Hardware

Do any of you expect that there’s going to be substantial drops in RAM prices within the next year?

I would not bet on prices dropping substantially in 2026. I don't have the ability to first-hand assess the situation, but what I've seen from articles suggests that you're most-likely looking at sometime in 2028 before memory prices start really coming down.

I am confident that memory prices will come down. From what I've read, it (normally) takes about 4-5 years to build a new factory from scratch. That's probably an outer bound, since as long as memory manufacturers can get capital (which hasn't been a problem; lots of companies want to give them money for memory), they can build out production.

Micron announced a second facility in Boise, Idaho in mid-2025, and said that it would start producing in 2027 (though from what I've read, it normally takes additional time to come up to scale).

https://boisedev.com/news/2025/06/12/micron-boise-second/

The company said production output is scheduled to start in 2027.

If you use that as as a baseline, maybe three-ish years if a company can build where they already have facilities.

What you might do is, if you have four DIMM slots and can live with just upgrading two, just upgrade two. Then in 2028 or whenever, upgrade the other two slots.

I'd also add that prices probably won't get down quite as low as they were about a year or so back, because memory manufacturers were losing money then (well, unless cost of production drops, which does happen to some degree over time).

Also, there's going to be a lot of pent-up demand by that time, so I'd guess that prices will more-likely come down slowly than quickly. A bunch of businesses will have extended their upgrade cycle, and they're going to want new hardware. Various hardware devices that may be deferred (maybe the Steam Machine 2, for example) will start being manufactured. Individuals are going to want to do upgrades that they've been waiting in exasperation to do, just like you. So I'd expect prices to slowly walk down, with people willing to pay more getting an earlier spot in the line.

Are there scenarios where they come down quickly in 2026? Well...major wars/disasters/etc that cause demand to drop more than supply. If everyone in the AI industry decides that the future is down some path other than needing a lot of HBM (which I don't think is going to happen in 2026, though maybe it'll happen down the road). If investors by-and-large decide that AI providing major returns is all way, way out much further than expected, and that more research needs to be funded before memory purchases do, which I wouldn't bet on. I can't think of many ways in which demand for DRAM would suddenly unexpectedly collapse or supply suddenly unexpectedly explode.