DDR5 RAM is now three-to-four times as expensive as it should be, thanks to the “AI” boom (and it won’t stop there). But this week, there’s an oh-so-rare opportunity for consumers to fight back, at least for a small subset of United States consumers… via a successful class-action lawsuit against G.Skill. (Hey, you gotta take your wins where you can get ’em.)
A settlement has been reached over a case that accused G.Skill of overstating RAM speeds for DDR4 and DDR5 memory sold between January 31st, 2018 and January 7th, 2026. If you bought G.Skill RAM during this time period, and if the speed rate for that RAM was 2133 MHz or higher for DDR4 or 4800MHz or higher for DDR5, then (say it with me now) you may be entitled to compensation.
The total allotted payout for the settlement is $2.4 million USD, but don’t get too excited. Estimated payouts per RAM stick sold are between $15 and $30, with a maximum per each claimant of $150. But there’s some good news: you can claim up to five products without even diving into your drawers for receipts. If you have more than five products that qualify, you’ll need to submit proof of purchase.
As it happens, I built or upgraded four desktop PCs in that time period—two for myself, two for my brother-in-law. And I’ve been a happy customer of G.Skill for a long time, so diving into my email receipts returned no less than eight sticks of RAM that qualify in there. It’s possible I might just get the maximum payout… though that seems very optimistic. As ClaimStacks explains, the pro-rata share and lack of hard documentation needed for most affected class members means that there are going to be a lot of claimants.
TL;DR? It’s possible you could go through this process, cross all your Ts and dot all your Is, and get a check for forty cents. Such is often the case, as class-action lawsuits are only really lucrative for the lawyers.
But at least it’s easy. I submitted my info on the claim site last night, needing less than 10 minutes even for four separate purchases of RAM. The payout can also be made out via popular methods like PayPal and Zelle. Who knows? Maybe if I get the maximum payout (estimated sometime after June of this year), I can go buy a rusty old stick of DDR3 for my post-AI bubble pop gaming PC build.