Topline
AI’s trillion-dollar appetite for memory has drained consumer supply and handed chipmakers more lucrative enterprise contracts, a shift that has sent RAM and SSD prices soaring and turned simple gaming and PC upgrades into far pricier undertakings, according to various reports.
NEW YORK, NY – JUNE 17: Jack Hyslop, science specialist for Christie’s, displays a 1958 prototype of a microchip before auction on June 17, 2014 in New York City. The microchip helped inventor Jack Kilby win the Nobel prize and is expected to sell for $1,000,000 – $2,000,000. (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)
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Key Facts
More than $1.1 trillion for AI data centers’ infrastructure has taken a dominant share of memory and storage supply, which has tightened the consumer market and dramatically increased memory prices for RAM and SSD kits, per PCWorld.
As a result of this, PCWorld estimates prices for RAM, a computer’s short term memory, have climbed over 100% in the past few months.
Ars Technica also reports that prices rose sharply from August to November, with average RAM costs up 208.2% and average costs for SSD storage for long-term data memory up 48.8%.
The steepest jump came from the Team T Force Vulcan RAM kit, a common choice for gaming setups and PCs, which climbed from $82 to $310 over the same period, per Ars Technica—a 278.1% increase.
Surprising Fact
The memory shortage has pushed some 64GB DDR5 memory kits to about $600, making them roughly $200 pricier than a PlayStation 5 Slim, according to Tom’s Hardware.