Tuesday, February 18th 2025
Top DRAM Manufacturers Touted to End DDR3 & DDR4 Production in 2025
Inside sources—familiar with goings-ons at leading DRAM manufacturing firms—have predicted the end of DDR3 and DDR4 production lines. According to a DigiTimes Asia report (citing Nikkei), industry observers have noticed that the DRAM market is undergoing a so-called "shift." They believe that pricing trends are decreasing due to weak demand. Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron are named as major players; allegedly involved in devising new strategies—in reaction to fluid market circumstances. The DigiTimes insider network proposes that the big three: "may phase out DDR3 and DDR4 by 2025...by the end of 2025...anticipating a future focused on advanced memory technologies." Older standards are falling out of favor, with DDR5 and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) on the ascent. Industry watchdogs reckon that possible DDR3 and DDR4 supply shortages could occur "post-summer 2025."
Taiwan's Nanya Technology has predicted that the overall DRAM market will "bottom out" within the first half of 2025. An eventual recovery is envisioned by the second quarter; AI-related demands could help drive up demand by a large margin. Additionally, Nanya points to improved inventory management and global economic stimulus. Taiwanese DRAM production houses are expected to pick up some slack, but an unnamed "key component distributor" anticipates serious after-effects. An anonymous source believes that the: "anticipated halt in production could lead to significant supply constraints, challenging market dynamics and impacting pricing strategies." Nanya Technology and Winbond Electronics produce specialized DRAM-types; therefore are not touted to be great gap fillers. The latter is reportedly reacting to weak demand for "mature" DDR products—DigiTimes commented on this development: "Winbond Electronics is advancing its manufacturing by transitioning to a 16 nm process in the latter half of 2025. This upgrade from the current 20 nm process, primarily used for 4 Gb DDR3 and DDR4, will enable Winbond to produce 8 Gb DDR memory."
As reported by Tom's Hardware; Changxin Memory Technology (CXMT) and Fujian Jinhua have ramped up DDR4 production and implemented aggressive pricing, thus making it difficult for market leaders to compete. Late last year, the tech news cycle pointed out that Chinese DRAM manufacturers were offering products at half of the price of South Korean-produced equivalents. Constraints, predicted in the second half of 2025, could spell difficult conditions for Chinese DRAM producers. Tom's Hardware believes that: "some industrial customers are unlikely to adopt China-made DRAMs, and are more likely to adopt specialized memory from Nanya and Winbond instead."
TechPowerUp's news feed history contains a small smattering of new DDR4 products—for example; Biostar launched its Storming V DDR4 memory module design last December, and V-COLOR introduced a TUF Gaming Alliance-themed DDR4 Prism Pro model in November. October's cycle had Lexar lining up its THOR OC DDR4 desktop product line for release. Looking through recent-ish history, there is a lot of silence on the DDR3 front. September 2024 TPU reader poll results led to a headline article, titled "DDR4 remains a popular memory standard." 58.2% of participants registered their utilization of DDR4 parts.
Sources:
DigiTimes News, Tom's Hardware, SK Hynix News (image source)
Taiwan's Nanya Technology has predicted that the overall DRAM market will "bottom out" within the first half of 2025. An eventual recovery is envisioned by the second quarter; AI-related demands could help drive up demand by a large margin. Additionally, Nanya points to improved inventory management and global economic stimulus. Taiwanese DRAM production houses are expected to pick up some slack, but an unnamed "key component distributor" anticipates serious after-effects. An anonymous source believes that the: "anticipated halt in production could lead to significant supply constraints, challenging market dynamics and impacting pricing strategies." Nanya Technology and Winbond Electronics produce specialized DRAM-types; therefore are not touted to be great gap fillers. The latter is reportedly reacting to weak demand for "mature" DDR products—DigiTimes commented on this development: "Winbond Electronics is advancing its manufacturing by transitioning to a 16 nm process in the latter half of 2025. This upgrade from the current 20 nm process, primarily used for 4 Gb DDR3 and DDR4, will enable Winbond to produce 8 Gb DDR memory."
25 Comments on Top DRAM Manufacturers Touted to End DDR3 & DDR4 Production in 2025
USA made products are expensive.
Also impossible to find new CPU coolers for old computers.
It’s also crazy to think that DDR4 has been on the market for nearly 11 years, and DDR5 for nearly 5. But AM4 hasn’t seen a new chipset since 2020, and LGA1700 supported both DDR4 and DDR5, so it makes sense for them to wind down production. Heck we’re honestly on the verge of DDR6, unless CUDIMMs somehow prolong the life of DDR5.
I’m still betting on CAMM2 becoming the standard after DDR6 (believe it or not there are already servers running CAMM2 memory modules), and LPCAMM2 replacing SODIMMS after DDR5.
Plus obviously all other smaller memory manufacturers that are going to keep producing it, since it's the big three(Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron) that are stopping.
Even here in SG, even there are brand new DDR3 RAM in shops
which are usually ex-stock.
The prices are really high that people sought to buy second hand instead.
In no way DDR4 should cease since many PCs are still using DDR4.
Whether old or new, AM4 as well as Intel LGA 1700 platform are still during DDR4.
DDR4 PC are usually more cost effective than DDR5 so if you are building/buying
a casual PC.
It's a no brainer not to go for AMD Ryzen 5000 AM4 with DDR4 or Intel LGA 1700
with DDR4.
'Cause last time I looked (about .025ns ago !), every mobo maker has boards that use it....including my 2.5 yr old intel-based mini-me box...
Granted most mfgr's have switched over to DDR5 for more recent models, but there's STILL a buttload of older boards available from most sellers..and plenty of ram to go with them, at least in the US anyways :)
Now DDR3 otoh, is essentially a dinosaur nowadays, as are the boards that use it, so the ramp-down on it's production is no surprise....
Total BS.
Is it worth buying? At $35ish, hell yeah. Considering that the last kit was $80 about a year before I built this Ryzen box, GOOD.
Will I ever use more than 8GB on a small 2016 animation/video/SQL production server?
Lol nah. However, tons of these older machines keep getting revived out of the woodwork to do all types of home server jobs.
It wouldn't surprise me if we soon have another memory scavenging situation like the eMachines where all good DDR2 is MIA.
I only run 2x1GB DDR2 in the SFF box and it's more than enough for serving files in the plainest sense: Samba, iSCSI, torrent, DCC...
DDR3 now has three massive edges: Size, speed and price. Unlike the 2009 era of slow and unstable memory kits, it's good enough.
You can afford to run service jobs with it, engines like Unity and Unreal still work with it just fine. Blender and OBS, no problems.
More importantly, many games still work well with it. My first 2 years of VR were carried by a FX/DDR3 system with plenty of memory.
The only things that kill support is time and the end of manufacturing. I can expect DDR3 to be on the chopping block. Had a great run.
Maybe the same turn of events is about to happen to DDR4 but we're just not ready mate. AM4 is still getting made and we like it here.
When I first picked up an -AES (Micron E) kit, it sold out EVERYWHERE. Solid kit, zero inventory anywhere. Instant legend among AHOC.
That 3200 memory kit went EOL so fast and just a year later I had to pick something very similar just to preserve my insane overclock.
Got into it a bit with the Crucial GM (Natasha) just looking for something that worked. She's the best and I'm so spoiled.
Fast af boiii! :pimp:
They can cut DDR4 production but like my AM2 and AM3+ stuff TONS of these AM4 systems worldwide will actually stand the test of time.
You would think something exciting on DDR5 must have happened to get all this to kick off but so far I don't see anything. Forced migration?
DDR3 still in the US it is used in embedded hardware.
For 5 years I've been warning people what tech companies are doing. I have been bitching and rightly so that the consumers are getting shafted. Not only in the quality of components but in performance vs price.
Consumers are only buying "the name brand" and more or less getting refreshes of the previous generations.
Nothing new.
I'll put it to you this way. I used to build brand new rig fully every 2 years, because the tech and the price made a difference.
I'm going to hold out for another 2 or so years before upgrading because the performance for the price is just not there.
My current rig is 6 years old.