TECH NEWS – Our wallets continue to suffer from steadily rising prices, even for previous-generation memory.

According to the latest forecasts from Morgan Stanley, the current shortage of mature DRAM and NAND chips will soon worsen significantly. Meanwhile, there are no signs that retail prices for newer DDR5 chips will fall: spot prices for 24 GB DDR5-5600/6400 chips rose by another 8% in August alone. The analysis does not bring good news for the consumer electronics sector. The Wall Street giant now expects prices for mature DRAMs, such as DDR4, to increase by 50% in Q3 2026 and another 10% in Q4. Interestingly, the expected rise in SLC NAND prices is much steeper: Morgan Stanley forecasts a 50% increase in each of the remaining two quarters of this year.

ICYMI: MORGAN STANLEY SAYS MATURE MEMORY IS THE NEXT SQUEEZE — DDR4 +50% IN Q3, SLC NAND +50%+ IN BOTH Q3 AND Q4

TIL: Morgan Stanley expects DDR4 prices to jump 50% in Q3 2026 and another 10%+ in Q4. SLC NAND could rise more than 50% in both quarters, with shortages potentially… pic.twitter.com/tBaJldlQiE

— Antfeed (@antfeedapp) August 18, 2026

ICYMI: BofA — DDR5 PRICES ARE STILL CLIMBING, UP 8% IN AUGUST AND 4.8X FROM A YEAR AGO

TIL: BofA says spot prices for DDR5-5600/6400 24GB memory rose another ~8% MoM in August, bringing the YoY increase to roughly 483%.

Prices were only around $8 in mid-2025, then surged above… pic.twitter.com/h8y2gWXHiX

— Antfeed (@antfeedapp) August 18, 2026

As for the proverbial cause of the war, the Wall Street giant points to the ongoing shift in wafer production toward HBM, DDR5 and higher-layer NAND, which is causing the market share of DDR4 and SLC NAND to decline rapidly. As we already know, HBM consumes about three times as many silicon wafers as traditional DRAM. This isn’t just due to the vertically stacked layers. The fact that memory cells cannot be placed close to the Through Silicon Vias (TSVs) that physically connect the HBM layers is also a significant factor in this dynamic. Demand for HBM continues to grow: UBS recently predicted that, in 2027, Nvidia alone will consume approximately 25.1 billion Gb of HBM out of the industry’s total consumption of around 61.5 billion Gb.

At the same time, it does not appear that DDR5 prices will fall in the near future. According to Bank of America data, spot prices for 24 GB DDR5-5600/6400 modules increased by 8% in August compared with the previous month, marking a 483% year-over-year surge (!!!). Remember that the price of a single 24 GB DDR5 chip was still around $8 in mid-2025, but is now approaching the $47 level!

Source: WCCFTech