RAM prices, why so...CRAZY!!!!111

bugler

They have gone nuts. Shortly before christmas, I saw a 256MB stick of DDR RAM from one irish retailer for 45 IEP. Now, I see the same sticks for over a 100 IEP. You'll get a 128 MB DDR stick for the price of a 256MB one a couple of months ago. What causes this? And is there any sign of a slump? Even SD seems to have gone up....

seamus

Well I got a stick of PC133 128MB SDRAM from PC World, yesterday for just under €32. Slapped it in. Works sweet. Tripled my RAM for next-to-nothing. Cheapest price I found in Dublin.

leeroybrown

RAM prices are cyclic. Every two years or so the prices cycle from high to low and back up again.

This has got nothing to do with RAM technology but is related to economics ... Supply and Demand.

Take DDR as an example:
The popularity of the AMD processore and the emergance of DDR boards cause an increase demand for the memory. Obviously all the big memory manyfacturers wan't a slice of the cake and they all build new fab's to produce the memory. As all the memory manufacturers reach full throughput on these fab's the price drops throught the floor. This causes profits to drop for a lot of the manufacturers so they scale back their operations on that Memory type and move more towards another causing a sudden price hike. It works pretty much the same way for every Memory type including PC ram, Flash Memory, tiny ROM's for emnbedded applications, etc.

You'll probably find that the sudden price increase in PC RAM has been balanced by a drop in another area of the RAM market.

corkey

Hi All

check out pc world doing non branded stuff 256 pc133 for
58 euros not bad :cool:

strat

When i built meh pc back in november i got 2 sticks of 256 DDR PC2100 for about 50euro each - ntb since then its doubled -

that said
about 12 months previous to that i got 128megs of pc100 - for an older p3 machine and it cost me about 200euro :eek:

i think volitile is the word your looking for

dont worry lads if u hold on im sure it will go down again :cool:

leeroybrown

Yeah,

I paid about €130 (just over £100 at the time) for 3 x 256 Meg of Branded PC2100 back in late October. I think that was just about at the very bottom of the price cycle. The RAM has worked perfectly from the moment I got it

ramius

The price of RAM always goes up and down and the reason is that when the price goes really low some companies are forced out of business and prices go up after a while the price goes back down, its all economics, I usually get all my RAM from www.itdirect.ie they are based on Parliament street in dublin

azezil

dammit i knew i should of baught that extra ram when i had the chance...

irishguy

i am thinking of buying 512Mb od DDR within 1 to 3 months do you think i sould wait or buy it now ill be getting it from Crucial

DDR

sceptre

I'd buy it now if you'll be needing it in the next few months. Got a 256 stick for the laptop lately for 51stg + 8 p&p from crucial, 20 nicker cheaper before Christmas (tight hoor here was waiting to see if he'd get some for the desktop too)

Don't know how reliable my info is but I've asked around - people seem to think prices will go up, might fall back again during the summer (it'd follow the cyclical pricing model if it does)

DiscoStu

i picked up 512mb of pc 133 a couple of months ago off overclockers.co.uk for 40 sterling. the same stuff will now cost over 94 + vat. i thinks thats about €180

Stonemason

Yup in this case korea decided to get in on the memory market they swamped the market place with cheap ram in a bid to get hard curancy $$$$ this had the effect of forcing a few companys out of business and now everything is going back to normal.BTW watch our for hidden price rises to ie anything using memory like Graphics cards these will increase too so if youve been putting off buy a nice new gf3 chances are itll get more expencive.




Stone:D