Why That Extra RAM Costs So Much More Now

Yesterday I wrote about why extra RAM still helps, even when the percentage barely moves.

Today, I want to explain why that extra RAM costs so much more than it used to.

This isn't a factory fire

This shortage isn't a factory fire or a shipping delay. It's a business decision. AI data centers will pay more for memory than the rest of us ever will, so the factories turned toward them. Three companies make almost all the world's memory, and all three shifted production to the AI side. One of them shut down its consumer memory brand completely. The chips that used to end up in a laptop on somebody's desk now end up in a rack in a data center instead.

Every device is asking for more

At the same time, the devices we all use are asking for more memory than they used to, and it's the same story everywhere you look. Our computers, our phones, our game consoles, even our TVs are all adding AI features that run right on the device, and every one of those features needs memory to work.

Cars are the extreme version of this. A modern vehicle is really a computer with wheels, running screens, cameras, sensors, and driver-assist systems all day long. Micron Technology says the average car on the road today carries about 16GB of memory. A car built for real self-driving will need over 300GB. Tesla is already doubling the memory in its self-driving computer for exactly that reason.

So the biggest buyers are taking most of the supply, and every other device on the market is asking for more of whatever is left over.

That's why the upgrade that used to be a rounding error on a quote now shows up as a real number on the invoice. It's the part that's easy to miss when you're only looking at the price of a RAM stick.