I saw the warning signs firsthand. I recently set out to build a small gaming PC for my living room, to play on my TV with surround sound. The project required a standard 32GB kit of RAM. On Sept. 11, that kit was selling for a reasonable $90. By the time I placed my order on Nov. 21, the price had tripled to $269.99. When I checked again this week, the price for that exact same memory kit had climbed to $349.99.
So, why is this happening? Put simply, the rapid buildout of AI data centers is causing a massive vacuum in the supply chain for RAM.
Major tech companies are placing open-ended orders for memory to power new AI data centers, according to reporting by Reuters. The companies are effectively telling manufacturers they will buy as much as can be delivered, regardless of the price. This has encouraged RAM manufacturers like Samsung and SK Hynix to pivot their factories away from making standard consumer memory to prioritize high-profit enterprise chips. And with only three major RAM manufacturers in the market today, there simply isn’t the wiggle room to absorb this AI demand without affecting everyone else.
“There’s just no RAM in the market, basically at all,” according to Tom, the creator of Moore’s Law Is Dead, a popular media outlet that tracks the computer industry. (To protect his privacy, he uses only his first name online.) “This isn’t price gouging by your local retailer. Retailers like Best Buy or Micro Center aren’t arbitrarily marking up sticks of RAM to make a quick buck. In fact, they are frustrated because high prices drive customers away.”
And the scarcity contagion is spreading beyond RAM. The demand for AI chips is squeezing the supply of NAND flash (used in SSDs) and traditional hard drives, as well. DigiTimes Asia recently reported that contract prices for traditional hard drives have already jumped roughly 4 percent in the last quarter as cloud giants buy up massive high-capacity drives.
In the component market, the inflation has already arrived. But walk into a Best Buy today, and you won’t see big price hikes on laptops or other devices … yet.
“We haven’t really seen any price adjustments just because it’s the middle of the holiday season,” says Avery Bissett, laptop and desktop analyst at OpenBrand, a research firm that tracks retail pricing and product data.
Bissett explains that because holiday promotional plans were “locked in several months ago,” retailers are effectively shielding consumers from the rising costs of production.
But this protection is temporary.
Experts say that next year, once the holiday inventory clears and new contracts kick in, that lag will vanish. And, they warn, we are about to experience shortages that could make 2026 one of the most expensive years ever for consumer electronics. And the effects may extend beyond computers—everything from TVs to tablets to smartphones to smart-home devices uses RAM, too.
So if you anticipate needing new devices next year, it could be smarter to buy now while you can still get 2025 prices.
