M15, and historically it was the company's main 3D NAND memory manufacturing center. However, because multi-layer 3D NAND and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) stacks use similar packaging technologies, it is now evolving into a site that also makes HBM stacks: M15X produces actual DRAM dies, whereas P&T3 performs packaging operations.

But the investment in SK hynix's Cheongju NAND and HBM assembly operations pales when compared to how much money the company plans to pour into other projects.

$389.3 billion go to Yongin Semiconductor Cluster to boost DRAM output

SK hynix plans to invest approximately $389.3 billion in the Yongin Semiconductor Cluster, which is the company's largest investment commitment ever and which will make the campus its largest DRAM production site. Meanwhile, Yongin is a greenfield site today.

The first fab in Yongin is expected to commence operations in May 2027, while the remaining fabs will be added sequentially. It takes about a year or 1.5 years or so to fully ramp a DRAM fab, so expect the facility to impact the memory market in 2028 – 2029. Under the company's newly announced plan, construction of all four fabs is now targeted to complete the fourth fab by 2033, instead of the original 2045 timeline. The $389.3 billion investment extends beyond 2033.

$259.5 billion go to Southwestern Semiconductor Cluster

Unlike Yongin, the Southwestern Semiconductor Cluster does not even exist. It is currently a planned project, and SK hynix has not even selected a specific site within southwestern Korea. The company says the exact location will be determined after evaluating land availability, electricity, water, transportation, and other infrastructure requirements in consultation with central and local governments.

The cluster is envisioned as SK hynix's next major manufacturing base after Icheon, Cheongju, and Yongin. For now, the planned investment totals approximately $259.5 billion, though given that the project's completion is decades away, we can expect that number to change upwards or downwards depending on the market conditions and the cost of wafer fabrication equipment.

The investment will be phased over many years and cover land acquisition, fab construction, and production tools. SK hynix says preparations must begin now because developing a new semiconductor cluster — including site selection and infrastructure — takes many years. For example, development of the Yongin Cluster took about nine years, according to SK hynix.

Not alone

SK hynix is not alone in investing in South Korea. Samsung on Thursday announced plans to spend some KRW 140 trillion ($90.98 billion) in its operations in South Korea’s Chungcheong region.

Under the plan, Samsung Display will expand OLED production in Asan; Samsung Electronics will build five HBM production lines in Onyang and modernize HBM-related facilities in Cheonan; Samsung SDI will establish a battery production line in Cheonan to validate next-generation technologies before deploying them globally; and Samsung Electro-Mechanics will expand AI server package substrate manufacturing in Sejong.

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

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

Custom ASIC enables DDR4 memory to work with new servers

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

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

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

Not only Meta's Vistara

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mini PCs have gained a following over recent years by bringing the best mobile silicon to the desktop. The mix of processing power, the compact chassis, power efficiency, and portability hits a PC sweet spot for many folks. Here we are looking at Hong Kong-based Minisforum’s update to its well-regarded AI X1 Pro 370 from last year – the new Minisforum AI X1 Pro 470. As given away by the name, this model packs one of the latest AMD Gorgon Point mobile processors.

Specifically, the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 470 is installed in this machine, and the mini PC’s relative charms rely on the enhancements delivered by the AMD Ryzen AI 400 series. Sadly, the latest AMD mobile processors offer merely incremental uplifts, leaving enthusiasts underwhelmed. The CPU boost goes 100 MHz higher, and the NPU performance has been lifted from 50 to 55 TOPS in the latest silicon. Nevertheless, we thought it would be worthwhile to gauge the appeal of the new Minisforum AI X1 Pro 470, and check out the top-end AI 400 series laptop chip in a mini PC.

Design of the Minisforum AI X1 Pro 470

The Minisforum AI X1 Pro 470 looks and feels well-made, hewn from premium materials, with nicely tactile buttons, and is reassuringly dense. An obvious comparison is against an Apple Mac Mini M4, but at 7.68 inches square and 1.87 inches tall, the Minisforum would be visibly larger than the Apple (5 x 5 x 2 inches), set side by side.

If getting something Mac Mini-sized with an x86 chip is crucial, Minisforum offers the AI X1 (non-Pro) models, which almost exactly match the Mac’s dimensions. These non-Pro models from Minisforum are a bit cheaper, but they have fewer expansion options, ports, and a less potent cooling system.

One of the design features I appreciate about the Minisforum AI X1 Pro 470 is that it has flexible positioning and mounting options straight from the box. It ships with both a metal VESA mount bracket and fixings, as well as a matching vertical stand. The larger ‘Pro’ models (our test model) also benefit from integrating a 135W PSU, so you only need a common figure-of-8 power lead (supplied) to the wall.

The Minisforum AI X1 Pro 470 has a decent selection of modern ports, mostly front and back. It is good to see OCuLink and 2x USB4 among them, and some will appreciate the dual 2.5G LAN ports at the back. I would have wished for more USB-A ports at the back and a rear audio jack, too.

Other design features of note, which might make this stand out from a raft of rivals, are Minisforum’s integration of a Copilot button on the front of the chassis, its responsive Windows Hello-friendly fingerprint sensor on the top of the chassis, and the inclusion of stereo speakers and dual-array microphones under the hood.

Minisforum AI X1 Pro 470 Mini PC Specifications

Ports and Connectivity of the Minisforum AI X1 Pro 470

While the AI X1 Pro 470 has a wide selection of ports, I’d like more. Having 2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A (10Gbps) ports, a USB4 Type-C (40 Gbps, supports Alt DisplayPort 2.0 & 15W PD out), and a 3.5mm Combo Audio Jack on the front, alongside the power and Copilot buttons, is a good start. To the left side, there is a full-sized SD card slot, with a Kensington Lock on the right.

Round the back there are numerous of ports, including another USB4 Type-C (40 Gbps, supports 100W PD-in to power the PC, Alt DisplayPort 2.0, and 15W PD out), another USB Type-A (but USB 2.0), plus an OCuLink Port, HDMI 2.1 FRL, DisplayPort 2.0, 2x 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet (RJ45), and an AC inlet (next to a reset / clear CMOS hole).

That sounds like a lot of variety, but just a single slow USB-A around the back is poor. It means I’ll be using a USB-C dock/dongle at the back, so the front system ports can remain ‘clean’ and available for handy occasional peripheral plugging. On the other hand, this little PC can connect up to four 4K screens simultaneously, straight from the box.

Wireless connectivity is decent. A MediaTek MT7925 Wi-FI 7 Card fitted to the motherboard also provides Bluetooth 5.4 with BLE support.

Upgradability of the Minisforum AI X1 Pro 470

Before even opening up this device, it is pleasing to see that both OCuLink and USB4 are available for fast docking and eGPU connectivity. Inside, there’s quite a bit of room for upgrades, too – especially for a mini PC.

Minisforum provides three M.2 storage slots. With my 32GB/1TB config, one of the slots already has a 1TB drive installed, specifically a Kingston PCIe Gen4 NVMe drive with HMB caching and QLC NAND. Adequate but nothing fancy, it managed peak read and write speeds of almost 5.7 GB/s and 5.0 GB/s, respectively, in ATTO Disk Benchmark. According to the specs, this mini PC can fit three such drives, maxing out at 12TB total capacity (3x 4TB). Extra fittings and thermal pads are supplied in the box.

This ‘AI mini PC’ can pack up to 128GB of DDR5 RAM, using two SODIMM slots. You can buy it barebones direct from Minisforum or Amazon. We received a 32GB/1TB model for testing. These Ryzen AI 300 and 400 chips can be sensitive to memory bandwidth, especially for tasks that lean on the iGPU, so it was unfortunate that the 32GB here was a single DDR5-5600 module. In a ‘normal’ market, we think Minisforum would have supplied 2x 32GB, or a 2x 16GB option, but this 32GB was supplied with a single SODIMM, which seems to be a by-product of the RAMpocalypse.

Adding or changing RAM or storage requires removing five screws from the bottom of the device (1 short, 4 long), followed by 7 further internal screws marked with triangles. Then lift the PSU with the secondary cooling fan gently, as there are three wired connections to the motherboard. You don’t need to detach these cables; there’s enough clearance to lean this assembly to the side, get in, and reach the RAM and SSD slots.

Productivity and AI Performance on the Minisforum AI X1 Pro 470

We tested the Minisforum AI X1 Pro system, and its AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 470 processor, using the supplied RAM/Storage configuration with Windows 11 pre-installed and the default ‘Balanced’ profile selected in the BIOS. VRAM was set at 8GB in the BIOS.

Taken in isolation, the results look pretty good. However, as I had an Asus Zephyrus G16 with 32GB quad-channel DDR5-7500 RAM at hand (my personal desktop replacement portable), I thought it would be interesting to check the difference between the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 (Asus laptop, PL1 65W, PL2 70W) and Ryzen AI 9 HX 470 (Minisforum mini PC, PL1 60W, PL2 65W).

Due to the aforementioned mini PC RAM configuration, the older-gen, thermally-constrained Asus laptop trounced the new-gen Minisforum challenger. Disappointing. I wanted to see if the Minisforum could fight back if I upgraded it to dual-channel. Luckily, I could source a matching DDR5-5600 SO-DIMM, so I’ve also tabulated those results. Spoiler: the RAM upgrade makes a huge difference, convincingly putting the Gorgon Point processor in the mini PC into pole position most of the time.

Above, you have two popular synthetic CPU benchmarks that concentrate on CPU performance. Then the Procyon AI tests I did looked at AI image generation using the onboard NPU. These results equate to a series of 500x500 pixel AI-generated images being produced from a prompt in Stable Diffusion Lite every 10 or 11s. Last but not least, Handbrake was used to convert a reference 4K/60 HDR nature video to 1080p/30.

Gaming Performance on the Minisforum AI X1 Pro 470

What we said about the single-vs-dual channel memory above applies even more in 3D gaming workloads that need to squeeze the best out of the Radeon 890M iGPU. Most readers will know about the theoretical benefits of improved memory bandwidth for Radeon iGPU graphics performance, but seeing, feeling, and measuring it is something else. We can thank the AI industry for opening our eyes to this and moving an extra matching memory module far beyond an impulse purchase.

As I was thinking this Minisforum AI X1 Pro 470 would be a good candidate for a living room TV connected media box and 'Steam Machine,' I tested Cyberpunk 2077 using the ‘Steam Deck’ preset at 1080p. The system did pretty well after it was upgraded to dual-channel RAM.

Overall, the gaming frame rates of 50-60fps on the dual-channel RAM-equipped X1 Pro 470 point to it being a pretty decent entertainment box for the living room scenario that I was thinking about. With all these tests done at medium settings (except CP2077), there are still plenty of settings that can be adjusted to achieve an average 60fps at 1080p, if you insist on that.

Bottom Line

During even the most demanding tests, the Minisforum AI X1 Pro 470 stayed pleasingly quiet and cool. Running through the benchmarks and stress tests, I didn’t see any processor temperatures rising above the low 70s (Celsius). Moreover, the weighty dual-fan cooling seems to do its job pretty quietly inside the slick metal alloy shell. These are definite advantages over my Zephyrus with Ryzen Ai 9 HX 370.

An unobtrusive fan profile is important to me for long-term use of any PC as a daily driver. I think this system could make the grade, with its idle noise level of 28dBA and highest reading of 32dBA from approximately arms-length away (positioned beside my monitor on the desk).

I’ve enjoyed testing the Minisforum AI X1 Pro 470. It looks good, feels well built, offers flexible mounting and positioning options, and runs cool and quiet. Being able to check it out in dual-channel memory mode also raised my opinion of the device. A decent USB4 dock attached to the rear provides the ports I need, while keeping it tidy, too.

Given the small changes delivered by AMD’s latest mobile chips, bargain hunters might be more interested in the AI X1 Pro 370 from last year, which is still available at $735 barebones, or $1,184 for the 32GB/1TB config. Also, if the AI X1 Pro 470 with 32GB/1TB config we received ($1,379.00 on Amazon) isn’t your little dream machine, the barebones model with HX 470 is just $779. To that, you'd need to add a dual-channel DDR5 SO-DIMM kit, an M.2 SSD, and Windows (or Linux).

With the AI boom driving up memory prices globally, Corsair is running a limited-time promotion offering a 25% discount on DDR5 memory kits. Considering prices have increased by as much as 300%, the rebate may not provide significant relief, especially if you opt for higher speeds with lower latency. Lower capacity kits, on the other hand, like the Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2x8GB) DDR5 6000 MHz CL36 kit, priced at $259.99, can be purchased for around $195 after discount. While that might not sound terrible, it is important to note that the same kit was selling for under $100 six months ago.

Check out the Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2x8GB) DDR5 6000 MHz deal on Corsair.com

Check out the Corsair Vengeance 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5 6000 MHz deal on Corsair.com

Check out the Corsair Vengeance 64GB (2x32GB) DDR5 5600 MHz deal on Corsair.com

If you’re still interested, head over to Corsair’s official website and use the code “DDR5-25” at checkout to take advantage of the offer. According to Corsair, the promotion applies across Corsair’s DDR5 lineup, including Vengeance and Dominator series modules, and is valid until March 26. The company also notes that the promotion cannot be stacked with any existing discounts.

Memory prices continue to soar, with no signs of relief in the near future. Earlier this month, a report by DigiTimes highlighted how the global memory market is becoming increasingly volatile, with DRAM prices now fluctuating on an almost hourly basis due to the AI-driven supply crunch. Apparently, large buyers, including cloud providers, automakers, and smartphone manufacturers like Apple and Samsung, have gained priority access to memory by leveraging their scale and upfront payments. This has resulted in small and mid-sized firms scrambling for limited supply while being forced to pay much higher prices or cut back operations.

Recently, TrendForce revised its Q1 2026 conventional DRAM contract price outlook, increasing its forecast from a 55–60% quarter-over-quarter rise to a steep 90–95%. The firm expects PC DRAM prices to more than double quarter-over-quarter, marking a new quarterly record. At the same time, NAND flash contract prices are projected to climb by around 55–60%, which is also significantly higher than the earlier estimate of 33–38%.

Ultimately, short-term discounts like Corsair’s may sound attractive, but with supply increasingly tied up by AI-driven demand and pricing remaining on the higher end, both consumers and PC manufacturers may have to adjust to a new normal where memory is no longer an affordable component.

RAM shortages are prompting some unheard-of moves on the part of some companies, like Transcend telling its customers that all deliveries were delayed, and Phison's CEO warning that smaller consumer electronics players might be headed for closure. Now, Silicon Power (SP) has added a notification to the header of its online U.S. store stating that "a full refund of the original purchase price will be issued if there is a shortage of replacement products." The new measure hints that, in some cases, SP is unable to source replacement parts or that the cost of replacement parts is now so high as to be unfeasible.

The latter is highlighted by the recent adventures of an Australian enthusiast's struggle to return his RAM kit for a warranty replacement, owing to the fact that the kit has quadrupled in price since he bought it. Retailers try their best to protect themselves from scarce availability and constantly fluctuating prices, all while consumers have to resort to paying highly inflated prices for what were once affordable staple items.

SP's statement is conditional and seems to indicate that in the case of an RMA, the SP store will make an attempt at replacing the item, but also prepares buyers for the possibility that they won't get a replacement unit. This is almost certainly due to the fact that flash chips have multiplied in price and become absurdly scarce, particularly for smaller companies.

As for its UK web-store, Silicon Power doesn't have a specific notice, and its warranty policy simply states that "due to ongoing technology or in case of discontinuity of any product, SP will be unable to repair the product, and therefore replace the product with a comparable one."

We took the opportunity to do a cursory browse of major memory and SSD manufacturers' RMA policies, and at the present time, we found that at least on paper, almost every major player says it will honor a replacement. Having said that, as the crises tighten, these policies might well change, and sooner rather than later. Note that our findings are consumer advice and not legal analysis:

• Corsair - Replacement: "If your Corsair product is not operating in accordance with its published technical specifications, the product will be replaced at Corsair’s expense."
  
• G.Skill - Replacement, conditional: "Any replacements provided will be with the same product model. This warranty obligation is conditioned upon the hardware being returned to the original place of purchase, or another place as directed by G.SKILL [...]."
  
• Kingston - Replacement: "Kingston will, at its option, either repair or replace any part of its products that prove defective by reason of improper workmanship or materials."
  
• Western Digital - Replacement, then equivalent item, then refund: "Western Digital will provide a Customer Replacement Unit (CRU) [...] it may instead provide a product with at least equivalent capabilities to the failed Product. [...] If Western Digital cannot provide a CRU replacement or an equivalent product, it may instead provide the user with a credit."
  
• Samsung - Replacement, then refund at current market value: "(1) repair or replace the Product with new or refurbished Product of equal or greater capacity and functionality; or (2) refund the then current market value of the Product at the time the warranty claim is made to SAMSUNG."
  
• Sandisk - Company chooses replacement or refund at current market value. "(1) repair or replace the Product with a new reconditioned or refurbished Product of equal or greater capacity, or another equivalent product; or (2) refund the current market value of the Product at the time the warranty claim is made."

The fact that nearly every company says it will honor a replacement is relevant against the backdrop of regional consumer protection laws. Most buyers' primary point of contact will be the store where they bought their hardware, but while most regional laws provide the buyer with multiple degrees of protection, for primary Western markets, the seller is apparently not obligated to replace the item and can instead issue a refund if said replacement would prove too onerous.

That seems to be the case with the European Union directive 2019/771, article 13.1.2.a, that sates that the consumer does have a choice between repair or replacement, "unless the remedy chosen would be impossible or, compared to the other remedy, would impose costs on the seller that would be disproportionate". The RAM price rise of 4-5x since last year would likely qualify, though individual EU member-states may offer additional protection, however.

The situation doesn't look too different in the United Kingdom, where the Consumer Rights Act of 2015 says, in section 23, item (3)(a), that although the customer has a choice between replacement or refund, they also "cannot require the trader to repair or replace the goods if that remedy (the repair or the replacement) [...] (b) is disproportionate compared to the other of those remedies."

As for the United States, most major PC hardware makers offer limited warranties, as opposed to full warranties, generally meaning that the manufacturer's policy dictates available options, save when specific state or regional laws apply. Broadly speaking, the stores are merely intermediaries in the process, and any protections they offer are a bonus.

The land down under has what appear to be the most consumer-oriented laws, as recently highlighted by the aforementioned Umart case. A browse of the Australian government's page dedicated to returns, refunds, and replacements clearly states that in case of a major failure of the item, "the consumer can choose," and should the seller be unable or unwilling to replace the item, the customer can "ask for a replacement [or] ask for a refund".

What this all means is that, should a person's RAM or SSD break under the manufacturer's warranty period in most regions, it might be wiser to try and go directly to the manufacturer instead of the place of sale, particularly considering that RAM almost always carries a limited lifetime warranty.

Just don't be too surprised if the AI component crisis continues to impact returns and refund policies, as other well-known manufacturers might be forced to follow SP, due to the shortage of DRAM or NAND flash chips.

The ongoing RAM chip crisis is bulldozing everything in its path, and both retailers and memory kit manufacturers are feeling the sting whenever they need to replace a kit under warranty. But some stores can be particularly vicious about this, as Australian buyer Goran says they discovered when they returned a faulty Corsair 32 GB DDR5-5600 kit to Umart — one of the nation's largest specialist PC hardware retailers — for a warranty claim.

In a story covered closely by the Hardware Unboxed channel, the store took his faulty DIMMs (bought in 2024) and confirmed the failure with a PassMark test, but then told Goran that he would not be receiving a replacement kit. Instead, it offered a refund for the original price of 155 AUD — a mere pittance, considering comparable kits now command between 500 and 600 AUD, or a 3.5x to 4x increase.

Despite currently having many similar kits in stock, the store told Goran that a replacement would be an "upgrade." Had Goran taken the offer, he'd have had to dole out another 400 AUD or more for a similar set.

Naturally, he refused the offer and brought up Australian consumer law, which is quite similar to the European one for these matters. In a simplified form, retailers are responsible for warranty claims and must replace or refund the defective item; then they take the issue to the manufacturer. When confronted by Goran, Umart went to the trouble of quoting the Australian Consumer Law but made a seemingly byzantine and twisted interpretation of it, reiterating that a refund at the original price was the proper remedy.

Savvy PC builders are probably thinking right now that at this point Goran could just save himself the trouble and head straight to Corsair's RMA page, as his set carries the usual manufacturer's limited lifetime warranty. That's when this story gets really interesting, as Umart displayed some serious chutzpa by effectively taking the DIMMs hostage.

The store said it couldn't send the RAM back as it had been "forwarded to the authorized supplier," who "issued a credit in place of replacement stock." So, not only could Goran no longer ask Corsair for a direct RMA, but Umart may have gotten a refund at today's pricing and pocketed the difference. Even still, Goran soldiered on and sent all the information to Corsair support, which promptly went on radio silence for three weeks. That's when Hardware Unboxed stepped in to help clear up the situation, even offering to lend Goran one of their memory kits in the meantime.

Corsair did end up replying to the channel stating that it was handling Goran's case — though the host naturally raised the question of whether the company had done because of the well-known influencer privilege. For its part, Umart essentially reiterated its existing position with a noncommittal statement posted as a comment to the Hardware Unboxed video. That did not sit well with people, and the channel replied back saying it now has collected more similar stories with Umart's warranty services — it's safe to say this story is probably not over.

While the best RAM is still available for purchase, prices have surged exponentially as the AI-created memory supply intensifies. With no clear end in sight for the shortage, prices continue to skyrocket at an unprecedented rate. The situation has escalated so rapidly that 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5 memory kits are now selling for $359.99 at U.S. retailers.

It’s astonishing and at the same time sad that $359.99 has become the new baseline for 32GB DDR5 memory kits. The relentless memory shortage sent shockwaves through the memory market, as affordable memory kits disappeared almost instantly, leaving consumers competing for whatever remained. The only silver lining is that, at this premium price point, the available options at least offer decent specifications.

At $359.99, you're limited to Silicon Power’s XPower Storm DDR5-6000 C36, Crucial’s Pro DDR5-6400 C38, or Corsair’s Vengeance DDR5-6000 C36 memory kits, all of which deliver decent performance. Just a couple of months ago, the first two memory kits were retailing for $325.97 and $292.99, respectively — today's prices are a bitter pill to swallow, for sure. In an interesting twist, Corsair's memory kit has actually become more affordable, down from $429.99.

To put things in perspective, the Silicon Power, Crucial, and Corsair memory kits were available for $269.99, $272.99, and $280.99, respectively, in Nov. 2025. It's a stark reminder of how drastically the memory kit has shifted. With increases of up to 33% in just a few months, the landscape is grim for PC owners and builders.

Scalpers are ruthlessly capitalizing on the memory shortage. In a twist of irony, they're leveraging the very force blamed for the crisis, AI, to intensify the scarcity even further: Scalpers have turned to AI to deploy DRAM bots to snatch up DDR5 deals online and relist the memory kits at jaw-dropping prices for desperate buyers. That’s why you now see astronomical listings on Amazon, such as the G.Skill Aegis 5 DDR5-6000 C36 for $1,236.75, or the Patriot Viper Xtreme 5 RGB DDR5-7800 C38 for $1,133.25. These two memory kits are normally priced at less than $120 — but we don't have a time machine.

The memory supply is dwindling, and the spiraling prices show no signs of stabilizing, which is expected when you're in the midst of a shortage. On top of that, AI-fueled bots are outpacing human shoppers. If this trend continues — and it likely will — memory upgrades will soon be out of reach for the average consumer.

Update 6/3/2026 10:54 am PT: Newegg has confirmed to Tom's Hardware that the listings are the result of a pricing error. An internal system glitch has impacted over 50 SKUs, and the retailer is working diligently to fix the issue.

Original Article

Newegg has dramatically increased the price of some Corsair Vengeance DDR5 and G.Skill Trident Z5 memory kits, widely regarded as among the best RAM, to a mind-blowing $3,980. We've contacted the retailer to clarify if this was a planned price adjustment or a pricing error, but we have yet to receive a response. The uncertainty leaves consumers in suspense regarding the future of memory affordability. Given the steep increase and a single specific price applied to multiple different brands and capacities, an error of some description seems more likely. In the meantime, consumers are unable to buy these kits without shelling out an eye-watering amount of money.

Currently, there are approximately 27 DDR5 memory kits priced at an eye-watering $3,980 on Newegg. The vast majority are Corsair Vengeance DDR5 kits, but there's one outlier that hails from G.Skill's Trident Z5 RGB lineup. These listed kits vary in capacity, ranging from 32GB (2x16GB) to 64GB (2x32GB), and span data rates from baseline DDR5-4800 to high-end DDR5-7600.

This Vengeance RGB DDR5-6000 C36 32GB memory kit was retailing for $439.99 a day before the sudden rise to $3,980. The memory kit is still selling for the same price on other U.S. retailers, such as Amazon. The Trident Z5 RGB DDR5-7600 C36 32GB shows a similar trend. The memory kit was $549.99 yesterday, and it was the lowest price in the market for that specific SKU.

Regardless of memory kit density or frequency, each one displays the same price tag. The uniform pricing across the wide range of products strongly implies a potential pricing error on Newegg’s part. However, at the rate at which memory prices are increasing in recent months, it’s impossible to completely rule out the chance that this is the new norm without confirmation from the vendor. As noted, prices elsewhere, including Corsair's own website, do not reflect this increase.

The ripple effects of the inflated Vengeance DDR5 pricing are clearly visible in Newegg’s bundles. What was once a sub-$1,000 Ryzen 7 9850X3D combo package has now skyrocketed to a staggering $4,542 overnight. However, this other Ryzen 7 9800X3D bundle remains at its previous price point. The difference is that it comes with V-Color memory rather than the Vengeance series, so the pricing error appears to affect only Corsair's memory kits.

Since the start of the year, DDR5 retail pricing has surged between 25% to 50%. Let's hope the steep price tags on Vengeance memory kits are simply the result of pricing errors, since Corsair is one of the top enthusiast brands. Consumers don't need any more grim news about memory price hikes. Objectively, if these pricing discrepancies are limited to Corsair memory kits, it could indicate that someone at Newegg was doing something about the pricing on these products. There is a possibility that Corsair has raised prices on its Vengeance memory kits, but perhaps not to the exaggerated levels reflected on Newegg's site. It's important not to jump to conclusions until Newegg provides clarification or an official response on the matter.

A Reddit user posted on the r/pcmasterrace subreddit to showcase their unexpected Corsair 32GB DDR5-6000 RAM haul. According to u/AccomplishedFan8690, they bought a single 32GB kit online for $300, but they were surprised to find an entire box arriving on their doorstep. The box contains 10 32GB kits, totalling 320GB. If we look at current pricing on Amazon for the best gaming RAM, most 32GB Corsair kits cost around $400, meaning this complete package is actually worth around $4,000 or more. With no motherboard offering that kind of DIMM support, and 32GB being the sweet spot for gaming, they won’t be able to use all 10 kits, which likely consist of a total of 20 sticks. Instead, they plan to sell the extra RAM for under the current inflated prices.

We’re unsure how this happened (or if it definitely happened), but sellers making mistakes in packing and sending orders are not unheard of. For example, a Samsung customer ordered two 9100 Pro SSDs late last year, but received 20 instead, while an Amazon customer canceled their Asus ROG Astra RTX 5080 order and just refunded, but the expensive GPU was delivered anyway. One commenter suggested that the person packing the order saw “1 box” on the order label and assumed that it was an entire box of RAM kits and not just one piece.

This would’ve been an amazing haul last year before the memory chip shortage, but given that prices have jumped by 500% in the last quarter of 2025, one could say that this is absolute gold. Some European retailers are reporting that RAM prices are slowly stabilizing, with some models even cutting prices. However, PC manufacturers continue to warn about looming price hikes, with a U.S.-based retailer saying that it will have to pass on costs to its customers once its existing inventory runs out.

The memory chip shortage is brought about by the massive demand of AI hyperscalers as they rush to build data centers to support the massive demand for compute. However, this is driven by investors pouring billions of dollars into AI, not by organic growth from customers. Some industry experts are even doubting the sustainability of all this spending, saying that there is “no way” that all these infrastructure costs can turn a profit. There really is no telling what the future will bring for RAM pricing, but in the meantime, we can just let u/AccomplishedFan8690 enjoy all that RAM and share the extra at lower prices with some of the lucky few.

As prices of DDR5 memory kits set records in the U.S., in Europe they begin to show signs of descend. At least, this is what a DDR5 pricing graph published to a renowned PC enthusiasts community is meant to show. We also analyzed the pricing of several DDR5 kits from prominent suppliers in Germany, and we can certainly say that these kits cost less than they used to cost just weeks ago.

The chart allegedly depicts aggregated pricing of an 'average' 32 GB DDR5 kit across the European Union from late July 2025 to February 2026. Prices hovered around €95 (minimum, green) – €100 (average, blue) through early autumn, then began climbing sharply in October, accelerating through November and peaking in early February at roughly €430 – €470 on average, with minimum prices slightly lower. Toward the end of the period, both lines trend downward, which may either indicate a modest correction after the spike or an actual drop in prices due to certain factors.

While the graph from deserves attention, it lacks clarity and details (which kits, which countries, retailers, is VAT included, etc.), so we decided to do our own price trend checks of five popular 32 GB DDR5-6000/6400 dual-channel kits* from renowned brands like Crucial, Corsair, G.Skill, Kingston, and Patriot in Amazon Germany using the CamelCamelCamel service.

Among the 32 GB DDR5-6000/6400 kits that we checked, only two models — from Corsair and Kingston — demonstrated steep declines: from around €480 in early February to around €425 now for Corsair and from around €550 in early January to €463 at press time for Kingston. Nonetheless, all memory kits that we checked are now priced below their peaks several weeks ago. Note that all retail prices in Europe include VAT, unlike retail prices in the U.S.

We also checked price trends for the same 32 GB DDR5 kits in the U.S., and while the prices are far from where they were in September, some of them (G.Skill, Patriot) are also showing a modest correction, though we certainly cannot say that they are heading downwards.

While $400 is certainly way too high for a 32 GB DDR5-6000 memory kit in 2026, we are not going to see prices decline to normal levels due to shortages of memory chips, which is going to happen either when excessive demand for all kinds of memory drops, when new DRAM production capacities come online in late 2026 – 2027, or when DRAM makers transit to more efficient process technologies. Yet, the signs of correction clearly show that the retail DDR5 kits' prices are way too high, which affects demand significantly enough for retailers to slash their price tags.

*We used the following kits for our checks, as memory prices currently depend on supply, we did not specify based on whether the kits feature AMD Expo or Intel XMP profiles:

• Crucial Pro 32 GB DDR5-6400 (CP2K16G64C38U5B)
• Corsair Vengeance RGB 32 GB DDR5-6000 (CMH32GX5M2E6000C36)
• G.Skill Flare X5 Series 32 GB DDR5-6000 (F5-6000J3636F16GX2-FX5)
• Kingston Fury Beast 32 GB DDR5-6000 (KF560C30BBEK2-32)
• Patriot Viper Venom 32 GB DDR5-6000 (PVV532G600C36K)

A charming video from a Turkish wedding reveals a delighted bride and groom being showered with opulent gifts, as per tradition. However, this happy couple isn’t seen being weighed down in gold and jewelry, as if typically the case, instead they are collecting the ultimate riches of the PC tech world – GPUs, RAM, and processors.

The video clip embedded below (expand the tweet to see it) begins with the groom being presented with an MSI Suprim GeForce RTX 5090 in white. The multi-thousand-dollar GPU is hung around the groom's neck using red ribbons. Next up, the same wedding guest presents the bride with a quad-channel DDR5 memory kit, again lashed together using red ribbons. If the guy who presented these tech delights wasn’t the ‘best man’, he is now.

Another wedding guest steps to the fore and adds an Intel Core Ultra Unlocked processor to the groom’s gifts. The subtitles read “right now it’s a full computer set” (machine translation). So, we guess bulky items like the case, motherboard, and PSU weren’t suitable for hanging upon the newlyweds.

Something old
Something GPU
Something borrowed
And something from team Blue

My step-sister married into a Turkish family. It was probably nearly 20 years ago, but I don’t remember her getting any computer tech gifts. The wedding did involve a lot of gold and AK47s, though.

We’ve recently reported on the value of both DRAM and NAND ICs rising above gold, by weight. Such reports may have inspired the Turkish wedding guests in their lovely video clip.

However, we note that while gold never tarnishes, diamonds are forever, cash is king, and happiness is a warm AK47 - an RTX 5090 is probably only going to be serviceable for about a decade, if it doesn’t self-combust in the interim. Meanwhile, a large number of economists and tech watchers expect there to be a sharp correction in the AI-stoked RAM and NAND markets, in due course.

We don’t want to be Debbie Downers about this wedding, though, and wish the bride and groom a long, blissful, and lag-free marriage.

Angeion Group, a settlement administration firm, is calling for eligible G.Skill customers to claim their cash from the company. According to the company’s X post, people who purchased a G.Skill DDR4 or DDR5 RAM kits may be eligible to receive a part of the $2.4 million that the company paid to settle the deceptive advertising case filed against it.

The plaintiffs said that “they were lead to believe that the advertised speeds were 'out of the box' speeds requiring no adjustments to their PCs," and they alleged “that G.Skill deceptively advertised and labeled the speed of its DDR-4 and DDR-5 DRAM (non-laptop) memory products with rated speeds over 2133 MHz or 4800 MHz, and that G.Skill is liable for violations of consumer protection statutes and breach of express warranty." While the company refused to admit any wrongdoing, it decided to settle the case to avoid “the uncertainties, burdens, and expenses associated with ongoing litigation.”

Eligible claimants must have purchased a G.Skill DDR4 memory module with a rated speed of over 2133 MHz or a G.Skill DDR5 rated above 4800 MHz between January 31, 2018, and January 7, 2026, while residing in the United States. You also do not need to present proof of purchase if you’re making five or fewer claims. So, if you think you’re qualified to file a claim, you can fill out the claim form on the official Settlement Website until April 7, 2026.

However, even though the settlement amount is relatively large at $2.4 million, the amount each claimant will get will vary depending on the total number of claims. Claim Depot also reports several deductions from the total amount, including administration costs of $295,000, attorney’s fees of up to $800,000, attorney’s expenses (to be determined), and service awards to class representatives of up to $10,000. Because of this, the amount you get (if you’re eligible for the claim) could be significantly less than the price of one of the best RAM kits you can get today. But even if that is the case, every penny still counts, especially as we struggle with skyrocketing memory and storage prices.

After months of consistent decline, Intel’s consumer CPUs have enjoyed a small but significant spell of market share growth, at least according to the latest Steam Hardware Survey (January 2026 data). The latest statistics raise a couple of key questions. Firstly, could this mark the beginning of an Intel comeback? Secondly, why might Intel platforms be more attractive in the current PC market?

So, the change in share is quite small, at 0.25% up in Intel’s favor, in January 2026 data. We know the SHWS hasn’t got the strongest reputation for rigorous statistical accuracy, despite the size of the user base. Nevertheless, it is entertaining to ponder whether something larger is happening in the CPU market, and why the balance could be shifting.

An Intel comeback?

Though Intel has broken its downtrend in this latest set of survey statistics, it isn’t possible to say whether this is truly a change in fortunes. As Aristotle (probably) said, “one swallow does not a spring make.” So, one result doesn’t provide a lot of certainty for extrapolations.

We’d need three months of data to confirm a popularity plateau, resistance point, or reversal of fortunes for Intel in the gaming CPU market. That means we are still a long way off the establishment of a reliable trend.

Why might Intel gain market share in 2026?

If we assume that Intel is once again going to consistently grow its consumer CPU market share, it is interesting to look at its current strengths and recent platform announcements.

Ahead of the RAMpocalypse, PC DIY forums and social media generally seemed to steer builders toward AM5 plus DDR5 for creating a potent ‘future-proof’ PC system. After several months of exploding RAM pricing, this particular path to PC Nirvana has lost its glossy shine.

In the PC DIY space, pricing and availability may have worked in Intel’s favor over recent months. The iconic PC chipmaker’s 13^th and 14th-generation processors appear to have remained in stock, often discounted. They can be used with cheaper DDR4 RAM (that upgraders may already have), with plentiful well-priced DDR4 motherboards (e.g. B760) still at retailers. Moreover, these remain decent platforms for most gamers, who will typically be performance-limited by their GPU choice. We've also seen some fairly drastic and generous discounts on Intel's current generation processors, with Core Ultra 200 series chips bundled with motherboards, coolers, popular games, or even just slashed in price in the second half of 2025.

A cultural shift from future-proofing to buying the best value $/FPS system today seems to have taken hold in Q4 2025 and persists to this day.

At CES 2026, we also noticed more positives for Intel. Its next-gen Panther Lake chips for laptops were far more warmly welcomed than AMD’s Ryzen AI 400 series refresh. This won’t have started to trickle through to Steam survey results, of course, but Intel traditionally has stronger laptop-maker support, and Panther Lake should ensure that isn’t eroded in 2026.

Amidst the dire and ongoing RAM shortage, there's a tiny sliver of hope stemming from Germany, where DDR5 prices have "come to a complete halt," according to 3DCenter.org's recent analysis. Prices from mid-January only saw a 0.1% increase on average across 20 DDR5 kits at the end of the month. While this doesn't suddenly signal normalcy — the stabilized prices are still high — it's a much-needed slowdown.

Just last week, we covered PCParkPicker's data that told a similar story. Instead of prices steadily going up, we're seeing the graphs level out for the first time in months. And that goes for both DDR4 and DDR5 kits, but the latter's high-speed offerings were still climbing at the time of reporting. That was also American data, reflective of broader industry trends, whereas 3DCenter's analysis is focused on Germany.

In particular, we're looking at the cheapest listings on Geizhals, a popular retailer in the region, whose inventory shows basically no uptick in pricing in the past 2+ weeks. Individual kits still fluctuate, especially if they're more sought-after models as mentioned before, but conversely, there are some kits that've actually received price cuts!

The biggest difference is seen with 64 GB (2x32) 6000 MT/s kits getting a 15% reduction compared to the start of January. The average price for these has fallen from 699 EUR to 596 EUR, implying that nature is taking its course. We can't be too hopeful, though, since 96 GB (2x48) 6400 MT/s kits saw a 17% price increase in the same time frame, followed by an 11% increase in 32GB (2x16) DDR5-6000 CL28 memory.

Regardless, the sweet spot for current-gen PCs — 32 GB DDR5-6000 — is still selling for 400 EUR, which is an astronomical 432% increase since July of last year, the most for the entire category. So, even though this month saw next to nothing in price hikes, we haven't escaped the crisis. The onslaught of attacks has stopped, but the damage already done will take a long time to repair, and that's if there are no more strikes.