Even though it's one of the largest manufacturers of memory and flash storage chips in the world, Samsung hasn't been enjoying much success in the stock market in recent times. However, two separate reports might provide the reason why the South Korean semiconductor firm's fortunes are suddenly looking a whole lot rosier.
The first is from The Korea Economic Daily (via Bloomberg), which claims that Samsung's HBM3E RAM chips have finally passed Nvidia's qualification tests for use in its AI mega-processors. High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) is a type of RAM where multiple memory dies are stacked together to create a single module that can sustain a huge amount of data traffic per second.
Samsung's most recent version of this tech, HBM3E, hadn't been meeting expectations, leaving competitor SK Hynix as the sole provider of the special memory for Nvidia. That no longer seems to be the case, though, given that its HBM3E has only just been approved, it will be some while before order books are full to bursting.
Still, it's good news as far as the stock market is concerned, as Bloomberg points out that current prices are roughly 20% higher than expectations. What's certainly helping here is that another Korean outlet, Newdaily (via Wccftech), is reporting that Samsung plans to increase the contract prices for its DRAM and flash memory chips by as much as 30%, before the year closes.
Micron has already announced a similarly huge price tag bump for its DRAM products, along with SK Hynix adding an extra 10% to its NAND flash prices. To make matters worse for the consumer, all of them are reducing their supply of memory chips, which will invariably result in everything becoming more expensive as demand outstrips inventory.
In the world of memory chips, none of this is remotely surprising, because every manufacturer in the market has been doing this for as long as RAM and flash have been consumer products. The moment that profit margins begin to fall, production is decreased, leading to tighter supply and eventually higher prices.
It takes a while for price increases to filter through the whole supply chain, but eventually, every company that makes graphics cards, RAM kits, SSDs, or anything that uses a memory chip or two will be forced to either absorb the increase in the bill of materials or pass the extra cost onto the customer.
We're unlikely to see all of the aforementioned products go up by 30%, because not every type of RAM and flash will be increased by that amount. We're still probably going to see some kind of price increase, though.
The memory chips that are used in AMD, Intel, and Nvidia graphics cards make up a relatively small part of the total price, but since the profit margins on most third-party cards are pretty tight, the additional cost for the RAM chips will be passed on to the consumer.
With a bit of luck, Samsung and the rest of the RAM-making market will just focus on making everything to do with AI processors more expensive, because that's where all the big bucks are right now. PC gaming revenue is peanuts in comparison. But if you're really worried about the cost of it all, then there's a simple solution: just wait.
Just as they have always done, eventually the prices will cycle back down because sales will invariably decline, leading to a surplus of inventory, which Samsung et al will want to shift for newer products. Then you'll see some nice SSD deals or cheap DDR5 RAM kits appearing, just in time for the next generation of processors from AMD, Intel, and Nvidia.
1. Best DDR5 overall:
G.Skill Trident Z5 RGB 32 GB DDR5-7200
2. Best budget DDR5:
Teamgroup T-Force Vulcan DDR5-5200
3. Best high-capacity DDR5:
G.Skill Trident Z5 64 GB DDR5-6400 CL32
4. Best DDR4 overall:
TEAM XTREEM 16 GB DDR4-3600
5. Best budget DDR4:
G.Skill Ripjaws V 16 GB DDR4-3600
6. Best high-capacity DDR4:
Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB 32 GB DDR4-3200
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