Memory prices per GB were cheaper in 2012.
It’s possible we’ll see a huge price drop on the near term but SSD + Cache + GPU’s seems to have changed the equation where RAM speed is considered more important than size. And from a pure architecture standpoint it makes sense.
They weren't though when you adjust for inflation. If you took inflation into account, ram is cheaper now by $0.89/GB for DRAM compared to 2012.
Lowest 2012 price listed is 3.7 (2012-10-30) vs highest listed in 2026 is 5.375 (2026-2-1), which overlaps based on the margin for error involved. https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/
So you are trying to compare the lowest with the highest and not the current price. RUn that number with the current price.
Even being vaguely in the same ballpark is a wild regression when you consider the difference in density.