- One other hike in RAM costs may quickly make laptops dearer
- A report suggests Samsung has confirmed it is elevating RAM costs quickly
- Different manufacturers like Micron have already revealed hikes for DRAM and NAND flash
It is probably that laptops (and different devices) are going to get pricier because of worth will increase that may reportedly make reminiscence deal dearer within the close to future.
As Korean site New Daily reports, Samsung has apparently confirmed to companions that it is elevating costs (charged to machine makers) for each DRAM and NAND flash reminiscence. That is taking place within the fourth quarter of 2025, so from subsequent month.
It’s DRAM – standard RAM modules for PCs and laptops (and other hardware) – that we’re concerned with here, and the report states that LPDDR memory is set to increase by 15% to 30%.
LPDDR is low-power DDR memory which is used in laptops and phones (as it’s more power-efficient, as the name indicates), and it’s LPDDR4X and 5X that are set to be hit with this chunky price hike (and LPDDR4, too).
NAND flash is used in storage, including cheap eMMC drives often used in low-cost laptops, and price hikes there are expected to be a somewhat less alarming 5% to 10%.
Analysis: A gloomy picture for RAM
This isn’t particularly surprising to hear as we’ve already witnessed memory price increases this year, including reports around DDR4 RAM becoming costlier.
It is because DDR4 manufacturing is being wound down (shedding out to DDR5 and HBM, the place larger income are available), an incidence that the New Day by day report refers to when it talks about “tight provide” because of diminished manufacturing of older reminiscence merchandise.
Samsung is not alone right here, both, with Micron already having announced price hikes for DRAM and NAND flash – supposedly to the tune of 20% to 30%, in accordance with this report – and SanDisk too (by 10% within the latter case). So, given Samsung’s speak of as much as 30% worth will increase in some eventualities, these are some appreciable hikes in principle.
LPDDR4X and LPDDR5X reminiscence is utilized in a complete lot of laptops, from past-gen fashions to cutting-edge notebooks (which run LPDDR5X), and so the price of these RAM modules going up by a good method goes to affect the invoice of supplies (the general price of constructing the machine) for these laptops.
That’s, in fact, a worth hike that shall be handed on to customers in relation to the value of any given laptop computer on the shelf, and so that is an ominous trace that worth tags shall be ticking up quickly sufficient.
Granted, possibly not within the fast future, as the value of those reminiscence modules is just being elevated with impact from now (or subsequent week), and it will take some time for that to filter via the provision and manufacturing chain. However not that lengthy, and RAM-driven worth rises for notebooks may nicely be in impact earlier than Black Friday 2025 – although substantial reductions will probably nonetheless be round within the gross sales (as ever).
Whereas RAM isn’t the most expensive element in a PC (particularly not in a gaming laptop the place the GPU instructions a lot of the premium), it definitely has an affect – particularly for cutting-edge each day driver notebooks that load up on reminiscence. The report particularly mentions AI PCs (Copilot+ laptops) as driving the demand for high-performance low-power RAM (LPDDR5X), in addition to smartphones – which may also see pricing affected.
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