{"id":654487,"date":"2026-06-18T13:02:33","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T11:02:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=654487"},"modified":"2026-06-18T13:05:04","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T11:05:04","slug":"people-who-want-to-buy-ram-and-ssds-in-south-africa-have-a-new-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/hardware\/654487-people-who-want-to-buy-ram-and-ssds-in-south-africa-have-a-new-problem.html","title":{"rendered":"People who want to buy RAM and SSDs in South Africa have a new problem"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most memory manufacturers have prioritised high-margin enterprise and commercial customers, leaving little of their product for the consumer market. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Syntech is one of South Africa’s foremost ICT distributors and has first-hand experience with the memory supply and pricing situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nowitz told MyBroadband there was significant concern in the market over the quality of products, especially from desperate smaller players.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Smaller SSD and Memory manufacturers who cannot get stock of actual chips are resorting to using used chips,” Nowitz said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“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.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Customers are going to have to stick to big brand names to know they’re getting a quality product,” he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He also explained that although there was a perception that global pricing had recently come down, the truth was far less exciting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nowitz said memory pricing peaked around April, when international markets began to show signs of a massive slowdown in PC and notebook sales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Stock in the channel and open market was being consumed instead of new sales for SSD and memory assemblers taking place,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This created pressure on companies needing to balance stock against cash flow, which allowed for some deals to take place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Further increases expected<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Syntech’s warehouse in Johannesburg<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sudden slowdown in the international DIY market had kept cheaper stock still available in the open market. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Nowitz said the current situation would not last, and prices were still expected to increase quarter over quarter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Manufacturers of SSDs and memory (not the wafers) are starting to negotiate again on larger deals,” Nowitz explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Syntech had observed a significant slowdown in purchases in the local market, particularly in the business and DIY markets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“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.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, system integrators and gaming system prebuilders, such as Syntech’s PCBuilder, have not experienced the same slowdown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“These portions of the business have been shielded from the massive price increases due to long delivery, manufacturing, and sales lead times,” Nowitz said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We have been holding inventory specifically for PCBuilder to be able to shield our consumers from the full effect of these price increases.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nowitz said that PCBuilder would continue to adjust to bring value to the market without compromising on quality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We will be offering more DDR4 solutions in the PCBuilder range, including mini PCs, all-in-ones, desktops, and gaming systems,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Smaller SSD and RAM brands have resorted to extreme measures amid a severe memory chip crunch. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341042,"featured_media":641991,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[35793,102231,102789,102561,103069,102821,102773,43538,47428,100912,38527],"class_list":["post-654487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hardware","tag-artificial-intelligence-ai","tag-craig-nowitz","tag-ddr5-ram","tag-memory-prices","tag-memory-shortage","tag-ram-prices","tag-solid-state-drive-2","tag-ssds","tag-syntech","tag-tech-distributors","tag-tech-prices"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654487"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341042"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654487"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":654545,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654487\/revisions\/654545"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}