RAM prices: Prime Day or Black Friday? The 2026 data

I get asked the same thing every sale season: "should I wait for the sale?" For most products the honest answer is yes. For RAM in 2026, the data says something less comfortable. Prices have gone up through every sale this year, and the sales haven't come close to resetting them. So instead of guessing, here's where prices have actually been, what they are today, and the number I'd buy at when Prime Big Deal Days opens on 6 October.

Where RAM prices have been (the dated record)

The October 2025 and 14 September figures come from Tom's Hardware's RAM price index, which tracks the lowest US prices across retailers. The 3 June figure is from its report that 32GB of DDR5 had hit a $375 minimum: $374.97 for a Silicon Power kit with a promo code, found via PCPartPicker. The 25 September price is one I checked on Amazon myself (US delivery address). For perspective, the index lists the lowest-ever US price for a 32GB DDR5-6000 kit as $72.

So: Prime Day or Black Friday?

Nobody can tell you what a retailer will charge on a given day, and I won't pretend to. What I can tell you is the direction. TrendForce's 3 July outlook forecast conventional DRAM contract prices rising 13–18% quarter-on-quarter in 3Q26. It also noted that consumer buyers "are reaching their affordability limit, leading to more moderate price increases." So: still rising, but more slowly. That's not a setup where waiting eight weeks for Black Friday reliably saves money.

• You need the RAM for a build now: buy on 6–7 October if a kit hits your line below. If it doesn't, buy anyway at the closest price to the line. Waiting has cost money all year.
• You're upgrading "sometime": you have the luxury of patience. The slowing forecast is your best argument for waiting, but set a price alert rather than a date.
• You're tempted by 64GB for local AI: $889 is the tracker's best. Check you actually need it first. Our system RAM for local AI guide covers when 32GB is enough and when MoE offloading makes 64GB worth it.

Is DDR4 the way out?

Maybe. DDR4 costs roughly half as much per gigabyte right now, and it's the one place a budget build can claw back real money. I did the full platform maths (CPU, motherboard and memory, priced today) in DDR4 vs DDR5 for a budget build. If you're buying RAM because you're building a whole PC, read that first. The answer may be to buy less DDR5, not cheaper DDR5. For the bigger picture on why this is happening, our memory shortage explainer has the whole story.