Modular laptop maker Framework forced to push SSD prices even higher but says DDR5 is 'stable'

Framework has posted another blog post detailing its price updates, and the bad news is that storage prices are going up. However, the modular laptop specialist says DDR5 prices have remained "stable." That immediately begs the question: Have RAM prices peaked?

Regarding SSD prices specifically, Framework says, "the biggest change for the month is on storage. We’ve consumed most of our inventory of drives we brought in earlier at lower costs across most capacities. The new costs we are sourcing drives at are substantially higher, and the weighted average inventory cost drives us to need to set higher prices."

Framework doesn't say exactly how much it is putting SSD prices up in the blog post. However, as a guide, it is currently charging $135 for a Sandisk SN7100 500 GB drive with its Framework 13 laptop, $265 for the same drive model in a 1 TB configuration and $505 for the 2 TB option.

The situation concerning storage, meanwhile, is bad enough that Framework is pausing production of its own Storage Expansion Cards.

"We also use NAND flash in our Storage Expansion Cards, and see the costs jumping massively there. The costs have increased to a level that we’ve paused production of the 250GB Storage Expansion Card for now rather than build new inventory at a price many times higher than the original. We’ll continue to sell through the remaining inventory that we have on hand, and we hope to be able to restart production as we find alternative NAND sources."

As for DDR5 memory for the same laptop, the situation is pretty grim. You're looking at $160 for a single 8 GB stick of DDR5-5600. You can double that for two 8 GB SoDIMMs, or pay $235 for a single 16 GB stick. Yuck.

Framework says it has also had to put the price up on the 128 GB version of its Desktop PC, which now comes in at $3,449, and that's before you've added any storage. Yikes.

Still, if DDR5 prices from Framework are mostly unchanged, might this signal that the memory crisis has peaked? It's probably too early to call that.

"This month, DDR5 costs have remained stable, and we’ve been able to keep pricing the same month over month," Framework says. In other words, there's no change this month. But we'd want to see that remain the case for many more months to come before assuming that the price rises are over, let alone that prices are finally coming down.