DDR5 will cost 60% more than DDR4, huge 2-year wait for cheap DDR5 RAM

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.

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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".

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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.

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.