Why are RAM prices so high in 2026?

AI data centres now consume an estimated 70 percent of the world's memory production. Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron, who between them make over 95 percent of DRAM, have redirected manufacturing capacity toward high bandwidth memory for AI accelerators. Because HBM consumes roughly three times the wafer capacity of ordinary DDR5, every wafer moved removes about three times as much consumer memory from the market. PC DRAM contract prices rose over 100 percent in a single quarter as a result.

Should I buy RAM now or wait for prices to drop?

If you need it, buy it. This is not a normal cycle that corrects in a few months. It is a structural reallocation of manufacturing capacity, and analysts expect elevated prices through 2027, with SK Hynix suggesting tightness could persist for years. Waiting has been the losing move so far. If you do not need it, do not buy speculatively either.

Are SSD prices going up too?

Yes. NAND flash contract prices have risen 70 to 75 percent in a quarter, and consumer SSDs have roughly doubled since late 2025. The cause is the same: manufacturing capacity redirected toward AI infrastructure, with demand growing faster than supply.

Does this affect the price of new computers?

It already has. Memory and storage are a meaningful share of the cost of a laptop or phone, so manufacturers are either raising prices or quietly shipping less memory at the same price. This is why checking the specification carefully matters more now than it did two years ago.

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Why Is RAM and Storage So Expensive Right Now?

By Isaac Farris · August 7, 2026 · Post #3

Close up of a computer circuit board showing memory and controller chips

If you have priced up a memory upgrade or a new solid state drive lately, you already know something is wrong. Prices have not crept up. They have doubled.

Here is what happened.

The damage

Memory prices to manufacturers rose over 100 percent in a single quarter. That is the steepest jump ever recorded.
A 1TB solid state drive that cost about 45 dollars in late 2025 is now closer to 90.
A 2TB drive that was 120 to 150 a year ago now runs 300 to 480.

The frustrating part: the two upgrades most worth doing to a slow computer are more memory and a solid state drive. Those are exactly the two things that went up.

Why? AI is eating the supply

Three companies make almost all the world's memory: Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron.

AI data centres need a special, harder-to-make kind of memory, and they pay far more for it. So those three factories switched over to making it.

Here is the bit that turns a shortage into a crisis. That special memory uses about three times the factory capacity for the same amount of product. So every production line switched over does not remove one line's worth of normal memory from the market. It removes about three.

AI data centres now consume roughly 70 percent of the world's memory production. The rest of us are fighting over what is left.

Has this happened before?

Yes, several times. A factory fire in 1993. An earthquake in 1999. A smartphone boom in 2017.

Every one of them corrected within a year or two. Prices came back down.

Why I think this one is different

Those were supply problems. Something broke, supply dropped, it got fixed, prices fell.

This is a demand problem. Nothing broke. The factories are running flat out. A new customer just walked in who will pay several times what you and I will, and wants everything.

That customer is not leaving next quarter. Analysts expect high prices through 2027, and one manufacturer has hinted it could run much longer.

There is a second thing that bothers me more than the price. When memory costs manufacturers more, they do not always raise the price of the laptop. Sometimes they quietly ship 8GB where they used to ship 16 and leave the sticker alone. That is much harder to spot.

What to do about it

Need it? Buy it now. Every quarter this year has been dearer than the one before. If a machine is struggling and memory or a drive would fix it, that is still far cheaper than replacing it.

Do not stockpile. Memory in a drawer does nothing for you.

Check the specification properly. When buying any computer, look at exactly how much memory and storage it has, rather than assuming it is what that price used to buy. And check whether the memory is soldered in, because then it is permanent. More on that on my upgrades page.

Refurbished just got much better value. A three year old business machine already has its memory and storage fitted at yesterday's prices. That argument is far stronger now than it was in January. There are some worth looking at here.

Look after what you own. The cheapest memory is the memory already in your machine.

Where these numbers came from

I did not measure any of this myself. The figures above come from industry reporting, and it is worth being able to check them:

Tom's Hardware on memory prices through 2026 and where they are heading
CNBC on AI memory being sold out and what that did to prices
IDC on how the shortage hits phones and PCs
Wikipedia keeps a running summary of the shortage with its own sources

The opinion in the middle of this post is mine. The numbers are theirs.

So is this our future, or the end?

Every previous crunch ended. The graph always came back down.

But every previous crunch was a supply problem in a market we understood. This one is a demand problem, and the new customer has more money than all of us combined and is still growing.

I genuinely do not know whether prices come back down this time, or whether computers just quietly become more expensive things we keep for longer and repair instead of replacing.

I do have a view. It needs its own post.

Coming next: Is It Our Future, Or The End?

Your friendly tech guy,
Isaac Farris