Intel is days away from launching its next-gen Alder Lake family of CPUs as well as the next-gen Z690 chipset and a huge flow of Z690 motherboards, all rocking new DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 technologies.
But how much more expensive will DDR5 RAM be over DDR4 RAM? It's a question that we don't have solid answers for just yet, but now we have a pretty good source: MSI. In a new post by MSI on their website regarding DDR5 RAM, MSI's Sara Lin explains that DDR5 RAM is expected to cost 50-60% more than DDR4.
Lin explains on the MSI website: "Historically, newer memory technology has always commanded close to a 30-40% premium over the previous generation. However, this time, DDR5 includes additional components that have driven the costs up further. As a result, we expect a 50-60% price premium compared to DDR4 at launch".
"It typically takes around 2 years to reach price parity with previous generations, and we expect trends to remain similar with DDR5 modules as well".
- Read more: G.SKILL rocks out with world's fastest DDR5-6600 RAM, Alder Lake ready
- Read more: TEAMGROUP unveil T-FORCE VULCAN DDR5 RAM, up to 32GB DDR5-5200 speeds
- Read more: G.SKILL preps Trident Z DDR5 gaming + OC memory, coming soon
- Read more: PNY announces its new XLR8 Gaming DDR5-4800 RAM, ready for Q4 2021
- Read more: ADATA unveils next-gen DDR5 coming, will offer 64GB kits of DDR5 RAM
DDR4 was more expensive than DDR3 when it launched, and DDR3 was more expensive... and so on. DDR5 will have a higher premium over DDR4 for another glaring issue: the freaking pandemic has come in like a wrecking ball on every single industry.
We have all heard about the silicon and component shortages affecting everything prices, yes I said everything prices, while DDR5 is bleeding edge for consumers and will carry and even heftier premium this time around. DDR5 memory kits are also larger, with 32GB and 64GB DDR5 kits to be more common than the 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB DDR4 memory kits.
- Read more: ZADAK unveils SPARK DDR5 RAM: 16GB and 32GB kits at up to DDR5-7200
- Read more: GeIL announces next-gen Polaris DDR5 RGB high-performance gaming RAM
- Read more: Corsair is preparing for DDR5: the next generation of memory on the PC
- Read more: Kingston preps DDR5 memory with OC support, ships in Q3 2021
- Read more: GALAX is working on next-gen HOF-branded overclocking-ready DDR5 RAM
MSI expects it to take 2 years or so for DDR5 to reach price parity with DDR4, so we should expect better DDR5 prices on the tail end of 2023, and more so in 2024. Intel is first with DDR5 and will drive a good chunk of people into the world of DDR5 with Alder Lake and Z690, but AMD is a year behind with Zen 4 in late 2022 having DDR5 support.