Prior to the chip shortage, affordable 2x8 GB RAM units around $50 or less were available. Could such offers reappear?
Prior to the chip shortage, affordable 2x8 GB RAM units around $50 or less were available. Could such offers reappear?
It depends on the time frame and your patience level. The supply issues are unlikely to improve soon, let alone this year. Even items available tend to be expensive due to strong demand.
Short before the 16GB memory kits for $50 became available, they cost double. This happened around 2017 or 2018. Similarly, SSD prices were much higher back then too. For instance, this 2x8GB 3000Mhz Corsair kit is listed here: https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B0134EW7G8. Prices rose at the end of 2017 and early 2018 before gradually dropping, then increasing again by the end of 2020. Adjustments have been made since then, so another change is possible, though it's hard to predict exactly when.
RAM has nothing to do with the chip shortage. The chip shortage isn't really a shortage anyways. It's largely spurred by car manufacturers that under-anticipated demand, and shorted their orders. Now they can't extend them enough to catch up. On the computer component side it's just over-utilization of 7nm from TSMC, and Samsung literally not having the production capacity to service demand for Nvidia graphics cards, which was a concern even before the 30-series launched. It's also unaffected, or should be unaffected by U.S. tarriffs, since that only affects Chinese sourced or manufactured goods, which doesn't really apply to RAM, most of which is manufactured in Taiwan. This is just a standard cyclical price upswing. It happens with RAM. No big issue is behind this.