The Great RAM Squeeze: How AI Demand Doubled Memory Prices and Hit Every PC

Whatever you buy with a processor in it costs more than it did a year ago, and memory is the reason. Prices for DRAM and flash storage have roughly doubled in 2026 as the three big memory makers pour capacity into chips for AI data centers, leaving consumer parts short.

How prices moved

Analysis published in March put Q1 2026 increases for DRAM, LPDDR5X and NAND flash at around 90 to 95% quarter on quarter. TweakTown then reported that LPDDR5X rose by as much as 89% in Q2. Gartner projects a 130% year-on-year DRAM price rise for 2026 as a whole. Forward-looking numbers come from Jefferies, which expects memory prices to climb 40 to 50% in Q3 and a further 30 to 40% in Q4. Those later figures are forecasts, not measurements.

Why consumers pay

Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron earn far more per wafer from high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for AI accelerators than from commodity DDR5 or GDDR. So they have reallocated lines, and Micron went as far as ending its Crucial consumer brand. The result is a shortage in precisely the products that go into laptops, phones, consoles and graphics cards.

The knock-on effects

Retailers and board makers have warned of GPU price increases; PowerColor and ASUS were among those cited, and the RX 9070 reportedly rose to $599, $50 more than before. Consoles followed, with Microsoft and Sony both citing memory when they raised prices. The upshot is that the hardware most people actually buy, rather than the data-center kit driving the shortage, absorbs the cost.

Why relief is slow

Memory is a capital-intensive business. A new fab takes years and billions of dollars to build, and makers learned from earlier boom-and-bust cycles to be cautious about adding commodity capacity. When AI demand pulled orders toward high-bandwidth memory, the sensible move for each company was to convert existing lines instead of expanding, which tightened supply for everything else at once. That is why forecasters talk in terms of years. AMD reportedly warned at Computex 2026 that DDR5 prices would not normalize until 2028, and Microsoft said console memory and storage costs could double again by autumn 2027.

There is some disagreement about the pace. One more optimistic analysis suggested the rate of DRAM price increases in the second half of 2026 might moderate slightly, which would mean prices keep rising but more slowly. That distinction matters for buyers: a slowing climb is not a decline, and contract prices that stop accelerating can still leave retail prices far above where they started the year.

What buyers and builders are doing

The practical responses are already visible. PC makers are tempted to ship laptops with less memory at familiar price points, or to raise prices and hold configurations constant. Board makers are passing GPU memory costs through, with ASUS and PowerColor among those that warned of increases. Console makers have raised prices late in a hardware generation, something that historically almost never happens, and Valve explained that its Steam Machine arrived at $1,049 because its original target was no longer viable.

For individual buyers the advice that follows is unglamorous. If you need a machine now, buying the memory you will actually need is better than gambling on a later upgrade, because upgrade prices are rising too. If you can wait, the second half of 2026 and 2027 look no cheaper. And the decision to skip a discrete GPU, or pick an older generation, may simply be the rational one while the supply of memory chips is allocated first to customers who pay the most per gigabyte.

What to watch

• Whether Q3 contract prices match the forecast or flatten, as one analyst thinks they might in the second half.
• AMD's reported view that DDR5 will not normalize before 2028.
• New fab capacity announcements, the only real long-term fix.
• OEMs shipping laptops with less RAM to hold price points.

Sources

1. DRAM prices surged by up to 89% in Q2 2026, destroying the consumer segment — TweakTown
2. Analysts predict another massive memory price increase in Q3 2026 and another in Q4 — TweakTown
3. RAM prices keep going up - what is RAMageddon, and why is it getting worse? — Tom's Guide
4. The memory shortage is driving up prices for SSDs, GPUs, and hard drives — TechSpot