It often seems like there’s no light at the end of the memory crisis tunnel. That’s not just my opinion , it’s what I was told a few months ago by Maingear CEO Wallace Santos. But analysts from Bernstein have forecast something quite positive for DRAM at the end of 2028, as long as you can hold out for that long.
As spotted by tech analyst Jukan05, Bernstein research analysts recently made financial estimates for the margins of SK hynix over the next few years. For the unaware, SK hynix is one of the single biggest makers of memory right now (alongside Samsung and Micron), and will be making money hand over fist with the memory crisis in full swing.
Bernstein reckons SK hynix’s gross margin on DRAM (percentage of revenue after taking away cost of goods) will be as high as 90.9% in Q2 2026, and will go all the way up to 92.7% in Q4 this year. To pair with this, Bernstein believes that the ASP (average selling price) will be as high as $1.85 per GB, which is more than three times what it was in 2025.
This is all to say that, for the rest of 2026, Bernstein reckons the price of DRAM will only rise. The research analysts think it will hit a peak of $2.23 per GB (almost five times higher than in 2025) by the end of 2027, with a gross margin of 94%.
However, there is some potential good news, too. Bernstein also estimates that 2028 will see a decline in gross margin and the ASP, with SK hynix expected to sit at a still very healthy 86.4%, with an ASP of $1.05 per GB. That’s more than a 50% drop from the previous year and only a near 100% increase from 2025.
Bernstein estimates that SK hynix’s DRAM gross margin in Q2 will reach 90.9%… pic.twitter.com/bC25hqTv5aJuly 3, 2026
NAND revenue has received similar projections from Bernstein too, with it anticipating a drop from $0.32 per GB at the end of 2027 to $0.1 per GB at the end of 2028. That means, according to Bernstein’s estimates, the end of 2028 will be a better time to buy both the memory and storage in your rig than the next two years.
Whether this is wishful thinking is anyone’s guess, but I’m certainly a bit sceptical of the specifics of this claim. A drop of any kind would be good for consumers, but both NAND and DRAM seem set for a large drop, according to Bernstein. SK hynix certainly looks set to increase output in the future, with it investing over $60 billion in chip plants in South Korea, and it’s looking to triple chip output by 2034, but SK hynix and Samsung are both set to steadily increase production to ‘minimize the risk of oversupply.’
It takes time to build the factories necessary to increase output, and these companies don’t seem to be throwing all their funds at them. That said, they are still putting a lot of money into future output.
The problem here is that, even if the supply of DRAM manages to catch up with demand over the next two years (which is a big ‘if’), there’s no guarantee that the prices will suddenly drop as a result. It seems likely they will instead slowly decline over time. And that’s before considering whether or not the AI industry will continue to expand by then, or how things like the launch of the next Sony and Microsoft consoles will impact consumer supply. For the sake of my rig, I hope that Bernstein is right though, and that my scepticism is unwarranted.
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