How Bad Will RAM and Memory Shortages Get?

Digital Trends reports:
A wave of shortages now threatens to ripple across RAM, SSDs, and even hard drives, affecting not only performance-hungry rigs but also everyday systems.

— CyberPowerPC has publicly confirmed it will raise prices on all systems starting December 7th due to RAM costs spiking by 500% and SSD prices doubling since October.
— Memory suppliers warn of a global DRAM and SSD shortage running into late 2026 or even 2027, driven heavily by AI server demand.
— As reported by Bloomberg, Lenovo has already stockpiled memory to ride out the crunch and maintain steadier PC pricing.
— Among other OEMs, HP, in its recent earnings call, flagged possible price increases or lower-spec models on the back of rising component costs.



But Apple 'may also be in a good position to weather the shortage,' reports Ars Technica, since 'analysts at Morgan Stanley and Bernstein Research believe that Apple has already laid claim to the RAM that it needs and that its healthy profit margins will allow it to absorb the increases better than most.'

Ars Technica also shows how much RAM and storage prices have jumped — sometimes as much as 2x or even 3x in just three months. 'In short, there's no escaping these price increases, which affect SSDs and both DDR4 and DDR5 RAM kits of all capacities (though higher-capacity RAM kits do seem to be hit a little harder).'

Memory and storage shortages can be particularly difficult to get through. As with all chips, it can take years to ramp up capacity and/or build new manufacturing facilities... And memory makers in particular may be slow to ramp up manufacturing capacity in response to shortages. If they decide to start manufacturing more chips now, what happens if memory demand drops off a cliff in six months or a year (if, say, an AI bubble deflates or pops altogether)? It means an oversupply of memory chips — consumers benefit from rock-bottom prices for components, but it becomes harder for manufacturers to cover their costs... The upshot is: Not only are memory prices getting bad now, but it's exceptionally difficult to predict when shortage-fueled price hikes might end...

Tom's Hardware reports that AMD has told its partners that it expects to raise GPU prices by about 10 percent starting next year and that Nvidia may have canceled a planned RTX 50-series Super launch entirely because of shortages and price increases.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.