Memory prices are skyrocketing, but there may be an outlier: Germany.
Following a surprising slowdown in memory price increases in the country in the second half of January, the trend has continued into February, 3DCenter reports. DDR5 pricing has been stagnant for the past month, with almost no recorded increase. Although there has been a jump in SODIMM prices and small price jumps in DDR3 and DDR4, DDR5 buyers have been able to enjoy stable pricing for several weeks now.
Prices for memory and storage products—particularly DDR5 memory and SSDs, and now hard drives—have risen by hundreds of percentage points since last summer alone. That trend continued in the first weeks of 2026, but in Germany, at least, that trend has slowed. After a near-450% rise since July 2025, there’s been little to no movement in 2026, according to the latest German retail data from 3DCenter.
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The same can’t be said for laptop SODIMM memory prices, which were up around 25% between January and February. That includes DDR5, DDR4, and DDR3, though, so it may be another example of older memory standards catching up as buyers look elsewhere for their memory upgrades. Indeed, DDR4 and DDR3 desktop memory pricing rose just under 5% in that same period, according to the data.
Even that might be overstated, though. 3DCenter highlights that a big part of the SODIMM price jump is due to a single DDR4-2400 kit increasing in price by almost 200% in that time period, skewing the data significantly. There was also a single DDR5 SODIMM that saw a price spike by around 50%, while others, like one cited 32GB DDR5 SODIMM, actually fell in price from 292 euros to 268 euros.
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GPU price increases have also slowed, according to the data, though storage is on the rise again, partly driven by a recent trend of buying up hard drive stock. All of this paints a confusing, if somewhat hopeful, picture of the memory industry. Although prices are likely to keep on rising in 2026, perhaps we’ve seen the worst of them as companies that could buy up extra stock did so, and others have found ways to offset costs without resorting to further rises.
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Jon Martindale
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Jon Martindale is a tech journalist from the UK, with 20 years of experience covering all manner of PC components and associated gadgets. He’s written for a range of publications, including ExtremeTech, Digital Trends, Forbes, U.S. News & World Report, and Lifewire, among others. When not writing, he’s a big board gamer and reader, with a particular habit of speed-reading through long manga sagas.
Jon covers the latest PC components, as well as how-to guides on everything from how to take a screenshot to how to set up your cryptocurrency wallet. He particularly enjoys the battles between the top tech giants in CPUs and GPUs, and tries his best not to take sides.
Jon’s gaming PC is built around the iconic 7950X3D CPU, with a 7900XTX backing it up. That’s all the power he needs to play lightweight indie and casual games, as well as more demanding sim titles like Kerbal Space Program. He uses a pair of Jabra Active 8 earbuds and a SteelSeries Arctis Pro wireless headset, and types all day on a Logitech G915 mechanical keyboard.
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