Other than this recent spike, it's been trending cheaper continuously for decades. In a few years 128GB will be as affordable as 12GB (what flagship phones have now) is today.
IMO that was a really weird choice that everyone seemed to make. DDR5 2x64GB before the spike was like $250. I had not much justification to NOT go with 64GB for my pre-COVID build.
It seems that a lot of PC building people are confused too deeply by Intel marketing and fixated on getting the flashiest CPU attainable within budget. Similar things happened with previous AI hype, and some people were using HDD boot drives on GPU rigs and asking others whether low end i7 would cut it. They acted very confused when told that they need SSD and Pentium is plentium.
I mean, there is a shortage going on, but when it'll be over anyhow - whether due to all the last three standing filing bankruptcy or CXMT-Huawei starts delivering in shiploads or Kioxia enters the market - and it comes back down to $2/GB, or even $5/GB, just max it out and forget about it for 10 years. Why not.
Because late stage capitalism demands endless growth in order to pay executives and shareholders (especially those late to the train) more and more YoY.
And those requirements for growth mean that cost cutting is needed. Over the past few decades cost _have_ been cut, building things more efficiently, components becoming cheaper, larger volumes in mass manufacturing.
But we have already reached a point where there are no other places to cut than the quality of the product itself. Look to shrinkflation in food and other places - look at how "live action" versions are being made of previously animated movies, how game franchises from 2 decades ago are being brought back from the dead, the huge influx of remasters etc.
Why? Because it's cheaper to revive/reuse an existing IP than it is to create a new one + it guarantees success with the drooling consumer masses. And cheaper = more Ferraris for the multi millionaire/billionaire execs.
See how much Mario movie made? Just wait...bet you there'll be a live action version. ;)
Their prices are currently so unreachable because of the big players hoarding every chip they can get their hands on, but if/when the market realizes that locally deployed LLMs are the way to go, maybe (hopefully?) then more chips will be available to the consumers for lower prices.
The only way that'll happen is if deep-pocketed corporate buyers exit the market almost entirely, and therefore stop being the highest-available bidder. Even in a scenario where it's obvious to everyone that consumer-side hardware is a viable option, it's still not in the big AI providers' interest to abandon the effort to push/pull everyone to their cloud. They'll keep buying as long as there's liquidity to fund them and the will to do so, and we're a ways off that collapsing. I'm quite pessimistic. Prices will probably come down in the next 12-18 months, but not to where they were before this