Even older DDR4 RAM is still much more expensive, and the used market isn't much of a refuge.
In 2020, $94.99 could buy you a 32GB DDR4-3200 RAM kit. In October 2026, the cheapest comparable kit listed in a price tracker cost $198. It's even more expensive to build a newer DDR5 system, with 32GB of DDR5-6000 memory starting at $454. And that's before you've even bought a graphics card or dealt with rising SSD and HDD prices.
Most of that price hike arrived in recent months. Since late 2025, growing demand from AI data centers has been pushing up memory prices for consumers. Even secondhand RAM isn't the bargain it once was.
In October 2020, an archived Newegg promotion offered a 16GB GeIL DDR4-3200 kit for $59.99 and a 64GB G.Skill kit for $204.99. A separate November promotion listed a 32GB Team T-FORCE VULCAN Z DDR4-3200 kit for $94.99.
Compare those prices with Tom's Hardware's October 16, 2026 price tracker. The cheapest DDR4-3200 listings at the time of writing were $104 for 16GB, $198 for 32GB and $489 for 64GB. That's approximately 73 percent, 108 percent and 139 percent more, respectively. These are retail snapshots rather than annual averages, and while the brands and memory timings differ between listings, the capacities and advertised speeds match. That gives us a reasonable picture of how much RAM prices have risen.
The comparison is even worse with DDR5. It didn't reach mainstream desktop PCs until late 2021, so there's no direct comparison for 2020.
Source link
