We can't seem to get a moment's respite in the PC gaming industry, can we? We spent the better part of this year lamenting ridiculously high GPU prices, and as soon as said prices finally start dropping, memory and storage prices start climbing.

We're in a memory shortage right now, and this applies to both DRAM memory used for RAM and NAND memory used for SSDs, and it will likely also affect GPUs, too. This shortage means there's more demand than supply, which causes prices to rise. We're already seeing RAM prices skyrocket, and prices for SSDs and even GPUs could follow suit before long.

• We're keeping track of the latest changes to RAM prices here.

The cause is mostly the newly booming AI industry, as AI servers require a lot of memory, both in terms of long-term storage and short-term system memory. And many of the same production facilities that make memory for these AI servers also make memory for our RAM, SSDs, and graphics cards, thus why there's an impact on PC gaming hardware.

I've broken down how and why all of this is happening below, as well as the real-world effects we're already seeing and are likely to see moving forwards.

A snapshot of the latest memory price news

• Framework delists standalone memory to 'head off scalpers and preserve inventory'
• Silicon Motion's CEO says 'We're facing [what has] never happened before: HDD, DRAM, HBM, NAND... all in severe shortage in 2026'.
• A Japanese retailer is restricting memory purchases.

The change is going to trickle down to gaming PCs soon, too, with CyberPowerPC releasing a statement saying that come December 7, 2025, it is going to be adjusting upwards the pricing on all its systems. And I would bet that it is not going to be alone in doing so...

It states that "global memory (RAM) prices have surged by 500% and SSD prices have risen by 100%."