Maybe that's a measure of the self-fulfilling dollar incentive toward "renting" someone else's RAM in the future rather than trying to actually own such an outlandishly luxury item :\

I bought whole Intel N100 mini pc with 16GB of DDR5 in it in 2023 for $AUD289 (so about $US200). I got a 16GB (DDR4) SODIMM in 2022 for $AUD88 ($US60).

Does it have to be DDR5? Is the limit RAM speed, or SSD speed?

I was just using that as an example of constant on going price rises, it was the most mundane and not particularly fast ddr5 6000 stuff. The 6400 is even more ridiculous.