Why have ram prices shot through the roof?

Seriously, I want to double my ram and the price per module is double what it was last february!!

From what I gather it is AM2 and Conroe pushing DDR2, causing the DDR400 to shoot up. Since they are "encouraging" people to move to DDR2, the price of DDR is making a killing.

Supply and demand.

Yea it's very strange. I remember looking up corsair value ram for $90 per 1gb stick, and now its like $110.
Sort of strange for the computer industry to do that, go up instead of down.

This seems a fair reason......

http://www.apcstart.com/site/sstokely/2006/10/1763/ram-prices-to-dive-from-recent-highs

At least the end of that article hints at some good news to come

Yah they new that Vista was coming out in January and that people would upgrading their rigs so they decided to create an artifical shortage of memory ICs.

Thats just my suspcious nature talking though

SeasonalEclipse said:

Supply and demand.

Click to expand...

Ah, the no brainer answer.

Neur0mancer said:

Vista was coming out in January and that people would upgrading their rigs so they decided to create an artifical shortage of memory ICs.

Click to expand...

There I believe it is mostly due to expectations of consumer behavior about the time of release of Windows Vista. I would disagree with, and shall disaffirm, Neur0mancer's comment about an artificial shortage. Suppliers expect consumers to want to acquire more memory about the time of percieved release of Vista; this would induce a positive shift in supply. This alone should result with more units available at lower prices. So then why are prices rising? Neur0mancer's opinion about anartifical shortage makes an attempt to explain it. If industry collusion occurs to restrict quantity, prices will "artificially" be induced to rise.

So why my disagreement (excluding that a regular shortage may be more probable)? The change is Supply was a reaction to another change. In this case, a more significant change: the change is Demand. Demand not only positively shifts, but it also reshapes, becoming more steep. With Vista almost here consumers, believing that buying more memory would be "necessary", demanded more units of memory at all prices (positive shift in demand); prices rise. As consumers more percieve computer memory as a "need", their willingness to pay increases significantly; prices paid would increase as suppliers gauge the icreased willingness to pay.

To conclude, memory suppliers produce more units of memory at a lower cost (not directly explained above) charge higher prices for them, while the buyers are buying more units of memory at higher prices. This is a currently sweet deal for the suppliers.

This should also answer the issue of this thread.

Yah I was being tongue in cheek

Although that class action lawsuit was just settled a fw months ago, for when the memory manufacturers were price fixing from99 to 02.
linky