PC memory market went down the pan in 2022 like everything else

Micron 24GB DDR5 — (Image credit: Micron)

Give it up for the good ship DRAM, the latest component to set sail and fall off the world's edge at the end of 2022. According to TrendForce, DRAM sales revenue fell 32.5% between the third, fourth, and final quarter in 2022.

That means DRAM has now joined CPUs, which dropped 21% year-on-year, and GPUs, down 50%, in nose diving into the new year. TrendForce says the fall in revenue in this case doesn't reflect a drop in unit sales so much as average selling prices plummeting.

PC memory generally, of course, is rather more of a liquid, commodity market than CPUs and GPUs. While compatibility isn't quite universal for a given memory type, it's far easier to switch from one vendor to another for your DDR4 or DDR5 sticks in response to price.

Ditching Intel CPUs for AMD chips is rather more complicated. Meanwhile, when it comes to graphics cards, with only two major vendors (OK, three if you want to count new entrant Intel), there arguably aren't enough options to force prices down rapidly when demand slumps.

And so, RAM prices have fallen dramatically—even 32GB of DDR5 can now be had for under $100—while GPU prices remain sky high, despite much, much lower demand. It's a funny old situation.

Jeremy has been writing about technology and PCs since the 90nm Netburst era (Google it!) and enjoys nothing more than a serious dissertation on the finer points of monitor input lag and overshoot followed by a forensic examination of advanced lithography. Or maybe he just likes machines that go “ping!” He also has a thing for tennis and cars.