RAM Prices Soar as AI Demand Squeezes PC Gamers

RAM prices have climbed to record levels for PC gamers. A pair of 16GB DDR5 sticks that cost around one hundred and fifty dollars eighteen months ago now sells for more than six hundred dollars, according to PCPartPicker averages cited by TechRadar this week.

A 64GB kit has risen more than fivefold from its old price of about two hundred and fifty dollars, and older DDR4 memory has nearly tripled over the same stretch. The cheapest 32GB DDR5-6000 kit in the United States cost $449.97 on October 14, according to Tom's Hardware, up from about four hundred dollars in August. The same kit's lowest price on record is $72. A slower Corsair kit now lists at $399, against eighty dollars before. Tom's Hardware puts the overall rise at more than 500% since last year.

The squeeze has a clear cause. Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron make about 95% of the world's DRAM, and they have shifted wafer capacity toward high-bandwidth memory for AI accelerators. That memory earns far more per wafer than the sticks that go into gaming rigs, so less capacity is left for ordinary desktop memory. The same AI build-out has rattled markets this week, with AI stocks selling off sharply.

TrendForce expects conventional DRAM contract prices to rise by ten to fifteen percent in the final quarter of this year, and says PC DRAM supply could shrink next year as more capacity shifts to servers. J.P. Morgan estimates DRAM costs could rise more than 400% from early 2024 to the end of 2026. Micron told investors in September that it has no line of sight to when supply and demand return to balance.

A week of remarks that stung

TechRadar columnist Matt Hanson gathered the threads in a column published November 6, arguing that PC gamers have had a rough week. The timing explains the reaction. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said on the Cheeky Pint podcast that it was "quite terrible", from a global allocation perspective, for everyone to hold a share of the world's limited DRAM in their own computer, adding that the memory was used about 5% of the time.

Altman later said he was taken out of context and wants people to have plenty of memory. Elon Musk replied with a meme on X captioned "The people deserve to have their RAM too!" Nvidia, meanwhile, marked the twentieth anniversary of its GeForce 8800 GTX with a semi-interactive Steam demo that lets players unbox the card in a 2006-era gaming room, which some gamers found tone-deaf while memory prices climb.

AMD chief executive Lisa Su told Yahoo Finance in an interview that AMD is "a data center first company", and said data centre revenue would grow 50% sequentially from the third quarter to the fourth. According to TechSpot and VideoCardz, AMD's gaming business fell 40% year over year to $773 million, while data centre revenue reached about $8.5 billion, roughly 63% of the quarter. AMD's chief financial officer expects the data centre share to keep climbing past 80%.

Not every claim in the column holds up. The Associated Press reported that BioWare closed on October 21 as part of broader cuts at EA, with about 400 layoffs. That confirms the closure. It does not show that memory prices or AI caused it. Reports that Nvidia has ended production of its flagship graphics card are rumours, and Notebookcheck reported that Nvidia denied discontinuation.

What it means for anyone building a PC

The pressure reaches beyond memory. PC shipments fell 20% year over year in the third quarter, according to Tom's Hardware, and high prices are cutting into demand for finished machines as well as parts. TrendForce says major notebook makers expect their own orders to fall in the months ahead as buyers hold back.

For anyone planning a build, the practical advice from price trackers is to check what is already installed before buying, and to buy only the capacity the machine actually needs. Older platforms offer a cheaper route, since their memory costs far less per gigabyte. Waiting for a sharp fall looks like a poor bet: no forecaster on record sees meaningful relief before late 2027.

Gamers still have releases to look forward to, with Grand Theft Auto 6 pre-loading starting November 10.

The frustration is easy to understand. Memory is the part of a gaming PC that has changed most in price, and the companies that make it earn more from AI customers than from gamers. Until more factory capacity comes online, the cost of a basic upgrade is likely to stay where it is: far above what builders paid a short time ago.