The Only Thing Spooky About This Halloween Is the Rising Cost of PC Parts

President Donald Trump’s tariff scheme has haunted us all throughout 2025, raising prices on video game consoles, laptops, and practically every gadget manufactured overseas. Now, we can think of the AI bubble for why our PCs cost even more. On Halloween, we’re seeing a new surge of computer component prices. Soon, the graveyards will be filled with former sticker prices of RAM and SSDs. The ghost of today’s pricing model will follow us into 2026 and beyond.

We’ve already reported about the impending surge in the cost of memory components due to demand from AI data centers. Now, we’re starting to see the impact firsthand with devices and components that were once much more affordable. That includes RAM as well as solid-state drive storage. On the auspicious date of Oct. 31, Minisforum declared it would be hiking prices across its lineup of mini PCs starting Nov. 4. The company said its “barebones” models “without DDR5 memory and/or SSD” won’t be affected, though that leaves it entirely unclear how much costs could spike.

📢 Notice of Upcoming Price Adjustment
Starting Nov 4, 2025 (PST), MINISFORUM will implement a slight price adjustment due to rising global raw material costs.

✅Barebone models and accessories will not be affected.

We truly appreciate your understanding and continued support.… pic.twitter.com/xu5lQx3n9m

— MINISFORUM Official (@Hi_MINISFORUM) October 31, 2025

How much extra you spend will likely depend on your memory options. Some of the company’s mini PCs, like its MS-S1 Max built for high-end or AI workloads, can get up to 128GB of RAM. AI is very RAM intensive, which is why one of Nvidia’s $4,000 DGX Spark small-scale computers also contains 128GB of memory. It’s also why all the major AI data center projects have been sapping the world’s supply of memory components.

Memory prices spike across the board

TeamGroup, one of the largest memory component manufacturers in today’s PC market, told PC Gamer:

“We have indeed observed noticeable upward pressure on prices across the NAND and DRAM markets. The current situation is not merely a matter of price fluctuation but a result of an unprecedented supply shortage, primarily driven by surging demand for AI and DDR5 server platforms.”

To exacerbate the situation, the company said hard drive manufacturers haven’t scaled up production, meaning that SSDs—the modern standard for PC storage in practically every desktop or laptop—are being squeezed even more.

You can see this playing out if you check the price history of various components. A package of 64GB Corsair Dominator Titanium DDR5 RAM now costs $502 on Amazon, though back in September it sold for a little more than $300, according to data from price tracking site Camelcamelcamel. RAM options that were once more affordable, like 32GB of Corsair Vengeance DDR5 memory, now cost $100 more than they did less than a month ago.

Gizmodo reached out to Corsair for comment, and we will update this story if we hear back. It’s the same story for older DDR4 memory as well. Even if you think about opting for older PC parts, you’ll still end up paying more. Semiconductor industry analyst Ray Wang shared charts showing the prices of both DDR4 and DDR5 memory were relatively stable over the last two years, but they’ve severely spiked this month.

DDR4 and DDR5 Pricing from October 2023 to October 2025. And yesterday pricing was still going up!

Beautiful and satisfying upward line 🙂 pic.twitter.com/UXfoypunCn

— Ray Wang (@rwang07) October 21, 2025

We expect a whole smorgasbord of new PCs to hit the scene in January during CES 2026. Already, major PC manufacturers are building hype for laptops sporting Intel’s Panther Lake and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Elite chips. Data centers are cropping up in communities all across the U.S., and it will take a long while before memory production will meet demand. As befits such a horror-filled holiday, we’re not holding onto any hope any new laptops and desktops will cost less than they did a year ago.