DDR5 Retail Prices Dip as TurboQuant Sparks Concern

Amazon listings for popular 32GB kits drop about 20% from recent highs, but server-memory demand remains tight

SK hynix 1b 32Gb-based 256GB DDR5 RDIMM. (Photo courtesy of SK hynix)

The price of Double Data Rate (DDR) 5 memory, which had been on a recent upward trend, is showing signs of decline in some retail channels.

However, an analysis suggests it is too early to view this decline as a structural change, as demand for high-performance server memory remains robust.

According to industry sources on April 1, the price of DDR5 in major U.S. online retail channels has fallen from its recent peak.

According to U.S. IT media outlet Wccftech, Corsair’s 32GB DDR5 memory kit is trading on Amazon for around $379. This is about 20% lower than the highest price ($490).

DDR5 prices had been on an upward trend for nearly a year, driven by expectations of expanding demand for Artificial Intelligence (AI) servers. Products that were in the $100−$200 range last year had recently seen a surge, climbing to the high $300s.

This price drop is interpreted as the first signal that this upward momentum is slowing in the retail market.

Industry insiders cite Google’s AI memory compression technology, ‘TurboQuant,’ as one of the main reasons for the recent price weakness.

TurboQuant is characterized by its ability to increase efficiency by reducing the usage of Key-Value (KV) cache memory, which is considered a bottleneck in the inference process of Large Language Models (LLMs).

The interpretation is that retail product prices were the first to react, as market sentiment reflected expectations that future memory demand for AI infrastructure could decrease.

However, the prevailing view is that this price drop is a limited adjustment confined to the general-purpose DDR5 product line.

The assessment is that while some product prices have fallen, they remain high compared to the past, and it is too early to consider it a change in the overall market’s supply and demand.

U.S. IT specialty media outlet Tom’s Hardware analyzed, “The memory supply shortage caused by AI will continue for the time being,” adding, “Prices are expected to rise again soon after Corsair’s discount event ends.”

In particular, the supply shortage continues for AI server memory, which Samsung Electronics and SK hynix primarily supply.

At its earnings announcement late last year, Samsung Electronics stated, “In the mobile and PC sectors, there is a possibility that the supply shortage will intensify, so we plan to actively respond by focusing on high-value-added products.”

Kwak Noh-jung, President and CEO of SK hynix, said at a recent general shareholders’ meeting, “As AI technology advances with a focus on inference, memory demand has expanded not only to HBM but also to general-purpose DRAM and NAND, fundamentally changing the demand for memory.”

In addition, there are forecasts that TurboQuant’s impact on overall AI memory demand will be limited.

Global investment bank Morgan Stanley projected that TurboQuant, by improving memory efficiency, could actually lead to an increase in memory demand by promoting the spread of AI services.

The explanation is that it is a technology that enhances processing efficiency on the same hardware, not a factor that structurally reduces overall memory demand.

Kim Eun-jin