The RAM in demand is DDR5. The price of older RAM might be driven up somewhat because more people are buying older computers due to the price increases, but I doubt buying refurbs just to harvest the RAM would be commercially viable.
this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2025
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Depends. The price of the same DDR4 kit I bought earlier this year is now 4x what it was, new.
The demand has increased in ddr4 because it increased so much for ddr5. While all the data centers and ai bullshit needs the 5, it's caused everyone wanting ddr4 to still need ddr4, and now people who wanted ddr5 to settle on getting ddr4 on the higher end speeds and capacitties.
DDR4 is currently like double the price is was 6 months ago.
Dude, even DDR3 sodimm has doubled in price in the last few months
DDR5 is the latest tech, but it affects everything. Even SO-DIMM DDR4 have had a price hike.
I bought DDR4 ram a year or two ago for $30 bucks. It’s $70 for the same RAM now.
Yep. Annoying. A few weeks ago I didn't realize all of this was starting, I wanted another 16gb ddr4 for a computer I was converting into a server.
Was annoying to discover the price increase for seemingly no reason.
Stop giving them ideas.
Isn't new ram ddr5 and ddr4 is old? I bought 3 i5-6500 machines with 16gb of ddr4 for $55/each and slapped in $30 rx480 GPs and been selling them for $150/each.
Trickle down effect. The people who want ddr5 are settling on the higher end ddr4.
Two ram sticks are the best way to have the highest performance (2 16GB sticks are better than 4 8GB sticks). No one really wants to build a new PC with just 16GB of ram now, so people are looking for 32GB and 16GB sticks of ram. They also don't want the slower ram, so they're looking for 3,400+ mhz speed ram.
So for people wanting a gaming or video editing or ai system, no one wants the 8GB sticks of 2,400mhz ram sticks in your machines.
I don't think so. ddr5 is in demand, prices for older ddr4 seems unaffected. No way someone buys a refurb PC to sell the ddr4 kit and have a useless PC.
Ddr4 went up a little bit to ride the inflation wave, but not nearly as much as ddr5
Supply and demand... We have tons of ddr4 on the secondary market - if they try to spike retail too much it won't sell at all.
Sodimm DDR4 seems to have gone up too. But yeah, not so much that it would be worth harvesting a working PC.
Is this happening? Probably
People selling refurb PCs are looking for any excuse to hike the price. It is how the market works. I guarantee you paid a premium for any device with a memory chip, new or used.
When I bought my first PC, RAM was $1,000 per MB.
Abort, Retry, Fail?
My first version of that was, Abort, Retry, Initialize?
I learned VERY quickly that Initialize is basically NEVER the correct option
i don't think the demand for old ram is viable)for scalpers), the number of systems that actually want it is far fewer nowadays. DDR4 pricing was more caused by production stopping on DDR4, rather than the current ram shortages.
How much are they worth nowadays on the used market?
I'm lucky I upgraded both my PCs to 32GB (ddr4) so I don't really care but I'm a tiny bit curious :-)
I'm not... but 32gb of ram is good enough for my desktop. And the 128gb in my server is working out great. My router only has 16gb but it's working fine. I do have 96gb sitting in a server board i need to find a use for though.
I did check Facebook marketplace for a used PC to see if RAM would be cheaper.
I bought a 2x16gb DDR4 kit just before all hell broke loose and it was pretty hard to find any, and the places I found it were asking for way too much. First one I bought was advertised as a kit but was singles so I returned it but now I think I should have kept those too haha but no way I wouldve known. But still managed to find a kit and buy it, glad I did. Maybe I should sell the 2x4gb DDR4 kit I replaced with the new one
I am not.
I've been trying to sell sticks of DDR3 cheap and no one wants it. 15600 Samsung.