Let's applaud the good ship DRAM, the latest component to set sail at the end of 2022 and fall off the edge of the world: according to TrendForce, DRAM sales fell 32.5% between Q3, Q4 and the last quarter of 2022.

In other words, DRAM took a dive in the new year, along with CPUs (-21% y/y) (opens in new tab) and GPUs (-50% y/y) (opens in new tab) According to TrendForce, the drop in revenue in this case does not reflect a drop in unit sales but because the average selling price has plummeted.

Of the three DRAM giants, Micron was the hardest hit (open in new tab), with a painful 41.2% revenue decline. Samsung, the largest, was down 25.1%, and SK Hynix, the second largest, was down 35.2%.

Apparently, Samsung was the most aggressive in cutting prices, increasing its market share from 40.7% to 45.1%. In other words, Samsung conducted a sort of fire sale, selling off large quantities of DRAM at low prices.

PC memory is generally a more fluid commodity market than CPUs and GPUs, of course. While no specific memory type is interchangeable, it is much easier to switch from one vendor to another for DDR4 or DDR5 sticks depending on price.

Ditching an Intel CPU for an AMD chip is more complicated. On the other hand, when it comes to graphics cards, with only two major vendors (three if you include newcomer Intel), there are not enough options to rapidly drive prices down when demand slows.

As a result, RAM prices have dropped dramatically, with even 32GB of DDR5 available for under $100 (open in new tab). It's a funny situation.