It’s not a nasty time to improve your gaming PC. Graphics card costs within the 2020s have undulated constantly because the trade has handled pandemic and AI-related shortages, nevertheless it’s truly doable to get respectable mainstream- to high-end GPUs like AMD’s Radeon RX 9060 XT and 9070 series or Nvidia’s RTX 5060, 5070, and 5080 series for at or just below their advised retail costs proper now. This was near unattainable by means of the spring and summer time.
However it’s not an excellent time to construct a brand new PC or swap your older motherboard out for a brand new one which wants DDR5 RAM. And the perpetrator is a scarcity of RAM and flash reminiscence chips that has out of the blue despatched SSD and (particularly) reminiscence costs into the stratosphere, precipitated primarily by the ongoing AI boom and exacerbated by panic-fueled shopping for by finish customers and system producers.
As an example simply how excessive issues have jumped in a brief period of time, let’s evaluate among the RAM and storage costs listed in our system guide from three months ago to the pricing for the very same elements right now. Observe that a number of of those are primarily based on the final accessible value and are at the moment bought out; we additionally haven’t regarded into issues like microSD or microSD Express cards, which is also affected.
| Element | Aug. 2025 value | Nov. 2025 value |
|---|---|---|
| Patriot Viper Venom 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR-6000 | $49 | $110 |
| Western Digital WD Blue SN5000 500GB | $45 | $69 |
| Silicon Energy 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 | $34 | $89 |
| Western Digital WD Blue SN5000 1TB | $64 | $111 |
| Group T-Drive Vulcan 32GB DDR5-6000 | $82 | $310 |
| Western Digital WD Blue SN5000 2TB | $115 | $154 |
| Western Digital WD Black SN7100 2TB | $130 | $175 |
| Group Delta RGB 64GB (2 x 32GB) DDR5-6400 | $190 | $700 |
Briefly, there’s no escaping these value will increase, which have an effect on SSDs and each DDR4 and DDR5 RAM kits of all capacities (although higher-capacity RAM kits do appear to be hit a little bit tougher). In the event you’re fascinated with an SSD improve, these will increase haven’t grow to be too ludicrous simply but, however should you had been fascinated with a RAM improve, your finest guess is to carry on tight to no matter you have already got and hope that nothing breaks any time quickly.
