- A high-end DDR5 RAM kit now costs more than an RTX 5090
- This is likely a 192GB kit for desktop use.
- Even the 128GB consumer package now costs three-quarters of the price of Nvidia’s Founders Edition of Blackwell’s flagship.
Did you ever think we’d live in a world where a high-end DDR5 RAM kit costs more than an Nvidia RTX 5090 GPU? No, me neither, but here we are.
This is the latest chapter in the RAM price inflation saga, which has been skyrocketing since October 2025 (or in some cases the end of September) and only seems to be getting worse.
VideoCardz reports that Corsair’s 192GB Vengeance DDR5 RAM kit, which includes four 48GB memory modules, is now essential (on Corsair’s online store).
That’s significantly more than the $1,999 list price of Nvidia’s RTX 5090 Founders Edition (and not far off the asking price of third-party flagship GPUs).
The same goes for some new high-end RAM kits made in China by Asgard. A 256GB kit now costs 3% more in this country than the official list price of the new Chinese version of Blackwell’s flagship (Nvidia RTX 5090 D V2).
Analysis: the signs of the times
Okay, the 192GB or 256GB RAM kits are premium workstation offerings, but it’s still good Any The PC RAM package would exceed the asking price of an RTX 5090. And that certainly wasn’t the case until recently.
While we’re looking for an inferior RAM kit listed on Newegg that can make an enthusiast consumer PC, the Corsair Vengeance 128GB kit (a pair of 64GB modules) just doesn’t cut it (all prices are correct at the time of writing). That’s three-quarters of the MSRP of Nvidia’s RTX 5090, and given the sharp increase in the cost of RAM modules, it wouldn’t be too surprising if such a memory kit was more expensive than Blackwell’s flagship in the near future, perhaps as early as 2026.
The question is where this price inflation will end, and I have a bad feeling the situation will get worse before it gets better. There is talk of a dwindling RAM supply for PC makers and upgraders, and I wouldn’t bet on that, and what is for sale could end up being really prohibitively expensive when you factor in resellers etc.
Is building (or buying) a PC really getting too expensive, not only because of the massive increase in the price of RAM, but also because of the ever-increasing costs of SSDs and GPUs? If you put this question to your magic 8 ball and shake it, I think you’ll find that the signals (mostly) point to yes, unfortunately.