RAM Price Increase 2026: The DRAM and NAND Surge Behind Every OEM Hike

One upstream shortage is driving nearly every hardware price move buyers are seeing in 2026, and the sharpest part of it is now behind us rather than ahead. TrendForce's guidance published March 31, 2026 called for conventional DRAM contract prices up 58-63% quarter over quarter and NAND Flash contract prices up 70-75% quarter over quarter in Q2 2026, and its July 3, 2026 release confirms the surge carried into Q3 — guiding conventional DRAM up a further 13-18% quarter over quarter and NAND 10-15% from that Q2 base: still a real increase, but a marked deceleration. Gartner's full-year forecast has DRAM up 125% and NAND up 234% across 2026, with AI data centers projected to consume roughly 70% of high-end DRAM. If you are budgeting servers, all-flash arrays or memory-heavy configs this fiscal year, this is the single cost driver to understand before your quote window closes.

The trigger is a supply reallocation, not a demand collapse. TrendForce, in a forecast published March 31, 2026, called for conventional DRAM contract prices up 58-63% quarter over quarter and NAND Flash contract prices up 70-75% quarter over quarter in Q2 2026, attributing the move to DRAM suppliers shifting capacity toward server and HBM applications while NAND demand stayed strong from AI and data-center deployments (TrendForce, March 2026). We cite no TrendForce release restating that quarter as a closed-quarter actual, so those two figures stay what they were: the guidance issued for it. What the July 3, 2026 release does confirm is that the surge carried into Q3 — its Q3 guidance builds on the realized Q2 base rather than walking it back. TrendForce also reported that cloud service providers were locking in supply through long-term agreements — a signal that the largest buyers expected scarcity to persist, not ease. Because these are contract prices rather than spot quotes, the increases flow through to the OEMs that build servers, storage and networking gear, and from there into the catalog prices buyers see.

The forward number is smaller than the one that made the spring expensive. TrendForce's guidance published July 3, 2026 puts Q3 2026 conventional DRAM contract prices up 13-18% quarter over quarter and NAND Flash contract prices up 10-15% quarter over quarter. Both are real increases; neither is anything like Q2.

The mechanism behind the moderation is worth understanding, because it is not the one buyers hope for. TrendForce attributes the slowdown to consumer demand hitting affordability limits — the phone, notebook and consumer-SSD market stops absorbing increases past a point, and volume falls away rather than prices continuing to climb — while AI server demand keeps supply tight on the enterprise side of the same fabs. That is a demand ceiling on one segment, not new supply arriving. Gartner's full-year 2026 forecast frames the same picture at annual scale: DRAM up 125% and NAND up 234% across the year, with AI data centers projected to consume roughly 70% of high-end DRAM in 2026.

For a buyer, the practical reading is that the deceleration does not undo anything. At the midpoint of each guided range, a component index entering Q2 2026 at 100 leaves Q3 near 185 for conventional DRAM and near 194 for NAND — close to double across two quarters of guidance, with the smaller increase second. Waiting a quarter now buys the smaller move, not a reversal.

The second half of the problem is availability. According to the SHI Resource Hub, DRAM lead times for larger orders have extended beyond 40 weeks as of late 2025 into 2026, up from roughly 25 weeks in mid-2025, with pricing guidance at the time of a 30-60% uplift over the January 2026 baseline through the first half of 2026 — driven by Samsung, SK hynix and Micron shifting fab capacity toward AI and HBM memory (SHI, 2026). That H1 window has since closed; the guided Q2 DRAM contract move alone sits at the top of that 30-60% range before Q1 is counted, so treat the SHI figure as the guidance it was rather than a current forecast. SHI notes no clear relief is signaled before 2027-2028. For procurement teams, that means memory-dependent refreshes need both extra runway and price-volatility headroom built into any RFQ. A switch or server order placed today on a 40-plus-week lead time may not deliver — or reprice — on the schedule a prior fiscal year would have assumed.

Cisco is the clearest vendor-confirmed data point on how far this reaches. On Cisco's Q2 FY2026 earnings call on February 12, 2026, CFO Mark Patterson said memory prices "have doubled in a year and probably will triple before the year is out," that Cisco's advance purchase commitments for memory rose $1.8 billion in the quarter — a 73% year-on-year increase — and that Cisco is rewriting contracts with flex-pricing provisions to pass DRAM and flash cost increases through to customers (The Next Platform, citing Cisco's Q2 FY26 earnings call, February 2026). That last point is the operational takeaway for buyers: flex-pricing and surcharge clauses on new hardware contracts are becoming the stated norm, which is why Cisco quote windows have shortened. We cover the Cisco specifics in a companion post linked below.

Seven months on, that "triple" line is worth reading as what it was: a CFO's forward characterisation on a February call, reported at the time and never issued as a Cisco pricing figure. What has since been published sits on a different axis — TrendForce's quarterly contract-price series and Gartner's full-year forecast measure component contract prices, not Cisco's own memory cost base, and neither is a confirmation or a refutation of the remark. We are not adjudicating it. The durable part of that call for buyers was the contractual one, which has held: flex-pricing provisions and shortened quote validity are now a normal feature of hardware paperwork, and that is the piece to read on any quote in front of you.

Beyond forecasts, price moves are already showing up. The Coalition for Government Procurement, an industry association, reported on March 6, 2026 that commercial DRAM prices were up over 500%, that PC prices were already up 10-15% with a projected further 20-25% over the six months following, and that server prices had already risen 35-40% with a projected further 60-65% over the same six months (Coalition for Government Procurement, March 2026) — a window that runs to roughly September 2026, so it is a forecast now largely worked through rather than one still ahead. The Coalition said the shortage is expected to continue until late 2027. Those server figures explain why memory-heavy configurations are repricing faster than the rest of the catalog — a server or all-flash array carries far more DRAM and NAND per unit than a typical endpoint.

For teams that want an analyst figure rather than vendor messaging, IDC forecast average PC prices to jump by up to 8% in 2026 due to what the report describes as "crushing memory shortages," and noted that some vendors are already selling pre-built systems without RAM installed to work around component scarcity (Tom's Hardware, citing IDC, 2026). That 8% is an average across the PC market; the server and all-flash figures cited by the Coalition run far higher, which is why memory-heavy configurations are moving faster than the rest of the catalog.

TrendForce (forecast published March 31, 2026) — DRAM contract prices +58-63% QoQ and NAND Flash +70-75% QoQ in Q2 2026, with suppliers reallocating capacity toward server/HBM and cloud providers locking in long-term supply: reported (guidance issued for that quarter — no TrendForce release restating Q2 as a closed-quarter actual is cited here). TrendForce (guidance published July 3, 2026) — Q3 2026 conventional DRAM contract prices +13-18% QoQ and NAND Flash +10-15% QoQ, with the moderation attributed to consumer demand meeting affordability limits while AI server demand keeps supply tight: reported (forecast). Gartner — full-year 2026 forecast of DRAM +125% and NAND +234%, and a projection that AI data centers consume roughly 70% of high-end DRAM in 2026: reported (analyst forecast). Coalition for Government Procurement (March 6, 2026) — commercial DRAM up over 500%, PC prices +10-15% (projected +20-25% more), server prices +35-40% (projected +60-65% more), and the shortage projected through late 2027: reported (industry-association warning). IDC via Tom's Hardware (2026) — average PC prices forecast up to +8% in 2026 on memory shortages, with some vendors shipping pre-builts without RAM: reported (analyst forecast). SHI Resource Hub (2026) — DRAM lead times beyond 40 weeks (up from ~25 weeks mid-2025) and a 30-60% price uplift over the January 2026 baseline through H1 2026, driven by Samsung/SK hynix/Micron shifting to AI/HBM: reported. Cisco Q2 FY2026 earnings call (February 12, 2026), via The Next Platform — CFO Mark Patterson stated memory prices have doubled year-on-year and may triple by year end, advance memory purchase commitments rose $1.8 billion (+73% YoY) in the quarter, and Cisco is adding flex-pricing provisions: vendor-confirmed.