People who want to buy RAM and SSDs in South Africa have a new problem
Syntech CEO Craig Nowitz has warned South Africans to stay away from lesser-known SSD and RAM brands, as some have resorted to using secondhand chips amid the global memory crunch.
Demand for cutting-edge memory products has surged since the second half of 2025 due to increased adoption of artificial intelligence (AI), which requires significant processing power and storage.
Most memory manufacturers have prioritised high-margin enterprise and commercial customers, leaving little of their product for the consumer market.
Syntech is one of South Africa’s foremost ICT distributors and has first-hand experience with the memory supply and pricing situation.
Nowitz told MyBroadband there was significant concern in the market over the quality of products, especially from desperate smaller players.
“Smaller SSD and Memory manufacturers who cannot get stock of actual chips are resorting to using used chips,” Nowitz said.
“Manufacturers of all types of products using NAND and DRAM are offering solutions now with pulled memory (memory installed in another system but never used), used memory, or reworked memory.”
Nowitz said that some memory assemblers were even using chips from different manufacturers on the same memory module. This could cause compatibility or performance issues.
“Customers are going to have to stick to big brand names to know they’re getting a quality product,” he said.
Nowitz said that RAM and SSD prices in South Africa in June 2026 were roughly double what they were at the start of the year.
He also explained that although there was a perception that global pricing had recently come down, the truth was far less exciting.
Nowitz said memory pricing peaked around April, when international markets began to show signs of a massive slowdown in PC and notebook sales.
“Stock in the channel and open market was being consumed instead of new sales for SSD and memory assemblers taking place,” he said.
This created pressure on companies needing to balance stock against cash flow, which allowed for some deals to take place.
Further increases expected
Combined with distributors and module assemblers also being keen on moving inventory, especially at quarter ends, there was a perception that pricing was coming down.
The sudden slowdown in the international DIY market had kept cheaper stock still available in the open market.
However, Nowitz said the current situation would not last, and prices were still expected to increase quarter over quarter.
“Manufacturers of SSDs and memory (not the wafers) are starting to negotiate again on larger deals,” Nowitz explained.
Syntech had observed a significant slowdown in purchases in the local market, particularly in the business and DIY markets.
“Companies are sweating their assets for longer in the hope that pricing will come down,” he said. “The DIY market has seen a massive slowdown as these systems use the most storage and memory.”
However, system integrators and gaming system prebuilders, such as Syntech’s PCBuilder, have not experienced the same slowdown.
“These portions of the business have been shielded from the massive price increases due to long delivery, manufacturing, and sales lead times,” Nowitz said.
“We have been holding inventory specifically for PCBuilder to be able to shield our consumers from the full effect of these price increases.”
Nowitz said that PCBuilder would continue to adjust to bring value to the market without compromising on quality.
“We will be offering more DDR4 solutions in the PCBuilder range, including mini PCs, all-in-ones, desktops, and gaming systems,” he said.
Syntech also planned to introduce new categories of products to give its resellers new opportunities to offset the expected slowdown in desktop and laptop sales.
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