How Bad Will RAM and Memory Shortages Get? (arstechnica.com)
- Reference: 0180236881
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/11/29/0629207/how-bad-will-ram-and-memory-shortages-get
- Source link: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/11/spiking-memory-prices-mean-that-it-is-once-again-a-horrible-time-to-build-a-pc/
> 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 [2]Bloomberg , Lenovo has [3]already stockpiled memory to ride out the crunch and maintain steadier PC pricing.
>
> — Among other OEMs, HP, in its [4]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," [5]reports Ars Technica , since "analysts [6]at Morgan Stanley and [7]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 [8]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, [9]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...
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> Tom's Hardware [10]reports that AMD has told its partners that it expects to raise GPU prices by about 10 percent starting next year and that Nvidia [11]may have canceled a planned RTX 50-series Super launch entirely because of shortages and price increases.
[1] https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/youre-not-imagining-it-ram-and-storage-prices-are-climbing-fast/
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-24/lenovo-stockpiling-pc-memory-due-to-unprecedented-ai-squeeze
[3] https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/11/25/0257209/lenovo-stockpiling-pc-memory-due-to-unprecedented-ai-squeeze
[4] https://www.pcmag.com/news/hp-to-raise-prices-lower-configurations-due-to-soaring-memory-costs
[5] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/11/spiking-memory-prices-mean-that-it-is-once-again-a-horrible-time-to-build-a-pc/
[6] https://seekingalpha.com/news/4522911-morgan-stanley-downgrades-multiple-hardware-companies-due-to-surging-memory-prices
[7] https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/apple-most-immune-to-memory-price-rises-others-more-impacted-bernstein-4373305
[8] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/11/spiking-memory-prices-mean-that-it-is-once-again-a-horrible-time-to-build-a-pc/
[9] https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/11/googles-sundar-pichai-warns-of-irrationality-in-trillion-dollar-ai-investment-boom/
[10] https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/amd-to-raise-graphics-card-prices-by-at-least-10-percent-in-2026-price-surge-attributed-to-ongoing-ai-related-dram-supply-crisis
[11] https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/nvidias-rtx-5000-super-could-be-cancelled-or-get-pricier-due-to-ai-induced-gddr7-woes-rumor-claims-3-gb-memory-chips-are-now-too-valuable-for-consumer-gpus
Come on AI bubble, pop already! (Score:5, Insightful)
AI generates insufficient revenue per resources in its current form. So many things will go back to normal once the poppage completes.
It's like a bad zit that is not poppable, so gets worse the more you try.
BurstGPT!
Re: (Score:1)
We must sacrifice general-purpose computing so we can have Emma Watson pron.
The only good news is that I replaced all of our Windows computers over the last three years because Steam stopped running on Windows 7 and then Microsoft said the old ones aren't allowed to run Windows 11. So at least I don't need a new PC for a while.
Re: (Score:1)
Once prices increase, then more players enter the game. Given the dynamics of business, and the desire to make as much profit as possible, the bubble will pop at the most inopportune moment in time. There will be a HUGE surplus of RAM and SSD's for a time, players will then go bankrupt, or "circle the wagons" and merge with each other to reduce the choices buyers have, and the whole cycle will repeat.
One consequence of this: The AI bubble popping may have such a profound effect on the global economy that i
Re: (Score:2)
If past experience is anything to go by there won't be an increase in RAM production because the producers know this is a bubble and are quite happy to sell RAM at much higher prices until the bubble pops. They don't want to invest a lot of money on increasing production and then see the market fall.
So we'll wreck the global economy because the 'elite' think they can replace us all with chatbots.
Re: (Score:1)
A "De Beers"-style memory cartel would need to be put in place to prevent new players from entering the market.
This isn't likely to happen.
New players will enter because doing so will be lucrative. A lot of new players will enter, and they will eventually all get a "haircut" when the AI bubble pops. This has what is historically happened in the memory market, and it is likely to happen again this time.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
New players are unlikely to enter because it takes a lot of time and money to set up RAM production and by then the bubble will have popped. It doesn't make sense unless they know the bubble will continue for at least several more years.
Re: (Score:3)
The bubble will need to last 5 years before there's any chance of new players.
40 years ago, sure, you might have been right: silicon fabrication was still a relatively cheap industry to get into. Leaving aside environmental concerns (our old friend MOS Technology of the 6502 managed to end up as a superfund site...) it was quite simply a lot easier to make foundaries that worked on a micrometer scale than on today's nanometers. Gordon Moore said that while his eponymous law predicted a doubling of transisto
So we are about 3 to 5 years (Score:3)
Away from the build-out being finished. The bubble isn't a bubble it's not going to pop. The infrastructure isn't going to get shut down and sold off it's going to get used.
Like I mentioned on another thread the problem AI solves is wages. Paying wages.
This means that AI isn't going anywhere. Now a whole bunch of companies will collapse and the banks will be in trouble because they would have loaned those companies hundreds of billions of dollars. But you're just going to have to bail those Banks out
Re: (Score:2)
> The [AI] infrastructure isn't going to get shut down and sold off it's going to get used.
It'll get used, if using it is more profitable than letting it go dark. Given the infrastructure costs of keeping all that hardware running, it's not a given that it will be. Once the investor $$$ stop flowing and the debt limits are hit, we'll see how much of the AI hardware build-out can really pay for its own room and board, and how much was just 'peacock feathers' whose only real purpose was to impress gullible investors into handing over their money.
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I'm hoping for more than normal. Big floods of used but perfectly serviceable drives and memory hitting the market, at bankruptcy prices.
Also can they please hurry up and get LTO 10 out the door, so that LTO 8 drives get cheap? Thanks.
If only a certain OS didn't end support (Score:5, Insightful)
We may have freed up RAM capacity by limiting unnecessary computer purchases.
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How much is this problem is down to AI and how much to beautiful tariffs?
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> How much is this problem is down to AI and how much to beautiful tariffs?
What mechanism are you thinking of where tariffs could limit supply of VRAM from East Asia?
Simple price increases, sure, definitely, but this is described by manufacturers as a supply & demand problem.
Do you have a different angle we should consider?
Re: (Score:1)
> We may have freed up RAM capacity by limiting unnecessary computer purchases.
Oh my gaming computer will not be replaced for some time until it is worth updating it, even if Micro$soft thinks otherwise. If someone hacks it, not much of value will be lost. Note most of my games are indie games that run just fine on a computer that was near top of the line eight years ago.
Re: (Score:1)
Yeah, all my games were running fine on my 10-year-old Windows 7 box that I'd upgraded with a GTX-1080 until Steam stopped running on it. The only thing it couldn't run OK was new games that needed ray-tracing, though the CPU was starting to limit it (e.g. the Borderlands 3 benchmark on my new system shows 25% CPU usage at 60fps vs 100% on the old one).
Crazy amounts of money have been spent on forced computer upgrades in the last few years.
Hopefully developers will optimize now (Score:1)
I hope this means developers will focus more on optimization to get the most out of the hardware people have instead of kicking the can down the road and expecting people to upgrade to use new software versions.
Re: (Score:2)
Linux has entered the conversation.
Re: Hopefully developers will optimize now (Score:2)
Yeah right. Everything will be a ridiculous self-contained Electron app with Rust stuff attached.
Same old, same old. (Score:4, Insightful)
> But Apple "may also be in a good position to weather the shortage,"
For those with no long term memory remaining, go back and research the time when Apple cornered the market on flash memory.
only going to hurt manufacturers not many endusers (Score:1)
I haven't built a PC in a long time, and all my last few laptops have had soldered in ram
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> I haven't built a PC in a long time, and all my last few laptops have had soldered in ram
You do believe, do you not, that if the manufacturers have to pay more, you are going to pay more (for that soldered in ram)? The only way to win is not to buy.
Re: (Score:1)
> The only way to win is not to buy.
The only way to win is to have already bought.
Computers have over 20GB of RAM.
Computers have several TB of storage.
I'm all good.
Re: only going to hurt manufacturers not many endu (Score:2)
Soldered-in RAM is not acceptable. There is no reason to block this upgrade even if the device is made difficult to open. Plus this is just wasteful. Tons of computers are being trashed due to bad RAM that could simply be replaceable.
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Speak for yourself. It's totally acceptable to me and plenty of others.
Computer says no :o (Score:2)
$Human: Write a satirical take on Fifth Element. With a massive power hungry AI substituting for the evil entity who wants to destroy the earth and Sam Altman substituting for Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg. Who want to aid the maleviolent AI in its task. Here's my take:
$Human: "Attack of the OMNI-MIND-9000
In the year 2214, humanity is under threat from OMNI-MIND-9000. A so-called benevolent Al. Whose true purpose is to absorbe every power and date source on the planet. OMNI-MIND-9000 is aided in its tas
Meanwhile... (Score:3, Informative)
My 32GB of G.Skill DDR4-2132 installed in my MSI Z170A Titanium motherboard rocking an Intel Core i7 6700K and Samsung 970 NVMe 1TB SSD has been serving me nicely for years and will continue to do so. Stop chasing these false "scarcities" that continue to crop up from time to time. Build your systems with used or NOS parts that are 3 or more generations back.
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You know there are people who do this thing called being born and then they grow up and then they have to buy things because you're not born with a 32 GB memory kit. At least I wasn't maybe that's a birth defect...
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Enjoy your mitigation patches. That old beast is riddled with hardware flaws.
Re: (Score:3)
> Stop chasing these false "scarcities" that continue to crop up from time to time. Build your systems with used or NOS parts that are 3 or more generations back.
That's good advice for individuals building a home system for personal use. It's not really applicable for businesses and companies, though, since they likely don't have the expertise or the man-hours required to cobble together their business-critical systems from used parts. They're going to want to buy new, from a company that give them good support if/when anything goes wrong.
Thank Tariffs Trump! (Score:2)
Where is most RAM and Storage manufactured now?
[1]East Asia! [fortunebus...sights.com]
Where the US Government is squeezing importers with some of the highest tariffs due to Trump's failing economic policies. Enjoy your RAM and STORAGE taxes consumers. I bought my storage needs for the next 3 years in April 2025.
After all, Trump just did sign an EO to replace all workers in manufacturing with robots using AI faster than otherwise using those workers tax dollars.
[1] https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/dram-market-109251
Re: (Score:2)
I too bought memory in April to avoid tariffs. I had to run a stupid python program to generate a dataset that required 96GB of RAM for a delayed project so I figured I might as well bite the bullet. DDR4 was still a good value at that point (it's a problem that can run overnight, performance wasn't too important).
But how are the tariffs limiting the manufacturing supply capacity of RAM factories in East Asia?
Do you have a mechanism to propose?
Do you think they're making enough to meet demand but then bla
Re: (Score:2)
> But how are the tariffs limiting the manufacturing supply capacity of RAM factories in East Asia?
> Do you have a mechanism to propose?
> Do you think they're making enough to meet demand but then blaming tariffs to justify jacking up prices? All of them? It would be an interesting conspiracy but is there any evidence to support that theory?
Tariffs will cause manufacturers to divert supply to countries that have the lowest tariffs on their product exports. This is what Canada is doing in any way they can including (as of this week) the construction an oil pipeline to the Pacific to serve Asian nations.
This will reduce the supply of their products to nations with the highest tariffs. This also provides them with better market certainty, than a nation that breaks existing trade agreements on a whim ( [1]like a commercial accurately quoting Ronald Re [youtube.com]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCKmMEFiLrI
Apple Rapes Users on SSD costs (Score:1)
I can buy an 8TB ssd for $600 to add to my system, or pay apple 4x as much to upgrade their worthless 512gb internal ssd to 8tb for a mere $2400. FUCKING CRAZY.
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Guy who doesn't buy Apple gear complains about Apple prices! News at 11!!!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
> the market will bare
Take it off! [1]Take it all off! [youtube.com]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkpGM_MvZ2Y