Samsung Reportedly Plans to Raise Memory and Storage Prices in Q4 2025

Samsung notified partners that it will raise prices for memory chips in the fourth quarter. DRAM prices are expected to increase by 15-30%, while NAND flash prices are anticipated to rise by 5-10%. These chips are used in RAM and storage devices, respectively.

In September 2025, Samsung informed major customers that it would increase contract prices for memory chips in the fourth quarter of 2025, according to ICsmart. Contract prices for DRAM, including LPDDR4X and LPDDR5/5X, are expected to climb by about 15-30%. For NAND flash, contract rates on eMMC and UFS are projected to rise by roughly 5-10%.

The company is responding to tighter supply and shifting production toward newer lines, which leaves fewer legacy parts available.

DRAM is used in RAM, while NAND chips are used in built-in storage in phones, tablets, and laptops; the NAND supply is also shared with SSD production.

Hardware Industry: Tariffs and AI Demands

Across the industry, suppliers have been resetting terms ahead of Q4. Micron paused price quotations for both NAND and DRAM on September 15 to reassess deals after SanDisk moved to raise NAND prices by about 10%, signaling tighter supply and a firmer pricing backdrop into late 2025.

On the demand side, cloud providers are shifting more data from HDDs to enterprise SSDs, concentrating orders on high-capacity QLC NAND chips. This shift could leave QLC in short supply by 2026, with enterprise SSD orders already accelerating and price hikes underway. Expect the impact to reach consumers by the end of 2025.

How This Affects Gamers

For gamers, price increases will initially affect new high-capacity SSDs. Expect the cost of 4-8 TB NVMe drives and large external SSDs to increase, as they utilize QLC. If QLC stays tight, pressure will also spill into non-QLC models. The effect can ripple across PCIe 4.0 and 5.0 options, as well as SATA.

Legacy DDR4 memory is already getting more expensive as DRAM contract costs climb, and vendors are lifting module prices across standard capacities. With fabs prioritizing DDR5 and HBM over legacy lines, the DDR4 supply keeps tightening, so prices are expected to rise even more.

US prices for both Xbox Series X|S and all PlayStation 5 models have already risen as import tariffs and AI-driven chip demand push up costs. In Europe, Sony rolled out a revised version of the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition with an 825 GB disc drive, instead of the original 1 TB.