An enterprising Russian enthusiast has taken to building his own memory amid the extreme price increases driven by a global shortage. As the world suffers from dried-up memory inventories, some people are wondering when things will go back to normal, while others are looking toward exotic alternatives like SODIMM-to-UDIMM adapters. Now, a bunch of modders in Russia have taken matters into their own hands and are proposing a radically inventive solution: making your own RAM by assembling the relevant parts yourself.
The idea comes from Russian YouTuber PRO Hi-Tech's Telegram channel, where a local enthusiast known as "Vik-on" already performs VRAM upgrades for GPUs, so this is a relatively safe operation for him. According to Vik-on, empty RAM PCBs can be sourced from China for as little as $6.40 per DIMM. The memory chips themselves, though, that's a different challenge.
The so-called spot market for memory doesn't really exist at the moment, since no manufacturer has the production capacity to make more RAM, and even if they did, they'd sell to better-paying AI clients instead. Still, you can find SK Hynix and Samsung chips across Chinese marketplaces if you search for the correct part number, as shown in the attached screenshots.
Moreover, the Telegram thread says it would cost roughly 12,000 Russian Rubles ($152) to build a 16 GB stick with "average" specs, which is about the same as a retail 16 GB kit. There's also a ZenTimings snapshot showing CL28 timings, claiming that even relatively high-end DDR5 RAM can be built using this method, but it won't be cost-effective.
Therefore, it doesn't make too much sense just yet to get the BGA rework station out and assemble your own DDR5. Things are expected to get worse, though, so maybe these Russians are on to something. We were able to spot DDR5 ICs on AliExpress ourselves, and GDDR6(X) was even more common, so there's certainly a market for it.
On the contrary, used kits can be used to salvage memory chips cheaply, or laptop memory can come in handy since it uses the same ICs. These chips are desoldered from the donor board and reattached (reballed) to the new PCB. We've actually seen something similar with DDR4 memory before, and at one point, China's crackdown on smuggling had caused reballed DRAM prices to drop further, but we're far from that now.
RAM prices are soaring globally, with some system integrators even offering options to bring your own RAM, now seemingly succeeded by build- your-own RAM. Competition breeds innovation, goes the saying, but desperation can often drive similar motivations, as is evident in this latest development in the ongoing memory crisis.
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