RAM price crisis LIVE — latest updates on massive memory price surge, expert advice and more

Now’s a great time to get into game streaming

With RAM prices set to keep climbing for the foreseeable future, now’s a particularly bad time to try and save money when buying a gaming laptop or building your own gaming PC. It’s cheaper to buy a pre-built PC than build one yourself, which is always a bad sign, and I expect high-end gaming laptops with lots of RAM to get more expensive in the year ahead.

As I mentioned earlier, we’re hearing very believable reports that Apple may need to increase MacBook prices in 2026 in order to compensate for more expensive DRAM. And if that proves true, the incredibly affordable MacBook Air M4 may lose its edge as one of the best laptops you can buy for (roughly) $1,000.

With that in mind I wanted to quickly highlight some good deals I just spotted on MSI’s Prestige 13+ AI laptops, which are ultra-light Windows 11 ultraportables with 3K OLED displays that are great for getting work done thanks to their 32MB of RAM (great for multi-tasking) and all-day battery life. I don’t know how long these deals will last, so you might want to snag one quick if you’re interested!

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), CyberPowerPC has confirmed that “global memory (RAM) prices have surged by 500% and SSD prices have risen by 100%.”

In terms of what this will do to the prices of CyberPowerPC products, the company does go into a little more detail in a response to one X user. “You can expect a system with 1TB SSD + 16GB Memory to increase by $80 and a 2TB SSD + 32GB Memory will increase by $160 for the total system cost,” the company commented.

This is an issue that hits all manufacturers, though, and Maingear CEO Wallace Santos has spoken with WCCFTech about the problem.

“We’ve already seen DRAM prices skyrocket due to the shortages and are holding off those price changes for our customers as long as we can,” Santos commented. “For consumers who are interested in getting a new PC or upgrading their current system’s GPU, SSD or RAM, they should consider shopping now and looking for offerings that have not seen price increases yet. MAINGEAR is offering pre-built units for Black Friday right now that were sheltered from these price increases.”

“I anticipate that the prices will continue to rise and then we will eventually have to increase our lead times as stock and allocation become constrained, but we are in constant communication with our vendors and will delay these increases for as long as we possibly can.”

MacBook and iPhone prices could rise in 2026, as Apple’s RAM supply advantage fades

In the face of the RAM price crisis, one company has been notably absent from this conversation of price increases: Apple. However, now the Cupertino crew’s in the spotlight, as a new rumor claims Apple’s long-term agreement for DRAM chips is coming to an end starting in January 2026.

This all started from a post by @Jukan05 on X, who indicated that people are potentially overestimating just how secure Apple’s supply chain management is. This points to their own supply chain checks that Samsung and SK Hynix will be planning to “raise memory prices for Apple starting next January.”

Recently, the first real casualty of RAMageddon was revealed when Micron announced that it will stop selling its Crucial-branded memory and storage in 2026 and “exit the Crucial consumer business in order to improve supply and support for [its] larger, strategic customers in faster-growing segments.”

Simply put: Micron is abandoning the consumer market (PC builders, PC gamers) in favor of AI data centers that have been gobbling up memory and storage at a staggering rate. That only leaves Samsung and SK Hynix as the main two DRAM manufacturers.

Micron’s Crucial brand might be the first casualty in this memory boom but we doubt it will be the only company to pull out of selling consumer-grade RAM and SSDs in favor of AI.

What if the AI bubble bursts?

Many companies and people in general speak about a future run by AI as an inevitability, but what if AI might be a bubble? With all the vendor financing agreements and promises of making money in exchange for burning a whole lot of cash. OpenAI has made $1.5 trillion in chip commitments, while Reuters reports the company has made $12 billion in annual revenue this year.

That’s a big tab, and very bubble-ish in our estimation. So what would happen if all of this money is spent but companies and investors get a reality check that AI won’t deliver the future some have predicted? What happens if the return on investment in this AI rollout doesn’t materialize?

Well, two things happen. First, tech companies will slam the brakes on new data center construction and AI scaling. The demand for DRAM and NAND chips will dry up overnight. And second, that will leave warehouses absolutely packed with stock that companies are desperate to sell. At that point, the prices come crashing down to get rid of them all. It will be a systemic shock to the whole industry, and a sharp, severe, rapid end to the RAM pricing crisis. But that’s just one possible scenario.

Some great laptop deals to beat the RAMageddon blues

With RAM prices continuing to rise, now is the time to take advantage of laptop deals. Below are three laptop deals we recommend you consider, as these prices might not last much longer.

Framework has called out the likes of Dell and Apple for the huge cost bump between RAM configurations. In a post on X (which appears to have been deleted), the modular laptop maker announced that it will “need to increase memory pricing soon.” Now, Framework has announced its own DDR5 RAM price increase of 50%.

“We increased our pricing on the DDR5 memory configurable in Framework Laptop DIY Edition orders by 50% to begin to respond to the substantially higher costs we are facing from suppliers and distributors,” Framework states. “The new pricing remains below what is available in the open market.”

This comes as no surprise, considering other major laptop makers like Dell and Lenovo are also looking to raise prices. However, Framework started the post with a screenshot of its RAM configuration prices when buying one of its laptops, like the Framework 13 or Framework 16, stating that an upgrade from 16GB to 32GB is $80.

“We won’t use this as an excuse to gouge customers like Dell apparently has and that Apple does as their norm,” Framework commented.

It is now cheaper to buy a pre-built gaming PC than building one yourself

For the first time since we can remember, it’s actually cheaper to get a pre-built PC than it is to build it yourself. It comes down to one key thing: stock. Most retailers and computing brands will have these ready-made and good to go from their warehouses — using the stockpile of RAM and SSDs they already have on their books.

Up to this point, the ongoing RAM crisis has been limited to purchasable consumer memory, but it was inevitable that RAMageddon would eventually impact more technology. A new analyst report from TrendForce, the market intelligence and consulting firm, claims that the memory price surge will affect smartphone and laptop manufacturers heading into 2026.

Consequently, according to the report, smartphone companies like Apple and Samsung will likely raise prices while reducing RAM capacity. It could also lead to a reduction in the number of devices actually produced by these companies.