Does the DRAM price-fixing ruling lower memory prices?

No. The order Judge Noel Wise signed on November 14 denies a motion to dismiss, which lets the case go forward and settles nothing about prices. Answers from the three companies are due on December 7, and the court meets the parties again in January. TrendForce still has conventional DRAM contract prices climbing 10 to 15 percent this quarter.

What did the judge actually decide on November 14?

The court refused to throw the case out, and dismissed no claim. The order in Garciaguirre v. Samsung Electronics, case 26-cv-06345-NW in the Northern District of California, denies the motion and grants a separate request that moved the early case deadlines. The claim is a Section 1 Sherman Act conspiracy in conventional DRAM running from October 2022, brought by seventeen consumers and small businesses in five states against Samsung, SK hynix and Micron, which together held more than 91 percent of the DRAM market by revenue last year, by the complaint's count. Nothing in the complaint shows an agreement directly, and the court says it treats the well-pleaded allegations as true for now, which is what a motion to dismiss turns on.

The line being quoted everywhere started with the defence, whose counsel cited Judge Posner on rivals in a concentrated market watching one another like hawks. The order replied that the conduct alleged looks more like hawks flying in formation, which hawks do not normally do. The court also called the oligopoly structure itself neutral, set the DDR3 allegations aside, and found the companies' investor statements did not support an inference of conspiracy.

Which memory price increase applies to your purchase order?

The one TrendForce publishes, not the one in the headlines. Its September 30 forecast has conventional DRAM contract prices up 10 to 15 percent quarter on quarter in the fourth quarter of 2026, and its November 11 release has PC DRAM contract prices up 13 to 18 percent. Compounded over four quarters those rates would come to 46 to 75 percent a year for conventional DRAM and 63 to 94 percent for PC DRAM. Neither release forecasts that: both say the pace of increases is slowing, so treat the annual figures as the ceiling if the current rate held, not as a prediction.

The triple-digit numbers in circulation are four different measures. The complaint alleges 697 percent over eighteen months. The order separately records reporting that retail prices were up 500 percent from the start of October 2025, which is a retail series and not a court finding. The same paragraph of the complaint gives conventional DRAM up 171.8 percent in the year to the third quarter of 2025, and a contract series of roughly 50 percent in the fourth quarter of 2025, 93 percent in the first quarter of 2026 and 58 percent in the second. All four figures are allegations the order repeats, not findings it makes. Which of them reaches you depends on your contract: TrendForce says increases trail the market average where long-term agreements set the pricing terms, and land mainly on customers without one.

Why does DDR4 now cost more than DDR5?

Because the three suppliers stopped making it while buyers still needed it. The complaint, as the order repeats it, says all three announced a mainstream DDR4 wind-down between about April and June 2025, that this pushed DDR4 and DDR3 prices up and set off panic buying, and that DDR4 ended up dearer per gigabyte than the faster DDR5 meant to replace it. The court made one finding of its own on that point: the companies gave no reason for what it called a sudden and coordinated DDR4 exit.

TrendForce's spot board shows the inversion in money: DDR4 16Gb 3200 averaged $79.50 a chip against $60.267 for DDR5 16Gb 4800/5600, about 32 percent dearer at the same density. The capacity went to HBM for AI accelerators and cannot come back as server memory, because HBM takes three to four times as much wafer area per gigabyte as ordinary DDR5.

What happens next in the DRAM case, and when?

The defendants have to file their answers next, by December 7, 2026, which is 22 days from today. The order puts the initial case management conference at 9am on January 12, 2027, and no class has been certified: the proposed class is indirect purchasers, people who bought finished machines and memory kits rather than chips.

Nothing in that calendar moves a price. Hardware Busters puts it plainly: any relief from a court is years off. Samsung, SK hynix and Micron had not commented on the ruling when Hardware Busters published, and their investor newsrooms carried nothing on the case when we read them on November 15. The only defence position on the record comes from counsel, who argued on November 13 that the complaint describes "lawful oligopoly conduct" and blamed the AI boom.