Views: 0 Author: Site Editor Publish Time: 2026-09-10 Origin: Site
The red arrow above a RAM stick points at the most eye-catching story in the storage market over the past year.
In Huaqiangbei, Shenzhen, gamer Xu Shao'an recently made a "compromise" decision. He wanted to upgrade his PC to properly enjoy a new AAA game, but the price quote at the counter made him pause: a 32GB DDR5 memory kit now costs nearly 4,000 yuan — three or four times more than it did a year ago. After weighing it over, he decided to downgrade to a 24GB configuration and wait for prices to come down before upgrading.
What Xu ran into was not one retailer's pricing, but a storage price surge sweeping the globe. Since the start of this year, global memory chip prices have kept climbing; since last September, prices of some RAM modules have risen more than 300%. The long-term structural demand from AI infrastructure is quietly rewriting the supply-demand picture of the storage market.
Compared with a year ago, mainstream storage products have all risen more than 100%. Three price changes tell the story best:
Product | Last year | Now | Increase |
|---|---|---|---|
1TB SSD | 410 yuan | 950 yuan | 132% |
16GB DDR5 RAM | 450 yuan | 1,800 yuan | 300% |
32GB DDR5 RAM | 900 yuan | 3,800 yuan | 322% |
RAM prices have climbed steadily, and SSD prices have followed. A certain 1TB SSD, for example, now sells for more than 900 yuan. Many PC builders admit that both components and complete machines sit at high prices, and quite a few customers are holding off.
Xu's choice is a snapshot of what many consumers are facing. With RAM and SSDs rising together, the direct result is that the same performance now costs two or three times as much. For ordinary users, the options are limited: if you are budget-sensitive, downgrade for now; if you are not in a hurry, postpone the upgrade until the market settles.
The most direct impact of this surge is that it raises the bar for everyone spending money on a PC — whether it is adding a RAM stick or getting a bigger drive.
The supply shortage on the consumer side is quickly transmitting to the production side.
Shen Jiaoqi, the head of an electronics company in Shenzhen that mainly makes RAM modules and SSDs, told reporters that customers' ordering rhythm has clearly changed this year: instead of "small, quick, monthly orders," they now stock up a quarter or even half a year in advance, aiming to lock in capacity and prices.
Growing orders have also pushed the factory to upgrade. Shen said shipments were handled manually before; to keep up with fast delivery, the company bought three automated packaging machines. Shipping frequency has gone from twice a day to at least six times a day — three in the morning and three in the afternoon.
After the automated packaging machines went online, this factory's shipping pace hit the fast-forward button.
Behind the surge is a real burst of demand. As AI servers and data centers heat up, orders for enterprise storage are growing fast, and many Chinese storage makers are accelerating capacity buildout. An executive at one Shenzhen storage company revealed that their module factory in Huizhou started a capacity expansion plan late last year, focusing on enterprise RAM product lines.
Industry insiders put it more directly: the core contradiction in the global storage industry right now is a severe supply shortage. With AI data centers pulling demand and foundries cutting production, storage chips are expected to stay in a boom phase for the rest of the year. Xie Ming, deputy secretary-general of the Shenzhen Electronic Chamber of Commerce, said AI demand has surged so much that some manufacturers have moved from cutting back to halting low-end memory chip production, while wafer prices keep climbing.
For ordinary consumers, there is really only one question: when will this wave of price increases end?
What is clear so far is that AI-driven demand and tight supply exist at the same time, so prices are unlikely to fall meaningfully in the short term. Two variables are worth watching: first, whether the world's major memory makers can expand capacity fast enough to keep up with demand; second, whether the pace of AI infrastructure buildout slows. Until these become clear, storage prices will likely stay high.
At its core, this price surge is a repricing between AI demand and storage supply. It is not far from ordinary people — the cost of a RAM upgrade or a new SSD is being pushed by this industry wave. For anyone thinking about upgrading their PC, the plain advice is: decide soon, or be prepared to wait longer.
