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Fake RAM sticks popular as prices driven up by AI industry [1]

['Rob Beschizza']

Date: 2026-03-16  

Fake RAM sticks, with the board and LED lights but no memory chips under the heatsinks, are becoming a popular accessory among PC builders eager to fill up the slots on their motherboards. They're sold as Light Enhancement Kits, and manufacturers are even bundling them with real sticks so you can have the appearance of a traditional dual-channel set.

These visually identical replicas of authentic memory modules enhance the overall appearance of systems, helping consumers achieve that coveted, fully equipped look. Their sole purpose is cosmetic, though. While they light up and synchronize with your existing RGB ecosystem, they don't contribute to your computer's memory capacity or performance.

I'm old enough to be curious about the computing power of these LED controllers alone. A search suggests 8-32Mhz and "256 bytes to a few KB" of RAM, with 1-16KB of flash memory occupied by the code to run the lights. You could get to the moon and back, but Doom might be asking too much.

Tom's Hardware reports that the price of 32GB of DDR5 RAM is now approaching $400: "it's astonishing and at the same time sad that $359.99 has become the new baseline," writes Zhiye Liu. At time of posting, that price had gone up to $369.00.

Previously:

• Prices for older PC hardware soar

• RAM prices go wild as AI companies buy every chip

• Sandisk's new portable SSDs cost a pretty penny

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[1] Url: https://boingboing.net/2026/03/16/fake-ram-sticks-popular-as-prices-driven-up-by-ai-industry.html

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