Comment by adrian_b

Due to the high prices of DRAM and SSDs they now are the greatest fractions of the total price of a computer.

In January I was forced to upgrade an ancient Intel NUC, by replacing it with an Arrow Lake H based ASUS NUC. The complete system with 32 GB DRAM and 3 TB SSDs has cost EUR 1200, including VAT sales tax.

The distribution of the price was like this:

  Barebone mini-PC:   41%
  32 GB DDR5 SODIMMs: 26%
  2 TB PCIe 5.0 SSD:  24%
  1 TB PCIe 4.0 SSD:   9%

Since then, the prices of DDR5 and SSDs have continued to increase, so now the fraction spent for memory would be even higher than 59%.

Before 2026, for so small amounts of memory its cost would have been much less than the rest of the system.