We’re So Screwed

Just when we thought we were settled into the new normal of tariff-borne PC and gaming console price hikes, next year’s devices are set to be even more expensive. You can blame the current favorite buzzword—AI—for the increasing cost of RAM and flash storage. All computers depend on memory to some extent, but those who want the biggest, best PCs or gaming devices will feel the sticker shock worst of all.

We’ve been reporting about the spiking cost of RAM prices since October. Essentially, AI data centers have such a demand for memory that the prices of SSDs (solid state drives), DRAM (dynamic random access memory), and HDDs (hard disk drives) are all ballooning in price. This is most keenly felt in the discrete PC RAM market. Corsair, one of the most popular brands for fast, gaming-ready RAM sticks, told Gizmodo over email, “Our DRAM prices have increased in response to the severe supply shortage we are seeing across the industry.â€

PCs are getting screwed by RAM prices

And it just keeps getting worse. A pack of 64GB DDR5 RAM from memory brand Crucial spiked from $150 to more than $400 in just two months, as evidenced by the Amazon price tracking site camelcamelcamel. Other, lower-end RAM sticks may see less of a bump, but users will inevitably find the more RAM they want, the more it will cost. Four sticks of 16GB DDR5 RAM from Corsair now sell for an astronomical $688. The same sticks in white demand $948. And they’re not even the priciest RAM available.

Memory prices will inevitably impact the laptop industry as well.

Holy shit, we are so cooked pic.twitter.com/557knWqz3G

— Pirat_Nation 🔴 (@Pirat_Nation) November 23, 2025

PCs are getting hit the hardest, especially if you had hopes of finally upgrading your desktop tower with new components. After months of scarcity, the price of GPUs from both Nvidia and AMD has normalized closer to the original suggested retail price. A Radeon RX 9070 XT remains a hot commodity and is still going for more than $600 MSRP at most retailers. However, numerous leakers have proposed that GPUs could see price hikes due to the ballooning cost of VRAM.

PowerColor, one of AMD’s board partners who makes discrete GPUs, took to Reddit last week (via VideoCardz) to tell users to “buy before the last week of the year before prices kick up.†The PR rep in this case was referring to possible deals happening before Black Friday but added in an update that this was in response to consumers “asking for advice on if they should ‘buy now’ because of market conditions.â€

Taiwanese media outlet UDN further claimed, based on anonymous sources, that AMD GPU prices could go up from several major board partners, including Gigabyte and Asus, as well as PowerColor.

Gamers better expect higher prices, too

Consoles won’t be spared of potential price hikes, either. Microsoft’s Xbox brand pushed the cost of tariffs onto consumers twice in 2025 with its Xbox Series X and Series S. Now, the high-end console with a disc drive costs $650, $150 more than it did at launch five years ago. YouTuber “Moore’s Law Is Dead,†who has consistently leaked information on unreleased AMD hardware, claimed in a recent video that Microsoft is telling partners that it may need to jack up prices for Xbox consoles once more, or else stock could significantly diminish “sooner rather than later.â€

The YouTuber further claimed that Sony “planned ahead, bought up gobs of RAM near the bottom of the pricing, and thus they should be fine for months.†That’s small comfort, however, for those who still plan to buy a Nintendo Switch 2. The system comes with 256GB of internal storage, and you need Express-level microSD cards to expand that limited storage capacity. Technohouse Toei, a Japan-centric computer store, told the Japanese outlet IT Media (read by machine translation) that it’s getting more difficult to acquire large-capacity microSD cards.

Analysts anticipate that flash storage prices will climb through the roof in early 2026. Citing reports from the Commercial Times and Reuters, analyst firm TrendForce reported late last week that the makers of NAND storage are “taking turns raising prices.†And this situation may not get any better over the following months. Sure, TrendForce said the memory sector is going to grow as fast as the tale of Jack’s beanstalk, but that won’t necessarily fix demand. Earlier this month, Korean-centric newspaper Chosun Biz reported that major flash storage manufacturers like Samsung and SK Hynix actually cut supply in the second half of 2025. Samsung is “internally reviewing†price hikes of 20% to 30%, according to Chosun.

Either memory production has to increase to meet demand, or else the AI data centers have to stop sucking down the world’s supply of SSDs and HDDs. The sooner the AI bubble bursts, the better it will be for PC prices.