If you haven’t been following the DRAM market lately, strap in—things just got worse. Gamers Nexus recently dropped a 25-minute deep dive titled “WTF Just Happened? | The Corrupt Memory Industry & Micron” and it paints a bleak picture of where consumer hardware is headed.

The Headline: Crucial is Dead

On December 3rd, Micron announced they’re shutting down their consumer-facing Crucial brand. The same Crucial that’s been a go-to for budget RAM and SSDs for nearly three decades. Product shipments through retail will continue until February 2026, and warranty support will extend beyond that—but make no mistake, this is the end of an era for DIY PC builders.

Micron’s reasoning? They’re pivoting entirely to “higher-growth segments,” which is corporate-speak for AI data centers and enterprise customers. The company’s press release frames this as “portfolio transformation” to focus on “secular, profitable growth vectors.” Translation: hyperscalers pay more than you do.

The Bigger Picture: A Three-Company Cartel

Steve Burke at Gamers Nexus doesn’t mince words about the state of the memory industry. Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron collectively control the overwhelming majority of global DRAM production. When three companies dominate an entire industry, competition becomes… optional.

The video highlights the industry’s documented history of price-fixing and collusion—these aren’t conspiracy theories, they’re matters of legal record. And while Steve is careful to note he’s “definitely not implying” current coordination for legal reasons, he points out that what once required secret meetings can now be accomplished through public earnings calls and press releases. When Micron openly states they’re no longer interested in gaining market share and are instead focusing on profits, the other players take note.

The Numbers Are Brutal

The RAM price explosion has been staggering. According to comments and discussion around the video, DDR5 kits that sold for $180 in July are now pushing $700 for the same capacity and speed. That’s not a typo—roughly a 4x increase in under six months.

This isn’t just about gaming PCs. Memory goes into everything: phones, tablets, laptops, cars, IoT devices, servers. When all three major suppliers simultaneously pivot toward enterprise AI workloads, consumer pricing becomes collateral damage.

The AI Gold Rush Connection

The root cause is the insatiable demand from AI data centers for High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM). Companies like NVIDIA need massive amounts of advanced memory for their GPUs, and they’re willing to pay premium prices that consumer markets can’t match. Micron’s stock has surged roughly 180% this year on the strength of their HBM business.

From a pure shareholder perspective, abandoning consumers makes sense—why sell commodity RAM to PC builders when hyperscalers are throwing money at you for HBM? But that calculation only works because there’s no meaningful competition to punish the decision.

The Subsidy Angle

What makes this particularly galling, as Burke points out, is the timing. Micron has been the recipient of massive government subsidies through the CHIPS Act—taxpayer money intended to bolster domestic semiconductor production. The implication that these subsidies are now effectively being redirected to benefit AI megacorps rather than everyday consumers is a bitter pill.

What Happens Next?

The outlook isn’t great. Analysts are projecting that memory prices could remain elevated through 2028 or beyond. Samsung and SK Hynix have explicitly stated they’re minimizing the risk of oversupply—industry-speak for keeping production constrained and prices high. New Micron assembly lines coming online in late 2028 apparently won’t be sending consumer RAM our way either.

Some are looking to Chinese manufacturer CXMT as a potential wildcard, with their recent demos of DDR5-8000 and LPDDR5X memory. Whether they can scale to meaningfully compete with the big three remains to be seen.

The Bottom Line

If you’re planning a PC build or upgrade, the window for reasonable memory prices may have already closed. The industry that serves consumers is shrinking while prices spiral upward, and the companies involved have every financial incentive to maintain this trajectory.

As Burke puts it throughout the video—this is consumers being abandoned by an industry with a corrupt past, benefiting from public money, while redirecting all their capacity to the highest bidders. And there’s precious little recourse available.

Source: Gamers Nexus - “WTF Just Happened? | The Corrupt Memory Industry & Micron”