What happened to the prices?

[shulkman]

I'm wondering what happened to RAM prices lately... It seems like they've gone up 50%. Was there some kind of natural disaster lately that I'm unaware of?

On a side note, when I built my current system 6 months ago, I picked up 8GB (2x4GB) of RAM (link posted below) with the intention of buying another kit of the same a little later on. I'm running a Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD4H with an I5-3570K. Is there any penalty I would face by using 4 sticks of RAM vs. 2? I remember back in the day that if you populated 4 slots rather than 2, it messed with timings. Thank you in advance for any info.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145345

 

[4745454b]

I'm feeling pretty good about buying my 16GBs of DDR3-1600 ram back when I did. Ran my about $95. I saw someone build the other day where he bought 8GBs of DDR3-1866 for ~$85. I know there is a difference in speed, but I'd bet the same ram I bought is well over $100 now. Granted I don't use it all right now, but at least I won't have to worry about buying more later. No clue about any disasters, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn its because of SSDs. I think they use the same chips.

Usually you'll lose a timing. So instead of 9-9-927, you might have to run 10-10-10-30. Really not a big deal. I'd say go either way. I went with 2x8GB even though it cost $10 more then the 4x4GB kits. Mostly because I wanted to leave the other two ram open open for the future.

 

[shulkman]

I'm feeling pretty good about buying my 16GBs of DDR3-1600 ram back when I did. Ran my about $95. I saw someone build the other day where he bought 8GBs of DDR3-1866 for ~$85. I know there is a difference in speed, but I'd bet the same ram I bought is well over $100 now. Granted I don't use it all right now, but at least I won't have to worry about buying more later. No clue about any disasters, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn its because of SSDs. I think they use the same chips.

Usually you'll lose a timing. So instead of 9-9-927, you might have to run 10-10-10-30. Really not a big deal. I'd say go either way. I went with 2x8GB even though it cost $10 more then the 4x4GB kits. Mostly because I wanted to leave the other two ram open open for the future.

Yeah, I think back in the day (Perhaps the last Pentiums or first Core processors) if you went with 4 sticks, you'd go from 1T to 2T on your timings, but nowadays, you run at 2T anyways, so I'm not sure how things go. I should have just bought the 2x8GB kit. The 2x4GB kit I bought on 4/6/13 was 51.99, and that same kit is now 84.99, but I can't find a good reason for the price jump.

 

[Tradesman1]

There was a large plant making DRAM ICs that burned down awhile back (early Sep I think), one of the large Hynix plants - and they are the 2nd biggest makers of DRAM Chips....also newer ICs are in production for DDR4 so supply is limited and prices have gone up on the chips, which of course leads to higher DRAM stick prices