Memory Prices?

What is going on with memory prices? In June 2003 I purchased this for a total of $46. That did include a $25 coupon, so the listed price was ~$70. If you click on the link you will see that today it is listed at $112.99.

Why has the price increased? Usually price increases are triggered by something. But, I have not seen any news of floods or other natural disasters in areas where the chips are produced, nor any news of chip shortages for any other reason.

Were prices artificially depressed a year ago and this is a correction?

Here is a graph of the trend for this year alone:



generated by
Ramseeker.com

Notice that graph is of lowest price, so even the generic stuff is going up in price.

yeah i dont know whats happening, but i just saw some new prices and some of them are absurd for what they are selling.

Yeah I totally agree. I was going to go pickup some memory and I figured it would cost like 200$ max, and I find out the memory that I really want is 400$.... WTF!?!?! http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=20-145-465&depa=0

I wonder what the best memory for around 200$ is, if i want 1gb. or best memory for 512.

could be price fixing.

Also could be that less people are buying ram from big name producers because they are learning about the chips that the sticks use and getting really cheap generic sticks that use the same chips. Corsair/OCZ/Geil will have to raise their prices to remain profitable when less people are buying their stuff.

Prices are going up right now and will continue to go up till Mid April. Most of the chip manufacturers have switched the production line to produce flash nand chips and the dye shrinkage is causing low yeild rates on DDR.

Brokers are also collecting all the parts to try to gain some profit.. Tier 3 manufacturers were caught off guard thus the enduser market pricing is now increasing. Also this is the time when the Big OEM.. Dell, IBM, Apple, renegotiate pricing for the the summer months and with the shortage of production capabilities it is also causing a stain on supplies.


Duonger

PS>. http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProdu...-145-465&depa=0

that is way overpriced...my opinion...

yeah everything u say is probably true, but as i said in my reply to the mushkin thread about their pc4000 that newegg is selling for 300.00 - is in my opinion bordering on absurd.. for instance the kingston bt-d43 valueram is selling for like 160-200 depending on the sale/rebates at bb cc. smaller companies like komusa have raised prices on their pc4200 from 238.00 to 248.00. now im not picking on mushkin cause they are a quality company with good support, but one cant help but feel like someones getting screwed when there is such a price disparity for basically the same chips.. now maybe in a week or 2 all the resellers will fall in line after they sell their stock that was purchased b4 the rise, but till then it really pays to do ur homework when buying ram..

kingston is much larger than mushkin. the chips mushkin uses for the pc4000 is hynix. there are 16 chips on a 512 and the chip cost from asia is about 7 dollars PLUS a 57% tarriff that is put onto each chip by the US government when the parts are imported. Kingston is able to buy from Hynix USA so they do not pay the tarriff. Adata/ Komusa does not use Hynix on their pc4000 so they do not incur the 57% tax rate. Why do you think OCZ and Corsair pc4000 are so high also...

my comment about the $400 for the corsair part is that i think they are overcharging a tad...

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduct.asp?DEPA=0&submit=Go&description=mushkin,pc4000

Duonger

kct2, i got the EXACT SAME ram as you. Freaky that the prices are going so high, eh?

EDIT: I forgot to change my sig. It used to be 2100 but now its 2700.