NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 Series Faces 30% Price Increase in South Korea

NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 50 series is rumored to see a price increase of about 20-30%, depending on the model, due to rapidly rising costs of GDDR7 memory from NVIDIA's VRAM suppliers. According to ZDNet Korea, South Korean importers and distributors have already informed the supply chain about this price hike, which could reach up to 30%. NVIDIA provides its add-in board partners with GDDR7 memory as a kit that includes both the GPU die and GDDR7, so any price increase from memory manufacturers affects AIBs and, ultimately, consumers.

Currently, each 2 GB GDDR7 memory module costs in the low 20s in USD. This spot pricing for GDDR7 means NVIDIA needs 16 of these modules for its flagship GeForce RTX 5090 GPU. This results in at least $320 being spent on GDDR7 memory for the flagship model, before adding the cost of the GPU die, research and development, and the margins for AIB partners. The situation remains challenging even in South Korea, the world's hub of DRAM production. Despite being home to SK hynix and Samsung, no one is exempt from these price increases, which are expected to continue.