Storage Market Upheaval: DDR5 Prices Soar 172%, Top Three Manufacturers Halt DDR Orders!

The price of DDR5 has soared, and the three major original manufacturers have suspended their quotationsThe global storage market is undergoing a profound transformation. The computing power demands of Artificial Intelligence are consuming the majority of memory production capacity, driving a sharp surge in DDR5 prices.

According to the latest investigation from TrendForce, the contract price for Server DRAM saw stronger upward momentum in Q4 2025, driving an increase in overall DRAM prices. The firm has revised its Q4 price forecast for commodity DRAM, raising the expected increase from the previous 8%-13% to 18%-23%, with a high possibility of further upward revisions.

The global DRAM market is facing a historic supply-demand mismatch. Recent reports indicate that Samsung Electronics has suspended contract pricing for DDR5 memory, and other major manufacturers are likely to follow suit.

In the spot market, DRAM products have achieved staggering price increases in 2025. The spot price for DDR5 16Gb has nearly doubled in the past month, reaching a record high of $15.50.

This trend is expected to persist into Q1 2026, as robust demand from the AI sector continues to create supply bottlenecks.

A report from DigiTimes points out that the AI memory cycle has already absorbed most available DRAM production capacity. The massive demand for memory from AI is not only forcing manufacturers like Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix to reallocate production quotas but has also reached a critical point—multiple companies have stopped accepting new DDR orders.

The global AI revolution is catalyzing an explosive growth in storage demand. Data center requirements for storage bandwidth and capacity are growing at an annual rate exceeding 30%, with the market size projected to surpass $300 billion by 2027.

Leading cloud service providers, aiming to build hyperscale computing clusters, are proactively locking in storage production capacity for the next three years.

TrendForce analysis indicates that in Q2 2025, there was still a price gap of over four times between HBM3e and DDR5, with the former offering better profitability for suppliers. As DDR5 prices continue to climb, this gap is expected to narrow significantly in 2026. Starting from Q1 2026, the profitability of DDR5 is projected to surpass that of HBM3e.

Given that HBM3e and DDR5 production capacities compete with each other, it is anticipated that after this profitability structure reverses, suppliers may choose to further increase the supply of Server DDR5 to solidify their profit foundations.

Persistent Tight Supply of Storage Chips

The storage chip market has officially entered a "seller-dominated" era. International leading manufacturers have shifted over 80% of their production capacity to high-end products like High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) and DDR5, causing the production share of consumer-grade DRAM and NAND to fall below 40%.

Price monitoring shows that the average price of storage chips in Q4 2025 has increased by over 18% compared to the beginning of the year, with some models seeing hikes of up to 23%.

SK Hynix has announced that its DRAM and NAND production capacity for 2026 was fully sold out by Q4 2025. This supply-demand imbalance is expected to last for a considerable time.

Looking ahead to 2026, TrendForce forecasts that the year-on-year growth rate for server shipments will expand to approximately 4%. Furthermore, as major CSPs actively adopt high-performance computing architectures to support large language model operations, the average DRAM capacity per server will increase accordingly.

This will push the overall bit demand for DRAM higher than previously expected, causing the supply shortage situation to persist.