News in the Channel - issue #38

RISING COST OF RAM

RAM was once one of the cheapest computer components, but the huge growth in data centres – fuelled by the rise of AI – which also need RAM has seen demand shoot up and caused supply issues, which is pushing prices up. Ian Foddering, VP Europe for SHI, says he expects to see a 50% increase in memory prices this year. “That’s on top of the rises we saw in 2025, which saw DRAM surge 171% compared to the previous year,” he adds. “We’ve seen them continue to rise in November, December, then again in January, and we’re expecting them to rise again throughout the year as we navigate through the situation. “We’re in this situation because the high bandwidth memory demanded by AI datacentres consumes three times the amount of wafers, which is the underlying, foundational requirement to manufacture RAM, and this is causing supply shortages. “For the market, that’s going to translate into higher prices as well as capacity shortages in the datacentre and limited stock availability, which will delay shipments.” Ruth Wildman, commercial director of Millstream Technology Ltd, says she has seen RAM prices increase by 140% on standard memory and SSDs since October 2025. “That, alongside the supply issues, make it extremely difficult to plan for upgrades and resolve memory related faults,” she says. “We would usually carry out several upgrades a month, but we cannot get the stock and it is not cost effective for the clients.” Mike Barron, UK managing director, SYNAXON, says the rise is having a knock-on effect on hardware vendors as they can’t get enough DRAM to populate all the laptops, PCs, workstations, tablets, smartphones, servers and storage devices they had planned to manufacture.

“This has led to significant shortages in some product categories – particularly at the entry-level as vendors are focused on building higher value products,” he says. “The upside is that with a scarcity of supply, selling prices are holding up and sales of the higher value products, for which there generally better availability, are strengthening.” Problems caused The rising cost of RAM is causing issues for resellers, especially those that build PCs/laptops for customers. Indeed, Ruth says Millstream Technology has temporarily stopped building PCs. “The lack of supply and cost of RAM and SSDs makes it non-viable,” she explains. “We will reassess this month, maybe offering some solutions with older technology but that seems like a step backwards.” Ian says he is starting to see lead times for deliveries on servers and storage kick out above 20 weeks. “We continue to expect that to kind of increase throughout the year,” he adds. “But maybe the worst side effect of this is causing a lot more volatility, so quoting and pricing are a moving feast. We used to have pricing that we could lock in for 90 days, 60 days, 30 days. Now, in some cases, we’re down to a week. Even after you place a purchase order, we’ve had some issues where orders have been cancelled because we couldn’t fulfil them in time; we had an agreement with a customer who needed it within a quarter, but it just wasn’t possible because the gear didn’t exist.” James Reed, managing director – Endpoint Solutions, UK and Ireland, TD SYNNEX, agrees reseller partners are having to manage quotes more carefully as prices for products not currently available from stock could change at relatively short notice. “For systems builders, sourcing memory continues to be a challenge, and the higher cost of these components will, inevitably, have to be passed on to the end user customer,” he notes.

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The upside is that with a scarcity of supply, selling prices are holding

up and sales of the higher

value products, for which there generally better availability, are strengthening.

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