Hardware Market Update: RAM, SSD/NVMe and CPUs – What’s Going On (And How Not to Panic)
If you’ve checked RAM or NVMe prices recently and quietly closed the tab hoping it was a glitch – you’re not alone.
The hardware market is going through one of those moments when everything technically works, but the numbers suddenly feel personal.
This isn’t a random fluctuation and it’s not a short-term retail anomaly. What we’re seeing is the result of AI infrastructure eating first, and eating a lot.
Let’s walk through what’s happening, without turning this into a market research paper.
Memory first – because that’s where it hurts most
The first and loudest signal is RAM.
Large AI and hyperscale players have already locked in significant memory volumes for 2026. That means less available capacity for everyone else, and manufacturers are happy to prioritize long-term, high-margin contracts. From their point of view, it’s rational. From ours – it’s expensive.
The result is simple:
DDR5 prices went up hard. DDR4 followed, because when one lifeboat is full, everyone runs to the next one.
For many common server capacities, prices are now several times higher than they were not so long ago. In some server-grade modules, the increase looks borderline surreal. Memory used to be a line item you barely discussed. Now it’s the part that dominates the entire bill.
In a modern server build, it’s no longer unusual for RAM to cost more than the CPU, motherboard, and chassis combined. That’s not a metaphor – that’s the quote.
SSD and NVMe – same story, different component
After memory, storage was next in line.
NAND manufacturers are clearly steering production toward enterprise and AI-focused products. Consumer and “normal” enterprise SSDs are no longer the priority they once were. Popular capacities like 2 TB, 4 TB, and 8 TB are seeing sharp price jumps across the board – SATA, NVMe, all of it.
One of the clearest signals came from Micron, which announced its exit from the Crucial consumer business to focus on higher-end segments tied to datacenters and AI workloads. When a vendor says out loud that the consumer market is no longer interesting enough, that tells you where the volumes are going.
So yes, NVMe is still great. It’s just no longer cheap. And in many configurations, storage has quietly become the second-largest cost after memory.
CPUs are calmer – but don’t ignore them
CPUs haven’t exploded in price the same way RAM and NVMe have, but that doesn’t mean nothing is changing.
Vendors are increasingly focusing on AI-optimized platforms and higher-margin product lines. Over time, this means fewer options in the low-to-mid range, slower refresh cycles for some classic server SKUs, and a bit more planning required when choosing platforms.
CPU pricing isn’t the main problem right now. Platform availability and roadmap predictability are.
What this means for hosting and cloud infrastructure
From a hosting perspective, the math is straightforward.
The cost of a typical compute node – the kind used for VDS clusters – has increased multiple times, driven mostly by RAM and NVMe. This is CAPEX, yes, but CAPEX always becomes service cost sooner or later.
For dedicated servers, the situation is slightly ironic. New builds, based on today’s component prices, can easily be less competitive than existing platforms bought before the market tightened.
Today, it’s very common that:
- The server platform itself is a relatively small part of the total price
- Memory and NVMe make up the majority of the cost
If you’ve ever wondered how a “simple” RAM upgrade can change a quote dramatically – this is why.
What we’re doing at ITLDC
First, the important part.
We do not plan to raise prices for existing services.
For new dedicated servers, we are keeping pricing stable as long as existing stock allows.
Over the last 5–6 months, we’ve added a large number of LC and E-class dedicated servers across many locations. This gives us a solid buffer and good availability for standard configurations, even under current market pressure.
Custom builds are a different story. If you need something non-standard – unusual memory sizes, specific module types, or specific NVMe layouts – pricing will reflect current market reality and parts availability. There’s no magic here, only real supplier invoices and limited volumes.
That’s why, right now, standard configurations are your best friend. They are cheaper, available immediately, and much less exposed to ongoing component volatility.
At the same time, we are keeping VDS pricing stable and have almost completed all scheduled VDS cluster upgrades. Over the past months, we’ve expanded our VDS infrastructure in both US and European locations, adding new high-performance, high-density compute nodes to handle new orders and upgrades of existing instances without performance degradation.
This allows us to keep resources readily available, absorb growth smoothly, and continue offering predictable pricing for virtual infrastructure.
In the current market, NVMe VDS remains one of the most efficient ways to scale workloads without tying budgets to fluctuating hardware prices.
What we recommend to customers
If your workload fits a standard server – take it. You’ll save money and time, and your server will be online immediately.
If you’re considering a small custom dedicated server mainly because “it feels safer” – take a second look at VDS. For many workloads, VDS is not only sufficient, but smarter under current market conditions. Predictable pricing beats romantic hardware ideas every time.
Be realistic with storage. NVMe everywhere sounds nice, but hot data and cold data are different things. Using NVMe where it matters and SSD or HDD where it doesn’t is optimization, not compromise.
Data integrity first – performance comes second
One thing we strongly recommend not to compromise on is data integrity.
For most use cases, running production data on a single disk, or worse – on RAID0 (stripe), is a bad idea. Yes, it looks fast on paper, but it also means that a single drive or module failure instantly turns into data loss or extended downtime. That’s usually not the kind of performance boost anyone enjoys.
This is why many of our dedicated servers with paired SSDs or NVMes are provisioned, where possible, with the OS installed on RAID1 (mirror) by default. You get redundancy, predictable behavior during failures, and often better real-world performance for read-heavy workloads.
And yes – backups still matter. RAID is not a backup, it’s just the first safety net.
For proper backup storage, we offer HDD-based VDS and dedicated servers with large-capacity drives (pairs of 10–20+ TB), suitable for private backup repositories, snapshots, and long-term retention.
In the current market, losing data or rebuilding from scratch is far more expensive than doing storage properly from the start.
Final thoughts
This hardware cycle is not a short blip. Multiple industry signals point to continued pressure well into 2026.
That said, there’s no reason to panic-buy hardware or freeze projects. With sane planning, standard configurations, and a bit of flexibility, you can navigate this market without overpaying.
And if at some point you feel your mood dropping – it’s perfectly acceptable to stop checking RAM and NVMe prices for a while.
If you want, send us your typical workload and resource needs. We’ll help you pick the most cost-efficient setup that makes sense today, not in a market that no longer exists.