If there ever was a golden age of cheap memory and storage, I’m sorry to tell you that it’s over.
The 2TB NVMe SSD you bought early last year? It now costs three times what you paid. The 32GB kit of DDR5 RAM that was $90 last summer? It’s now somewhere between $300 and $500, if you can find it for sale at all.
The effects of the RAM crisis are being felt downstream in tech markets everywhere. Xbox just announced this week another console price hike. Apple announced it’s raising prices of its MacBooks. Microsoft recently raised the prices of its Surface PCs. The Steam Machine is making its debut at $1,049. I could go on and on.
The worst part of this whole RAMpocalypse? No one really knows when it’s going to end.
Why are memory and storages prices still going up?
So what happened? AI happened. The way the world’s memory market is set up relies on three major companies to supply everyone else with DRAM for consumer memory and storage.
Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron realized early on in the AI boom that they could make a whole lot more money by moving away from consumer memory and into high-bandwidth memory (HBM) that’s used in AI datacenters.
Profit margins are enormous on the other side, and I really don’t find it surprising that these massive corporations made the shift, as companies like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have essentially offered blank checks to buy up as much memory as possible.
The fallout of these moves by the three big memory manufacturers, of course, is a strangulation of the consumer memory market. And this isn’t a typical supply crunch like we’ve seen in the past that can be remedied by a new manufacturing plant coming online.
This time around, the memory crisis is a reallocation of the world’s DRAM manufacturing capabilities, and there’s no real end in sight.
I don’t think RAM and SSD prices will drop anytime soon
I’m not expecting to see tech prices drop anytime soon, and you don’t have to take my word for it.
Counterpoint Research confirmed in February that memory prices rose in Q1 2026 by 80% to 90% compared to Q4 2025. Late last year, Kingston noted that it had seen a 246% increase in NAND wafer pricing compared to the start of 2025, the steepest ever in the company’s 29-year history.
In February 2026, Gartner released findings suggesting that, by the end of 2026, DRAM and SSD prices could surge by 130% compared to 2025, which could raise PC prices by 17%. I believe we’re already seeing that estimation come into play, and this same study predicts that global PC shipments could fall by 10.4% this year.
By the end of 2026, DRAM and SSD prices could surge by 130% compared to 2025, which could raise PC prices by 17%.
It gets worse. Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra signaled earlier this year that the RAM crisis would continue beyond 2026. This week, Micron announced that most of its DRAM has been bought up via long-term contracts through 2030, and that there’s almost certainly no end to the crisis.
SK hynix, another one of the three big DRAM players, stated in 2025 that its HBM, DRAM, and NAND manufacturing capacity is sold out through 2026.
OK, I know that’s a lot of numbers, but I’m trying to drive the point home: the RAM and SSD crisis isn’t likely to end in 2026. It probably won’t end in 2027, either. 2028 could be our lucky year, but that’s relatively far into the future and harder to predict.
The problem is compounded by the fact that it takes a very long time to create new fabrication plants, not to mention the billions of dollars required to get the project going.
Micron is building a new fab plant in Idaho, for example, but it’s not likely to begin producing anything meaningful until the end of 2027. Keep in mind that this is the same company that axed its entire consumer RAM and SSD portfolio in 2025 to focus on AI clients.
Samsung and SK hynix, meanwhile, are focusing on raising production in their existing plants, as new fabs won’t be ready until the late 2020s.
Most of the analyst forecasts I’ve read rightfully point to some relief coming no earlier than late 2027, and I’m not talking about 2024-era prices. If those prices ever return, it will be at the end of a long, slow decline as the market levels out.
If memory prices drop, will PC prices also fall?
I certainly enjoy entertaining more conspiratorial ideas, and the one question that I don’t think enough people are asking is about PC prices after memory and storage markets return to normalcy.
Will the laptops, PC components, consoles, tablets, and other affected tech products drop in price once RAM and storage markets return to normal?
If I’m being optimistic, then yes, I do believe that a correction in component costs would also lead to a correction in PC and console pricing.
If I’m being optimistic, then yes, I do believe that a correction in component costs would also lead to a correction in PC and console pricing. History suggests that this isn’t out of the ordinary. There was a glut of memory and storage in 2023 and 2024, and I recall consumer prices did soften a bit.
However, I don’t think 2026/2027/2028 is at all the same as years gone by. PC makers are expecting to see a major hit in worldwide PC shipments in 2026. As mentioned, Gartner predicts a 10.4% decline. IDC research points to an 11.3% decline.
The twist is that by raising prices for consumers, the PC market is still expected to grow by hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming years.
This is what I find particularly frightening. If the volume of sales drops but profits keep growing, is there really any financial pressure that will make PC makers drop prices?
I don’t think most PC makers will care that entry-level buyers are priced out of the market when enthusiasts and enterprise customers continue to shovel money their way. Why bother with discount laptops at thin margins?
Gartner believes the sub-$500 laptop market will completely disappear by 2028, and I’d say we’re already well on our way. Will that market recover when RAM and SSD prices return to normal? Hard to say.
I can reference the GPU price spikes from a few years ago during the crypto boom and pandemic shortages. GPU prices went up, the market leveled off, and GPU prices came back down. But they didn’t go all the way back down, resetting at a higher baseline than before.
Consumers had become used to paying inflated GPU prices, and there was really no incentive to drop prices back to 2019 levels. I think the same logic applies to the PC market.
The Chinese wildcard could save us all
Competition is likely the only thing that can save us, barring a collapse of the AI boom and a bursting of the market bubble.
Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron currently control about 90% of the world’s DRAM production, which makes it painfully easy to coordinate pricing. I’m not saying it’s explicit collusion, but it’s certainly something.
Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron currently control about 90% of the world’s DRAM production, which makes it painfully easy to coordinate pricing.
The best chance of breaking up this oligopoly comes from China. Companies like YMTC and CXMT have been steadily growing their share of the NAND market with newfound production and new fabs.
If these competitors can indeed scale up production and get their products out to international buyers, I don’t see how that wouldn’t disrupt the oligopoly. It’s not exactly smooth sailing for China’s manufacturers, though, as issues with exports, access to advanced equipment, and geopolitical concerns are all hurdles they must pass.
What does this mean for you and your next PC?
Gartner expects PC lifetime for regular consumers to increase by 20% by the end of this year. The cheap PC upgrade cycle has all but come to an end.
When new DRAM factories do come online, I expect them to serve AI customers first. Consumers will get the scraps, just like they are currently. Chinese DRAM makers might enter the international market and force prices to fall, but I doubt by enough to make a serious impact.
If you’re waiting for the RAM crisis to be over before you buy your next device, I have some bad news. The most optimistic predictions put easing as early as late 2027 or 2028, while the most pessimistic push the dates into the 2030s.
Should you need a new PC now, I recommend buying one that will last for years to come. What some thought was a brief blip on the PC market’s graph has some serious staying power. What it will look like, if it ever returns to normal, is anyone’s guess.
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