A severe shortage in global DRAM supply has reportedly led some distributors in Taiwan to impose unprecedented bundling requirements on buyers, according to a report in Taiwan’s Economic Daily News. It claims that certain channels are now requiring customers to purchase motherboards alongside DRAM modules at a one-to-one ratio, or risk being denied access to memory stock entirely.
This type of allocation control has reportedly never been seen before in the DRAM industry. It appears that distributors are using high-demand memory modules to drive additional board sales, a tactic more common in constrained consumer electronics markets than in the hardware space. Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, and the Chinese board vendor Chaintech are reported as direct beneficiaries of the practice.
