The steep rise in RAM and graphics-processing costs is making it increasingly difficult for individuals and small businesses to keep pace with growing compute demands. Ubiquta is developing an integrated approach designed to reduce heat, distribute workloads across multiple pieces of hardware, extend hardware life, and significantly lower the cost of high-performance computing. It takes a model already proven at commercial scale—distributed computing—and brings it down to the local level, where workloads can be shared across affordable systems instead of relying solely on expensive individual workstations or the cloud. By shifting more compute locally and improving how that work is distributed, Ubiquta can also help reduce the heat burden and water consumption associated with large-scale cloud infrastructure.
Memory and graphics cards are the two largest costs in a compute build. Launch list prices for graphics cards stayed close to flat for five years, but what buyers actually pay, and what memory costs, has climbed sharply since 2025. Prices below are approximate and current as of October 2026.
Normalized price index, 2020 = 100. Both lines start at 100 in 2020 so they can be compared on one scale.
The biggest jump is in 2026. Memory now costs about 2.1 times what it did in 2020, and high-end graphics cards cost about 4.6 times as much.
RAM: the tracked annual average for a Crucial 16 GB DDR4-3200 module through 2024, then approximate 2025 and 2026 averages (source: MemRadar). GPU: a high-end Nvidia acquisition-cost proxy, not a universal average; 2021 and 2026 were distorted by scarcity.
| Year | RAM | GPU |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 100 | 100 |
| 2021 | 141 | 220 |
| 2022 | 108 | 146 |
| 2023 | 60 | 107 |
| 2024 | 61 | 107 |
| 2025 | 82 | 133 |
| 2026 | 207 | 460 |
Same cards, two prices: the list price at launch (unchanged since January 2025) and the lowest U.S. listing found in September 2026.
A 32 GB kit is a common size for a workstation. Prices are the lowest U.S. listings reported by price trackers.
Spot prices for the memory chips themselves, from the DRAM spot market. Retail kit prices follow these with a delay.
Launch list prices for comparable cards in each generation, followed by earlier street-price snapshots.
| Year | NVIDIA, comparable tier | AMD, comparable tier |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 | RTX 3080: $699 | RX 6800 XT: $649 |
| 2023 | RTX 4070: $599 | RX 7800 XT: $499 |
| 2025 | RTX 5070: $549 | RX 9070 XT: $599 |
Launch list prices stayed within a narrow band for five years. The change is in what people actually pay.
| When | Item | Price seen |
|---|---|---|
| Sep 2020 to Mar 2021 | RTX 3080 (list price $699 and up) | Median eBay sale price of $2,069 on 3 March 2021, up from an average of $1,300 to $1,500 the month before |
| Oct 2022 | RTX 4090 at launch | List price $1,599 |
| Jan 2023 | DDR4-3200 memory kits, Europe | 16 GB for about EUR 43 and 32 GB for under EUR 90 |
| Jun to Dec 2023 | RTX 4090 new, retail | About $1,550 in June, rising to over $2,000 by December |
| Oct 2023 | RTX 3080 / 3090 used on eBay | Average about $401 / about $704, roughly half of their retail prices |
Sources differ in method and region, so rows are snapshots, not a single continuous index. A retail-kit price history for 2020 to 2024 is not published in one trusted place, so it is not shown here.
Street prices change daily and vary by retailer and region. Figures marked "about" are rounded snapshots.
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