Anyone planning a PC upgrade in Germany may be facing an increasingly hostile market. New pricing data suggests that memory costs are continuing to rise sharply, extending a trend that began in the second half of 2025 and shows little indication of easing as 2026 gets underway.

According to updated figures from 3DCenter’s memory price index, German retail RAM prices continued climbing into mid-January. The index, which tracks Geizhals listings while excluding eBay and Amazon Marketplace offers, highlights how sustained supply pressure is reshaping the consumer memory market across multiple generations. Although this report in particular is about Germany, US and other markets are probably experiencing sort of similar pressures.

The most severe inflation is still concentrated around desktop DDR5 memory. Across a broad selection of kits, current pricing now sits at more than four times July 2025 levels, making DDR5 the most distorted segment in the index by a considerable margin. Although price momentum slowed compared to the explosive growth seen late last year, increases remain significant. January alone brought another sharp month-on-month rise, with DDR5 prices increasing 27.6 percent, adding to the already dramatic 93.0 percent jump recorded between November and December.

The scale of the increases becomes clearer when looking at individual products. High-capacity DDR5 kits have recorded monthly jumps that now exceed what entire kits cost just six months ago; a 2×32GB DDR5-5600 kit climbed from €530 in December to €677 in January. Meanwhile, mainstream configurations are experiencing the largest proportional increases, having started from far lower base prices.

While DDR5 continues to dominate the headlines, older memory standards are no longer insulated from the wider trend. DDR3 and DDR4 pricing has accelerated noticeably in recent weeks, with month-on-month growth increasing rather than slowing. 3DCenter reports an average overvaluation of +219 percent compared to July 2025, or roughly 3.2× baseline pricing.

These figures closely mirror the explanation offered recently by G.SKILL, which attributed soaring DDR5 prices to severe supply constraints and unprecedented demand driven by the AI sector. The company pointed to industry-wide DRAM shortages, as manufacturers increasingly prioritise enterprise-grade memory such as High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) for data centres over consumer products.

The impact is now clearly visible at retail level. With DRAM supply tight and costs rising throughout the supply chain, price pressure is spreading beyond enthusiast DDR5 kits to older memory standards and even storage products, which 3DCenter notes have also seen significant increases.

or consumers and system builders alike, the latest data offers little reassurance. With no clear signal that supply conditions are improving, and AI-driven demand continuing to dominate memory production, retail pricing shows no signs of stabilising in the near term. Detailed breakdowns are available in the full 3DCenter report.