Navigating the volatile silicon market: updates on memory and storage pricing


Updated on March 9th, 2026

We’ve kept to the monthly cadence on price updates to reflect increased costs on memory and storage. We have a few updates today. First, we have needed to increase the pricing on DDR5 SO-DIMMs to $13-$18/GB depending on the capacity. This is both due to increased costs from our suppliers and because we’ve sold through the older, lower cost inventory that we had averaged into the previous pricing through our Weighted Average Cost of inventory model. The cost increase is smaller this month than in previous months, but we don’t yet have the visibility to determine if this is a new stable cost level.

The second update is that we’ve started to deplete our earlier, lower-cost inventory of SSDs, and have needed to re-price some capacities to reflect the costs we are now paying for new orders. Like with memory, we’re passing through as close as we can to our actual costs from suppliers and using a Weighted Average Cost model. There are still some models and capacities like 2TB, 4TB, and 8TB SN850X for which our pricing is substantially below market while we sell through inventory. If you’re looking to order a Framework Laptop or Desktop with a lot of storage, now is the time to do that.

Finally, we have needed to update the pricing on both Framework Desktop and on some pre-built configurations of Framework Laptop 16. The Framework Desktop updates are also smaller than in previous months, but reflect the continued upward trend on LPDDR5x costs. On Framework Laptop 16, we’ve sold through inventory of some pre-built configurations and have had to re-price to reflect the new costs on memory and storage. In upcoming months, we will need to do this on the remaining pre-built configurations of Framework Laptop 13, Framework Laptop 16, and Framework Laptop 12.

In addition to memory and storage, we are beginning to see impacts to other silicon. So far, we’ve been able to absorb cost increases on CPUs, but we are also seeing shortages in some areas. Supply of the i5-1334U processors we use in Framework Laptop 12 is limited due to production capacity constraints on that process node at Intel, and we are now out of stock on some configurations with it as we work on ways to bring in more supply.
As always, we will continue to keep you up to date as we navigate through the supply environment. You can refer back to the recording of our Q&A for more detail on how we’re staying in production and doing what we can to ensure you can still buy repairable, long-lasting computers.

Updated on February 11th, 2026

We’re keeping to a roughly monthly cadence on these updates, and unfortunately the trend continues in the direction we expected from last month. Today, we have updated our DDR5 memory pricing for all capacities, now ranging from $12-$16/GB depending on the capacity. As before, we’re selling memory modules for as close as we can to the weighted average cost of our purchases from suppliers. That means in some cases the pricing is slightly below what is available in market. In other cases, there are still retail parts available at lower prices, and we recommend that you pick those up elsewhere alongside your Framework Laptop DIY Edition. We have been able to hold our pre-built system pricing and storage module pricing flat for this month, but we do anticipate increases in the future. We are currently selling some SSD capacities like 8TB for substantially below the available market pricing.

Unfortunately, pricing of LPDDR5x memory also continues to increase, and we’ve needed to update our pricing for Framework Desktop systems and Mainboards again. We are again only increasing pricing enough to cover the increases in cost from our suppliers. The new system and Mainboard prices are 6-16% higher than before. We anticipate that here as well, costs from our suppliers are going to continue to increase over the next few months.

We know that this is an unusual and difficult time to be a consumer of electronics products. We’re fixing problems everywhere we can across this industry, but in this instance the best we can do is provide transparency around what is actually occurring. In addition to continuing to update this blog post, we’re going to hold a livestream Q&A around memory prices on the Framework YouTube channel this 2026-02-12T18:00:00Z.

Updated on January 12th, 2026

We held off on it as long as we could, but with LPDDR5x memory prices from our suppliers continuing to increase rapidly, we’ve had to update the pricing on Framework Desktop systems and Mainboards. The prices of 128Gbit parts (of which we use 8 to get to 128GB) have spiked the most, impacting our very popular 128GB configuration. We will of course honor the original pricing for any existing pre-orders. We were able to hold the 32GB and 64GB configurations closer to our original pricing, making both of these a pretty strong value for PC gaming in the current environment. The 32GB Framework Desktop Mainboard still comes in cheaper than building your own desktop PC from parts with similar performance.

As before, we’ve limited our price increases to only cover the cost increase in memory from our suppliers, and we’re using Weighted Average Cost of inventory to handle the rapid fluctuations in memory purchase prices. The memory outlook as we enter 2026 continues to get worse. From what we learned in meetings throughout the week at CES with suppliers, distributors, and partners, it’s clear that this is going to be a challenging year and possibly even years for consumers. We will continue to do everything we can to make our computers accessible during this time, and we’ll keep you informed throughout.

Updated on December 24th, 2025

With costs from our suppliers continuing to increase, we’ve had to make a further price adjustment on DDR5 memory modules. During this period of extreme memory shortages and price volatility, our priority is to make sure you can still buy a computer when you need one. With that in mind, we’re setting our memory configuration prices as close as possible to the actual purchase prices we have with our suppliers and distributors. Since we’re constantly sourcing additional memory and each purchase comes in at different (and often higher) pricing, we’re using the Weighted Average Cost (WAC) of inventory, which currently comes to $10/GB for 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB modules, and slightly higher for 48GB modules.

This new memory pricing is still below most of what we see available in the retail market (and far below the $25/GB that Apple currently charges). However, if you are able to find a deal on lower priced modules, we encourage you to bring your own memory when purchasing a Framework Laptop DIY Edition. To make that even clearer, we’re updating our configurators soon to add a link to PCPartPicker directly in the Memory section, letting you quickly check if you can find modules at lower prices anywhere else. We recommend also checking the Framework Knowledge Base for which modules we’ve done compatibility testing on.

All indications we’ve received from suppliers is that prices will continue to increase going into early 2026. We have absorbed and continue to absorb some of the price increases to be able to offer this new pricing, but it is very likely we’ll need to adjust module prices again within the next month. As we shared before, we will continue to keep you updated throughout with transparency on price changes. We’ll only increase prices to cover increases in costs, and we’ll bring prices back down as costs come down in the future.

Updated on December 17th, 2025

Trailing behind shortages and price increases from suppliers on memory, we’re also seeing costs of storage increase rapidly in recent weeks. Our suppliers indicate that pricing will continue to increase in early 2026 and likely beyond. Like with memory, our recent pricing on storage has been both below the market pricing for these modules and below the costs at which we can purchase new modules from suppliers. With that, we have now updated pricing on storage to reflect our new purchase prices from suppliers. We’re following the same process that we are with memory, where we will keep the original prices on all existing pre-orders, will update this post each time we update prices, will limit price increases to only cover increases in costs, and will bring pricing back down when costs decrease in the future.

Original blog post

Today, we increased our pricing on the DDR5 memory configurable in Framework Laptop DIY Edition orders by 50% to begin to respond to the substantially higher costs we are facing from suppliers and distributors. The new pricing remains below what is available in the open market. We aren’t changing pricing on any existing pre-orders, and we also are not yet updating pricing on our pre-built laptops or Framework Desktop which come with memory (this makes the 128GB config of Framework Desktop a bargain). As always, we also offer the option to buy a DIY Edition laptop with no memory or storage included, letting you re-use modules you have or find deals where you can.

The memory market is currently extremely volatile and we expect costs from our suppliers to continue to increase over the next weeks and months. It is highly likely that we will need to make further price updates on both DDR5 modules and on our systems that come with memory, whether DDR5, LPDDR5X, or GDDR. Like we did during the fluctuating tariff environment earlier in 2025, we commit to three principles throughout this:

  1. We are going to stay transparent. Any time we change memory or system pricing, we are going to let you know and explain the reasoning behind it.
  2. We won’t use this as an excuse to be extractive. We’ll only increase pricing to cover increases in our costs, and where possible, we’ll absorb costs to maintain stability in the pricing we put in front of you.
  3. Just like we did with tariffs, when our costs go back down in the future, we’ll reduce our pricing and update this blog post to reflect the change.

For more context on what is driving the cost increases throughout the industry, there is currently a massive supply and demand imbalance for memory. On the demand side, the boom in AI data center construction and server manufacturing is consuming immense amounts of memory. A single rack of NVIDIA’s GB300 solution uses 20TB of HBM3E and 17TB of LPDDR5X. That’s enough LPDDR5x for a thousand laptops, and an AI-focused datacenter is loaded with thousands of these racks! On the supply side, the memory industry since its inception decades ago has gone through repeated boom and bust cycles, making the three main surviving memory die makers Micron, SK Hynix, and Samsung hesitant to speculatively invest the billions of dollars needed for fabrication capacity expansion. Now that the demand exists again, there is a years-long lag time to catch up on supply. Worse for us in the PC space though, both the existing capacity and the new capacity is being prioritized to higher-margin server-focused memory like HBM and the server markets for DDR5 and LPDDR5X over the PC market.

We have strong partnerships with Micron (one of the biggest manufacturers of both memory dies and modules), memory module makers like ADATA who source from all three of the big memory die suppliers, and memory distributors, and our DIY Edition model gives us a lot of flexibility to navigate constrained and rapidly changing environments like this. We’ll continue to keep you informed throughout, and we’ll do everything we can to keep memory available to you.

Note: Because our current memory pricing is substantially below market, we are adjusting our return policy to prevent scalpers from purchasing DIY Edition laptops with memory and returning the laptop while keeping the memory. Laptop returns will also require the memory from the order to be returned.

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I am not happy to hear you are still closely working with Micron after they decided to abandon us consumers.

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Thanks for the information and the transparency.

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Now I modified my order to add memory to my DIY edition. This post was helpful to me letting me know what the Framework plans are.

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I just want to say somewhere that the AI bubble will burst and the RAM market will get back to normal, but Micron killing Crucial will forever make the RAM market worse for consumers. Such a shame :frowning:

I don’t blame Micron for this or Framework for working with them, instead it’s nice that we might have access to some of Crucial’s legacy through Framework.

On topic, though, Framework is doing a nice thing here which I appreciate as always. Hope it calms down soon enough.

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I appreciate the transparency and some details about the hardware of AI datacenters. At first this was a bit of a bummer because I just ordered a DIY Framework 16, but it very much helps to read that the 50% increase doesn’t entirely cover the new memory costs, as well as the manufacturing pressure for memory for AI datacenters. It’s only going to get worse for some time – I’ve heard estimates that costs will be high for 10 years.

The AI datacenters seem particularly scary in some ways because they are taking massive natural resources (water, power, manufacturing) and it is unclear where this is heading. The movie “Colossus: The Forbin Project” keeps coming up as one of the possibilities may be living with when the machine becomes smarter than we are. Because, sadly, man is proving repeatedly that we are not capable of running things without continuing to damage and destroy the ecology of the Earth, which is bound to be in conflict with any being put in charge of our own safety and security.

This again is why I appreciate Framework’s mission of sustainability and ease of re-use of parts. And that becomes more important as the parts get more expensive and more difficult to get.

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You might charge you mind…. just sayin’

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I saw this video already.

But I can also understand that consumer hardware business is much more complex to maintain than a B2B one.

Micron is not withdrawing their supply from the market, they are deciding to not invest in their consumer line of products, and however much I’d like them to not do that, it’s not right to force them to do it.

Also, does anybody else feel that Steve has become much more sensationalist and angry in the last year or two? Much more emotion in GN’s videos, much more unsubstantiated narrative and claims.

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I do, I think Steve at Gamers Nexus has posted videos about alleged wrongdoing more often in the last 2 years.

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Yeah i remember GN and LTT had like a pretty bad tiff about the Labs testing a couple of years back, as well as the whole Honey debacle when that brand ended up getting revealed as a scam as well.

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Just saying I’m a loyal Framework customer. You guys are really good to your customers. We appreciate what you do, the way you treat us and your people and the transparency. When this happen you guys were one of the first things I thought about.

That said I’m glad i got my order ahead of this. I ‘ve ordered the 16, 13, and Desktop this year. I’m normally a DIYer and that’s high praise. Please do really try hard to find a new source of memory even if you have to go to Chinese memory because if you ask me other than repairability and ownership what i love about framework it’s the 96gb of ram in a laptop. I really do use it as a dev.

What I hate most about MAC (I have to use at work) is fighting ram all the time plus the no ownership and long term costs. At work, I’ve been trying to convince them to go to you guys, but it’ s a huge mega corp.

I’m actually shocked how good your Framework desktop is as Running LLMS. For my use case this is better than a 5090. I’m so glad i to a plunge on that, and the build is just amazing. Hopefully though some act of god you can keep that price down. I know you guys order this stuff a bit on the margin though.

Anyway i’ll stick with you guys, and glad i got all three orders in this year, but will keep sending business your way whenever I can.

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It has been, but in my opinion a lot of what he says is technically correct. Both things can be true, and I’m not just being diplomatic. I genuinely feel that way. My argument is that some people are very sensitive about ownership, especially here and people like him. He’s high agency. People are passionate about their hobbies. There is a real case to be made around tax policy and large companies buying up goods and infrastructure in a way that effectively forces everyone into renting storage and compute. I had personally been thinking along the lines of hat he said just not always how he says it.

Granted, there’s an emotional angle to his reporting, but the underlying point stands: small companies like Framework and individual consumers are getting squeezed by large tech firms (this go around). I do think he’s become more sensationalist and angrier over time. It reminds me of the emotional intensity people felt during the pandemic and the crypto cycle. Still, much of what he’s saying isn’t unfounded.

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@catastrophic I actually also do have a question in regards to the RAM and a theory im having with shipping

With this Ram and SSD Price Spike, im wondering if you are shipping DIY Kits without RAM and SSDs first and then once you get a new shipment, you end up getting shipments with RAM and SSDs delivered next? (Im not even sure if you can answer this without like spilling beans on anything secret, so if you cannot that is totally ok)

If you want to, we can also discuss in PMs if need be (but theres no pressure if you dont want to.)
edit: idk why this didn’t end up as a reply to you, but I added the @ just in case.

Hey all, there was an update on the blog today.

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I’m not sure I understand your question. Did the updated blog post answer it?

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Not really. But it doesn’t matter because the capture came through

My question was whether or not you were capturing the payment for DIY kits without RAM and SSDs first and then ones with SSDs and RAM?

Which blog where?

Cheers

Here’s the blog post, which is also the first post of this thread.

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The blog post has been updated again, and the copy above has been revised accordingly.

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This comment is not directed at Framework.

The pricing of RAM by the effect of supply and demand of RAM, in my opinion, has opened a massive doorway for “legitimate ;)” price gouging!