RAM and SSD Prices Are Still Rising in Q4 2026 — But More Slowly

Yes — RAM and SSD prices are still going up heading into the fourth quarter of 2026, but the rate of increase is finally easing. Market-research firm TrendForce's most recent memory-market outlook, published September 30, 2026, forecasts conventional DRAM contract prices rising roughly 10–15% quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) in Q4 2026 — down from 13–18% in Q3 and far below the roughly 58–63% QoQ jump TrendForce had forecast for Q2. NAND flash contract prices are expected to rise 15–20% QoQ in Q4, also a step down from Q3. The one exception is the blended DRAM average once high-bandwidth memory (HBM) is folded in: that figure actually widens to roughly 15–20% QoQ in Q4, from 8–13% in Q3, because AI-server demand for HBM keeps overriding the slowdown in ordinary PC and laptop memory.

The forecast lands the same week Samsung Electronics' own numbers showed exactly how lucrative that memory boom has become. On October 8, 2026, Samsung's newsroom published preliminary guidance for Q3 2026: consolidated operating profit of roughly KRW 107.4 trillion and revenue of roughly KRW 195 trillion. Measured against the KRW 12.17 trillion operating profit Samsung reported for Q3 2025, that is an increase of about 782.5% year-over-year — the first time Samsung's quarterly operating profit has topped KRW 100 trillion.

What TrendForce's Q4 2026 forecast actually says

TrendForce, the Taiwan-based market-research firm that tracks the memory-chip industry every quarter, revises its DRAM and NAND contract-price forecasts on a rolling basis as supply deals get negotiated between chipmakers and their biggest customers — PC makers, server builders, and cloud companies. Its most recently confirmed set of figures, released September 30, 2026, forecasts the following for the fourth quarter:

• Conventional (general-purpose) DRAM: contract prices up 10–15% quarter-over-quarter.
• NAND flash: contract prices up 15–20% quarter-over-quarter.
• Blended DRAM average, including HBM: contract prices up 15–20% quarter-over-quarter.

Those numbers continue a pattern that's been running all year. TrendForce's conventional-DRAM forecasts have gone from roughly 45–50% QoQ (April 2026, for consumer DRAM specifically), to roughly 58–63% QoQ for Q2 2026, to 13–18% in Q3, and now 10–15% for Q4. Each step is smaller than the last — the textbook definition of a deceleration, even though every single number in that sequence is still positive. Prices are not falling. They're rising by a shrinking amount each quarter.

A separate, less-well-sourced report citing TrendForce and dated around October 20, 2026 puts the overall Q4 DRAM increase at approximately 20% quarter-over-quarter, framing it as a slowdown from much steeper increases earlier in the year. That 20% figure is in the same ballpark as TrendForce's own published 15–20% range for blended DRAM including HBM, so it's plausible, but Pandromeda was not able to trace it back to a TrendForce-published report or press release, so it should be read as an estimate rather than a confirmed TrendForce figure.

Why the pace is slowing even as prices keep climbing

TrendForce and the analysts who cover the sector point to three overlapping reasons the rate of increase is cooling off, even with supply still tight:

• A high price base. After DRAM and NAND contract prices roughly doubled across the first three quarters of 2026, each additional percentage point of increase represents a much larger dollar amount than it did in Q1. Buyers have less room to simply absorb another 50-60% jump the way some did earlier in the year.
• Weaker buyer purchasing power. PC makers, phone makers, and smaller server builders have already been paying sharply higher memory costs for most of 2026. At some point, raising prices further starts cutting into unit volumes, so suppliers and buyers alike have more incentive to negotiate smaller increases.
• Long-term agreement (LTA) price caps. Major cloud providers and other large customers increasingly lock in multi-year supply contracts with price ceilings. As those agreements phase in, they put a lid on how much contract prices can move each quarter for the customers covered by them, even while non-LTA buyers continue to see steeper increases.

None of this means the shortage is over. Memory makers — Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron — continue to prioritize advanced-node manufacturing capacity for HBM and server DRAM, which feed AI data centers, over the conventional DRAM and NAND that go into everyday PCs, laptops, and consumer SSDs. That underlying supply squeeze is the same one that's been pushing RAM and SSD prices higher all year; the Q4 forecast is simply the latest data point showing the squeeze easing in degree, not in direction.

DRAM and NAND contract prices, quarter by quarter

Two things stand out in that table. First, conventional DRAM and NAND are both decelerating — their QoQ percentage is smaller in Q4 than it was in Q3. Second, the blended DRAM figure that includes HBM is doing the opposite: it widens from 8–13% in Q3 to 15–20% in Q4. That's not a contradiction; it reflects two different markets moving in different directions at the same time, which is the subject of the next section.

Samsung's record Q3 shows where the memory money is going

Samsung Electronics doesn't publish full-breakdown earnings until later, but its preliminary guidance — released through its own newsroom on October 8, 2026 — already tells the story. The company guided to consolidated revenue of approximately KRW 195 trillion and consolidated operating profit of approximately KRW 107.4 trillion for Q3 2026, both stated as the median of narrow guided ranges (KRW 194–196 trillion for sales, KRW 107.3–107.5 trillion for operating profit), as required under South Korean disclosure rules.

Compared with Samsung's own reported Q3 2025 figures (KRW 86.06 trillion revenue, KRW 12.17 trillion operating profit), the new guidance works out to:

• Operating profit up roughly 782.5% year-over-year
• Revenue up roughly 126.6% year-over-year

Compared with Samsung's own Q2 2026 figures (KRW 171.5 trillion revenue, KRW 89.49 trillion operating profit), the guidance also implies operating profit up about 20.0% quarter-over-quarter and revenue up about 13.7% quarter-over-quarter — and an implied operating margin of roughly 55.1%, topping the previous record of about 52.2% set the prior quarter.

Samsung's guidance release does not break out which division drove the number, but outside reporting attributes the jump overwhelmingly to its memory-chip business: surging prices and volumes for conventional DRAM, HBM for AI accelerators, and enterprise SSDs, partly offset by continued weakness in its mobile and foundry units. HBM bit shipments are reported to have risen sharply quarter-over-quarter as Samsung ramps newer-generation HBM for AI customers. Samsung's full Q3 2026 results, with segment-level detail, are scheduled for release on October 29, 2026.

Conventional DRAM vs. HBM: two different markets, one supply chain

The reason the Q4 forecast looks almost contradictory — conventional DRAM decelerating while blended DRAM accelerates — comes down to the fact that "DRAM" isn't one product anymore. Conventional DRAM (the kind in PCs, laptops, and phones) and HBM (the kind packaged next to AI accelerators like GPUs) are made on the same underlying wafer technology but sold into very different markets, with very different customers and very different pricing power.

AI data-center operators buying HBM are far less price-sensitive than PC makers buying conventional DRAM, and HBM carries a much higher price per gigabit to begin with. As memory makers shift more of their limited advanced-node wafer capacity toward HBM and server-grade DRAM — the products AI customers are willing to pay a premium for — less capacity is left over for ordinary consumer DRAM and NAND. That's the mechanism behind the broader 2026 price surge: it isn't really a RAM shortage so much as a reallocation of fab capacity toward the most profitable product mix, with consumer memory absorbing the squeeze.

That dynamic is also why a "slowdown" in the growth rate doesn't necessarily translate into near-term relief for shoppers. Even a forecast 10-15% QoQ increase for Q4 means retail RAM and SSD prices in the following months are still working through yet another round of higher input costs — on top of all the increases already baked in from the first three quarters of 2026.

How this reaches the RAM and SSD you actually buy

Contract prices are what memory makers charge their biggest customers — module makers, OEMs, and system builders — for DRAM and NAND chips in bulk. They are not the same as the retail price of a RAM kit or SSD on a store shelf, but they are the leading indicator for where retail prices are headed, typically with a lag of a few weeks to a couple of months as existing module and drive inventory works through the channel.

Because conventional DRAM contract-price increases are decelerating, shoppers shouldn't necessarily expect a new wave of retail price spikes as dramatic as what hit the market earlier in 2026 — but they also shouldn't expect prices to come down. A smaller quarterly increase stacked on top of several much larger ones earlier in the year still adds up to RAM and SSD prices that remain well above where they were at the start of 2026. For a sense of how much memory a typical system actually needs before deciding whether to pay up now or wait, this breakdown of RAM capacity by use case is a useful starting point before shopping.

A separate, ongoing legal wrinkle

The pricing story is unfolding alongside a separate legal one: Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron are named defendants in antitrust litigation alleging coordinated DRAM price increases, a claim the companies dispute. That litigation is independent of TrendForce's market forecasts — which describe supply-and-demand dynamics tied to AI-driven memory demand — but it's worth keeping in mind as context for why memory pricing has become such a closely watched, and contested, topic in 2026. More detail on that case is available here.

What analysts are watching next

Two things will determine whether Q4 2026 marks a genuine turning point or just a pause in the cycle. The first is whether PC, laptop, and phone makers — who have already absorbed roughly a year of rising memory costs — start passing more of that cost onto end consumers, or instead cut back on memory configurations to hold prices steady. The second is how much AI-server demand for HBM keeps growing into 2027; TrendForce and Samsung have both signaled that server DRAM and HBM supply is expected to stay tight well into 2027 and beyond, with some industry forecasts (including Micron's) pointing to a memory shortage lasting through 2028. If that holds, the deceleration in conventional-DRAM contract prices may prove temporary rather than the start of a sustained cooldown.

What next: what this means if you're buying RAM, an SSD, or a new PC

If you're shopping for memory or a new PC in the next few months, the practical takeaway from this forecast is narrower than the headlines suggest. Prices are not expected to fall in Q4 2026 — they're expected to keep rising, just by less each quarter than earlier in the year. That argues against waiting indefinitely for a price drop that TrendForce's own numbers don't currently project, but it also doesn't mean this is uniquely the worst possible moment to buy, since the sharpest increases (the 40-60%-plus QoQ jumps) already happened earlier in 2026.

A few practical implications: build-your-own PC shoppers and upgraders should expect RAM kits and SSDs to cost noticeably more than they did at the start of 2026, with only modest further increases likely through the end of the year. Anyone buying a pre-built PC, laptop, or device with soldered memory should expect manufacturers to continue passing at least some of these costs through in new product pricing, as has already happened across the PC and phone industry in 2026. And for AI infrastructure buyers and investors, the Samsung guidance is the clearer signal: as long as HBM and server DRAM demand stays this strong, memory makers have little incentive to let conventional DRAM and NAND prices come down, since every wafer they could use to relieve that pressure is more profitable making HBM instead. The next concrete checkpoint is Samsung's full Q3 2026 earnings release on October 29, 2026, which should show, in detail, exactly how much of this record quarter came from memory.

Written byMara Lindqvist

Mara Lindqvist edits the hardware desk. She covers graphics cards, processors, memory and storage, the foundries and chip designers behind them, and what the numbers on a spec sheet mean for people choosing a PC. Specifications in her stories come from manufacturer spec pages and datasheets.

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