The recent AI boom has caused a massive shortage in PC components across the globe, further accelerated by DRAM companies willfully choosing to abandon their consumer base in favor of the more lucrative enterprise offerings.
We’ve seen DRAM prices quadruple in pricing in the past few months alone, and we are soon set to enter an era of severe silicon shortage. Things are going to get worse before they get any better, atleast, until the bubble pops.
This isn’t just restricted to PCs though, as all manner of devices use ‘smart’ functionalities that have made them increasingly dependent on these components. This will undoubtedly affect the pricing of other devices, such as mobiles, smart TVs and tablets.
DRAM Prices to Keep Increasing Through 2026
DRAM pricing is expected to get even worse in 2026, as analysts predict even more price hikes. This is terrible news for those who were holding out on upgrading their PCs, with the hope that 2026 would be a bit different.
It’s a bad time to be a PC enthusiast, and all of this can be attributed to one thing, the rise of AI. Given its lucrative nature, many companies have begun to shift their DRAM production capabilities toward enterprise grade hardware instead.
We’ve seen consumer brands like Crucial being killed off in favor of parent companies (in this case, Micron) going for the money making machine that is AI.
It’s a terrible mess that won’t stop anytime soon. DRAM orders are placed in bulk and ahead of time, so expect the shortage to last a while. Simply put, the consumer DRAM production is not a priority for these companies anymore.
How This Affects Consumer Electronics and Their Pricing
Of course, PCs aren’t the only things utilizing DRAM these days. With the advent of ‘smart’ devices, we’ve seen a variety of (often unnecessary) appliances equipped with a small computer to enable these so called smart functions.
The DRAM shortage crisis will affect these sooner or later, and expect TVs to be affected first. Smart TVs are expected to get dearer, or compromise by shipping with much lower specced internals (than usual).
The next wave should hit the smartphone and laptop industry soon. We’ve already seen rumors of 8 GB RAM laptops and 4 GB RAM phones making a return, and these could soon be a reality.
Higher end devices are also expected to receive a significant price bump.
It would be naive to assume that companies would optimize their software for these lowered specs. Expect these devices to ship with half baked, buggy and heavy software too.
