In case you hadn’t heard, there’s currently a RAM crisis affecting the PC market. The high demand by AI companies for RAM has led to a shortage of supply and pushed prices sky high. It’s a big hassle for those wanting to upgrade or build a new PC as they’re faced with paying exorbitant prices for modules. But there are a few things you can do to skirt around the situation. Here I suggest a few ideas.
Buy bundles for RAM
While the cost of individual RAM kits can leave one’s eyes watering, savvy shoppers have managed to score some great deals on RAM bundles. Buying anything in groups to save a few dollars is generally a good idea and the same can be said for RAM. Some bundle deals even include free RAM. For example, Newegg had a bundle deal on a gaming motherboard and free RAM going on Black Friday: If you bought this Asus TUF Gaming mATX motherboard you got 16GB of free Team Group DDR5 RAM as well.
Consider a prebuilt PC
If you’re in the market for a whole PC, you may as well buy a prebuilt PC and get your RAM that way. While buying individual components and building a rig can be extremely expensive in light of the RAM crisis, most companies selling prebuilt PCs still offer their products within a reasonable price range. For example, while a pair of 16GB DDR5 RAM modules can cost as much as $640 on Amazon, you can currently buy a BeastCom Q3 Gaming PC with 16GB DDR5 RAM for as little as $522 — that’s with all the other components added too — a motherboard, CPU, and the tower, included.
If you’re looking for a prebuilt PC be sure to check out our best computer deals article.
Pexels: Andrey Matveev
Choose DDR4 RAM over DDR5 RAM
Looking at the price of RAM on Amazon you’ll see a huge price difference between DDR5 RAM and DDR4 RAM, with DDR4 RAM being in some cases up to $150 cheaper than DDR5 RAM. For example, you can currently buy 32GB of of G.Skill Trident DDR4 RAM for $230, whereas 32GB of G.Skill Trident DDR5 RAM costs $360.
That makes a compelling case for choosing DDR4 RAM for any RAM upgrades or new builds, perhaps pairing the RAM with a Ryzen 5800X3D or Core i7-14700K if you’re building a new rig. DDR4 RAM is still considered good enough for most uses in 2025. It offers significant value for gaming and productivity tasks, with speeds of 3,200MHz or higher being sufficient for most games. While DDR5 offers faster speeds and higher capacities, the performance difference is often minimal for everyday use. You’ll need to be willing to use slightly older platforms and parts to go this route, but you can still find excellent performance available.
Shop the secondhand market
Good bargains can be found shopping in the secondhand market for PC parts with RAM being one of the more reasonable purchases among the different components for sale. As a general tip, don’t just look for standalone RAM sales, if you’re a savvy shopper you should also target old desktops or laptops with the intention to harvest the RAM inside.
Wait it out
Of course, the other thing you could do if you don’t want to pay exorbitant prices right now is wait until RAM prices come back down to a reasonable level. Even though it seems like the crisis won’t end, the day will come when suppliers will catch up with demand.
We saw this happen with the GPU shortage back in 2023 and 2024. GPU prices have since stabilized and returned to mostly normal. So, if your rig is doing swell and doesn’t need any big performance boosts, hold tight for a year or longer and you might be able to save some cash.
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via PCWorld https://www.pcworld.com
December 17, 2025 at 08:12AM