The demand for AI is making every gadget cost more, whether it’s a PC or gaming console.
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.”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.
