DDR5 RAM kit that costs more than an RTX 5090 launched by Asgard, and it’s getting even more expensive
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Over the past couple of months, we have seen RAM prices rise fast, and the trend doesn’t seem to be reversing any time soon. The blame for this jump in pricing has been placed on the ongoing AI boom. Data centers are buying up huge amounts of memory, which leaves less supply for regular consumers.
As a result, prices for high-capacity RAM kits have gone up to levels most PC builders never expected. If you were thinking about upgrading your system with more RAM, now isn’t the best time. You may need to wait for the market to cool down (though that might be several years), because some brands are launching new kits at prices that feel unreal.
192GB DDR5 RAM for around $1,200, 256GB for more than $2,000
Asgard, a well-known Chinese memory manufacturer, just released two massive DDR5 RAM kits, and their prices are far beyond what most people would call reasonable. The first kit is the Asgard Thor 192GB DDR5 edition. It includes four 48GB sticks and is listed on the Chinese retailer JD for 8,599 Yuan, which is around $1,216. This is already pretty expensive for RAM, especially for gamers and everyday users. But compared to the second kit, it feels almost normal.
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The real shock comes from the Asgard Valkyrie 256GB DDR5 RAM kit, which comes with four 64GB sticks. Its price on JD is 14,599 Yuan, or about $2,064. That alone is higher than the MSRP of Nvidia’s flagship RTX 5090 GPU, which is wild to think about, as you could buy a top-tier graphics card for less than this RAM kit. But it gets even worse, as the price of this kit has already risen, reaching around $2,404. For reference, we’ve actually seen AIB RTX 5090 cards selling for MSRP – not just the Founders Edition.
These kits are obviously not made for regular gamers or standard work PCs. They are meant for very heavy workloads, such as large 3D projects, virtual machines, or AI training tasks. Still, the pricing shows how much the memory market has changed because of AI demand. High-capacity RAM used to be expensive, but never to the point where it cost more than a high-end GPU. Right now, upgrading to huge RAM kits is not friendly to the wallet. For most people, the smart move is to wait and see if prices calm down.
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