DDR5 RAM Prices per GB

It's a 2026 supply story. DRAM makers have been diverting wafer capacity and packaging toward HBM and high-density modules for AI datacenter demand, tightening supply of mainstream DDR5 exactly as adoption ramped — so DDR5 $/GB spiked while the older, oversupplied DDR4 stayed cheap. On this board the gap is visible directly: compare the DDR5 floor to the DDR4 floor and you'll typically see DDR5 running several times higher per GB. It is not a permanent law of physics — new fabs and process maturity will narrow it over time — but as of now the premium is real, and if your platform can still take DDR4, that's the cheaper road. If you're on an AM5 or newer Intel board that requires DDR5, buy from the top of this ranking rather than waiting indefinitely.

The floor moves week to week, so check the live board above — but 2026 has been rough for DDR5 buyers. A supply crunch (HBM and DDR5 production being diverted to AI datacenter demand) pushed DDR5 well above its historical lows; where a good desktop $/GB might once have been a couple of dollars, DDR5 has been running several times that. As of this board, the cheapest DDR5 rows still floor several times higher per GB than DDR4. Anything near the top of the ranking here is a genuinely good deal in the current market; don't anchor to pre-2025 prices that no longer exist. Sort by $/GB and buy from the floor.

For a homelab or NAS, often yes — it's one of the best value plays in the whole memory market. When datacenters decommission servers, registered ECC RDIMMs (and LRDIMMs) hit the secondary market in huge quantity at a steep discount, so the $/GB can be a fraction of new desktop memory, especially for large 32/64GB modules. The tradeoffs: RDIMM/LRDIMM only works in server and workstation boards that accept registered memory (it will not post in a normal desktop), the modules run a bit slower and sometimes hotter, and you inherit no meaningful warranty. But for a virtualization host, a TrueNAS/ZFS box, or a Proxmox lab where you want maximum ECC-protected RAM per dollar, used server RDIMM is hard to beat. Filter this board to ECC and used/refurbished, sort by $/GB, and check the module type matches your board.

Yes, usually. ECC (error-correcting) memory carries an extra DRAM chip per rank to detect and fix single-bit errors, and registered/buffered ECC RDIMMs/LRDIMMs add a register that eases the load on the memory controller for high-capacity server configs. That extra silicon and the server-grade positioning mean ECC modules often list at a different $/GB than plain desktop UDIMMs — sometimes higher new, but frequently LOWER on the used/recertified server market because decommissioned server RDIMMs flood in cheap. ECC only works if your CPU and board support it (most consumer platforms don't; server, workstation, and some AMD boards do). If you're building a NAS, a homelab, or a workstation that supports it, ECC is worth it for data integrity — and the used-server $/GB can be a bargain. Use the ECC filter above to compare.