Persistent memory storages are affecting older DRAM standards more than previously expected, causing extreme price hikes of both DDR4 and DDR3 products. According to a new report from Taiwanese tech site DigiTimes, DDR4 contract prices for this quarter are expected to soar by 50%, and the situation isn’t expected to improve any time soon.
According to DigiTimes, DDR4 memory contract prices for the third quarter of 2026 (Q3 2026) are going to be much higher than initially thought, specifically for 8Gb chips. The leading cause for this demand is said to be enterprise SSDs, which require DRAM for caching to boost performance. Generally speaking, for each 1TB of NAND flash memory, SSDs can bundle 1GB of DDR4 or DDR3 memory as cache.
Considering that enterprise SSDs, such as Samsung’s PCIe 6.0 drives, can go beyond 16TB, even if this ratio is lower, the demand for 16Gb and 8Gb DDR4 chips will remain high. In fact, DigiTimes expects the 8Gb DDR4 shortage to persist for as long as two years.
Since the situation isn’t improving any time soon, according to DigiTimes, Taiwanese memory manufacturers are raising 8Gb DDR4 contract prices by as much as 50% in Q3 2026 compared to Q2, exceeding what was previously believed to be the price ceiling. This is both much higher than the previous 10-to-20% estimate and above what Samsung Electronics is quoting for equivalent products.
The same goes for 16Gb DDR4 chips, which are reportedly now exceeding the price of their DDR5 equivalents. This time, however, the demand seems to originate from the PC market, which isn’t surprising as many users are continuing to use DDR4 CPUs to save on build costs.
As if this weren’t enough, with Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron focusing on higher-margin products such as DDR5, LPDDR5x, and HBM, DDR4 and older memory standards are now mainly produced by Taiwanese companies such as Nanya and Winbond. Due to this reduced capacity, DDR4 production is unable to satisfy demand, which in turn is shifting demand toward DDR3, with even DDR2.
DigiTimes indicates that DDR3 memory, such as 4Gb chips, is expected to see a price surge through the second half of 2026, as they can serve similar applications to DDR4. To get an idea, the price per gigabit of DDR3 has reached $3.19 in July 2026, which is higher than the $2.94 needed to buy a 16Gb DDR5 chips.
