Random access memory, or RAM, is in just about every piece of technology we use. But it’s also the technology that AI companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta are using to power the servers in their massive data centers. Now, the world’s biggest memory makers — Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron — are taking advantage of a surge in demand, shifting their resources away from consumer-focused products and toward more lucrative deals with AI companies.
The result is a severe shortage in RAM for consumer products, which is not only contributing to price hikes on the RAM kits used by PC builders but also for the manufacturers of a range of devices, including laptops, smartphones, gaming consoles, and a whole lot more. Some companies, like Raspberry Pi and Framework, have already raised the prices of their products as a result of the increase, while others, like Dell, Asus, Acer, Xiaomi, and Nothing, have warned about price hikes coming soon.
It doesn’t look like the RAM shortage is going to subside anytime soon, as analysts at the International Data Corporation predict that it could “persist well into 2027.” Here’s all the latest news on the rising price of RAM.
- SK Hynix reportedly wants permission to export equipment to China in exchange for building a new US chip factory.
The export-restricted equipment for making RAM would go to SK Hynix’s Dalian, China facility, Reuters reports. Its sources say increasing SK Hynix’s production in China would help fund a US factory. SK Hynix is also separately reportedly in talks about making chips at an Intel facility in Ohio.
- Global smartphone sales just hit a 14-year low.
That’s according to analysts at Counterpoint, who also say sales in Q3 2026 were 20 percent down on the previous year, as supply shrinks and prices rise. Samsung held the top spot, helped by Galaxy Z Fold 8 sales, with Apple close behind.
Decade-old RAM is making a comeback
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty ImagesCPU makers have noticed that the seemingly unending RAM price hikes are making it tough for a lot of us to upgrade our PCs. Their solution? A return to last-gen DDR4 RAM. Intel and AMD are making new CPUs that’ll support the older, more affordable type of memory.
On Friday, Gigabyte announced that two of its motherboard lines will support “upcoming” processors built on Intel’s LGA 1700 socket. That socket debuted in 2021 with the 12th gen Alder Lake CPUs and supported both DDR4 RAM and the then-new DDR5 RAM. Intel dropped it for a DDR5-only approach in 2024. But according to Gigabyte, the dual format support is now being revived, with new LGA 1700 chips “expected to launch in early 2027.”
Read Article >- PC shipments dropped around 20 percent in Q3, analyst firms say.
As noted by Windows Central, IDC reported a 20.1 percent decline while Omdia reported that shipments fell 21.2 percent. Both said that the lowered shipments followed a pull-forward in shipments earlier in 2026.
“Vendors and channels bought ahead of price hikes, which inflated early year shipments and left Q3 starved of demand,” according to IDC. “The result is a broken seasonal pattern: the third quarter is normally larger than the second, and this year it fell short.”
- AMD intends to ‘substantially’ increase its chip supply next year.
“We’ve been able to increase our supply as we’ve gone through 2026,” CEO Lisa Su said today, “and we’re going to substantially increase our supply in 2027.”
Like Nvidia, AMD has seen a boom in GPU demand driven by AI, signing big deals with Meta, Anthropic, and OpenAI, and suffering the same shortages as the rest of the industry.
Nvidia’s Shield TV Pro just got a $100 price hike
Image: NvidiaNvidia’s Shield TV streaming boxes are the latest victims of the memory shortage that has seen prices increase dramatically for everything from digital cameras to game consoles. When the Shield TV Pro launched nearly seven years ago with an upgraded Tegra X1+ processor, 3GB of RAM, and 16GB of storage, it sold for $199.99. But starting on October 2nd Nvidia increased its price by $100 to $299.99 as a result of the increased cost of components, according to Ars Technica.
When the Pro model was first announced in 2019 Nvidia also debuted an updated entry-level version of the Shield TV with the same processor but 2GB of RAM and 8GB of storage priced at $149.99. Unfortunately, it will no longer be an option for those now looking for a cheaper alternative to the Shield TV Pro. Nvidia has stopped production of the standard Shield TV model and moving forward it’s focusing its efforts on only manufacturing the Pro option, according to Gizmodo.
Read Article >- Huawei says RAMageddon has increased its smartphone costs by $200.
Its consumer business chief Richard Yu said the higher costs are hurting Huawei’s profitability “very badly,” and Huawei will “have to raise prices going forward, though it will be moderate,” Bloomberg reports.
Samsung raised prices on the Galaxy S26 by $100
Photo: Dominic Preston / The VergeThe base Galaxy S26 with 256GB of storage costs nearly $1,000 after Samsung raised prices in the US by $100 or more, Phone Arena reports. The Galaxy S26 and S26 Plus were already $100 more expensive than their S25 predecessors when they launched earlier this year, which Samsung said RAM price hikes were partly to blame for. With both price hikes combined, the base S26 will now set you back $200 more than the base S25 would have. Apple and Google have also raised prices on their phones this year.
Nearly every phone in the S26 lineup is $100 pricier on Samsung’s official website now, and the 1TB version of the S26 Ultra went up by even more with a $200 price hike:
Read Article >- 2GB Raspberry Pis are getting pricier.
The company has announced several price hikes over the last year in light of the ongoing RAM crisis, and this time it’s adding $12.50 to the price of the 2GB Raspberry Pi 4 (now $67.50) and Raspberry Pi 5 (now $77.50) variants.
“The current memory supply circumstances are very challenging, but, as we’ve said before, they won’t last forever. The price of memory will eventually subside, and we look forward to reversing our own price increases when it does.”
- Acer’s CEO expects PC prices to come down… eventually.
Digitimes reported on remarks from CEO Jason Chen, who said recently that he expects PC prices to rise another 20% before coming down in the second-half of 2027. The increase tracks with all of the component spikes we’ve seen, including rumors that AMD and Intel are both about to raise prices by another 10% this year. Chen reportedly said: “a lot of people come and tell us they want to raise prices, and we find it a bit baffling,” noting that memory suppliers have an incentive to push their current cost narrative.
- AMD also has a rumored 10 percent price hike coming.
The price increase reportedly follows higher prices from chip manufacturer TSMC, and could impact everything from AMD’s GPUs to its motherboard chipsets. Intel is reportedly planning a similar price hike, and Qualcomm and Nvidia also raised prices earlier this year.
Valve’s virtual reality plans hit actual reality
Photo: Kelsey McClellan / The VergeThe Steam Frame headset is here, and it may not surprise you: it was supposed to cost less than $1,059. “We set out to come out with a device that would have been far more affordable, but the global RAM market, the global storage market have impacted us the same way they’ve impacted everybody,” Valve developer Jeremy Selan told the BBC. “We fought hard to get it even to this price.”
I haven’t yet seen Valve say whether it’s selling the Steam Frame at cost, like the company confirmed it was doing with the $1,049 Steam Machine living room PC. But Valve developer Pierre-Loup Griffais hinted maybe so in an interview with Tom’s Hardware: “there’s not really any sort of the kind of distortion compared to just the price of the parts in there.”
Read Article >- The Dell XPS 13 is the latest laptop to get a $100 price hike.
The XPS 13 now costs $699 for a base configuration with just 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. That price used to get you a configuration with 512GB of storage, but Dell’s now charging $799 for that one. It matches the pricing for Apple’s MacBook Neo, which also got a price hike earlier this year.
The Trump phone just got a $250 price hike
It’s going to take a lot more gold coins to buy the Trump Phone now. Photo: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The VergeBad news if you didn’t lock in a Trump phone at launch: It now costs $749, a $250 increase on its price at launch. The T1 Phone itself hasn’t changed.
Trump Mobile didn’t announce the price increase, instead quietly changing its website overnight. This wasn’t a total surprise though, especially given the phone ships with an unexpectedly generous 512GB of storage and 12GB of RAM. When I spoke to two Trump Mobile executives earlier this year, they called the $499 launch pricing “introductory,” and a few months later, the website itself was changed to reflect that, calling it a “promotional price.” That wording is now gone.
Read Article >It’s the year of smartphone price hikes
Photo: Nilay Patel / The VergePaying more for a new phone seems almost unavoidable after Apple’s event today. The new iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max start at $1,199 and $1,299, respectively — a $100 price hike over their predecessors. You can’t dodge the price hike by opting for an older iPhone, either, because Apple raised prices on those by $100, too. And it’s not just Apple. This year, the $100 price hike has been a trend across the industry.
Google and Samsung followed the same formula as Apple when they each launched new phones over the past few months. The Pixel 11 starts at $899, up from $799 for last year’s Pixel 10. The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra launched at $2,099, $100 more than the Galaxy Z Fold 7 it replaced.
Read Article >Framework is giving some customers a RAM refund
Photo: Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The VergeIn a “rare, positive update” amid the ongoing component shortage, Framework is lowering its RAM prices for some buyers of the Laptop 13 Pro — at least, for now. After increasing the laptop’s memory pricing in July, Framework says it “secured a limited quantity of Micron 32GB and 64GB LPCAMM2 memory modules at lower cost,” and plans to share the savings:
Framework says it’s sending out refunds for the price difference for preorders that shipped with the higher RAM price. It’s also adjusting the price for pending preorders “through Batch 10 that have memory configured at the higher pricing,” and giving customers in those batches the option to upgrade their RAM configuration at the lower price.
Read Article >Intel CPUs are reportedly getting a 10 percent price hike in October
Image: Alex Castro / The VergeIntel’s PC CPUs may get more expensive in a few weeks, with Digitimes reporting that Intel has a 10 percent price hike planned, following similar increases earlier this year. According to Digitimes, the price hike is part of a shift for Intel toward increasing profitability for its PC CPU business, rather than keeping prices low to try to expand its market share.
Digitimes also says Intel may be planning to cut another 5 to 10 percent of its staff, although it may also bring in new hires at the same time. Additionally, the report claims Intel could soon put its Small Core line in end-of-life, but this would mainly impact industrial PCs and IoT tech, not consumer PCs.
Read Article >The real reason your phone is getting more expensive
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The VergeWhen Apple debuts the next generation of iPhones this week, they’re likely to come with an unwanted change: a higher price tag. A price hike from the supply-chain powerhouse would be the clearest sign yet that soaring memory costs have become unavoidable — with no end to the memory crunch in sight.
Call it “chipflation” or “RAMageddon.” The shortage is reversing a decades-long decline in memory costs that helped make consumer electronics more powerful without making them dramatically more expensive. The terms “memory prices” and “memory shortage” appeared in 473 company transcripts last quarter, according to data provided by AlphaSense. The entire industry is seemingly working on the problem. And yet, we’re years away from seeing it fixed.
Read Article >Google tells Android app developers to cool it on memory use, or else
The memory crisis just won’t quit. Image: Alex Castro / The VergeGoogle will start policing memory-hungry Android apps as a direct response to the RAM crisis. Spotted by TechCrunch, the company yesterday published a memo addressing the Play Store’s role in enforcing new memory-usage restrictions. The post emphasizes the importance of meeting new memory usage limits for apps, in order “to help developers navigate industry-wide hardware constraints and Android’s broader memory limits,” it says. And failing to meet the new memory restrictions will come with consequences.
The memory limitations were first introduced with Android 17, appearing first on Pixel phones. It’s probably no coincidence that the base configurations of the Pixel 11 Pro and 11 Pro XL come with less RAM than last year’s models. As Android 17 rolls out to the wider ecosystem, Google warns developers that they’ll need to play nice with a much bigger range of devices: “Over the coming year, an increasing number of manufacturers will leverage the Android per-app memory limits across their portfolio of device RAM configurations from 4GB to 16GB+ devices.”
Read Article >- Sony Xperia 10 VIII: Same specs, new price.
The new midrange Android phone has almost exactly the exact same design and internals as last year’s Xperia 10 VII apart from two meager upgrades: a brighter display and louder speakers. Oh, and at €599 / £549 (around $700-750), it’ll also be € / £150 more expensive when it launches in Europe in “mid-to-late September.” Thanks, RAMageddon.
1/6Those two rear cameras are the same, with a 50-megapixel main and 13-megapixel ultrawide. Image: Sony - Nvidia’s AI chips are about to get more expensive too.
Price hikes aren’t only for laptops, smart speakers, and game consoles, as Bloomberg reports that “some of Nvidia’s biggest customers” have been told that server prices are going up more than 15 percent. Those customers are the companies that build the AI data centers for Oracle, Microsoft, and others that have heavily contributed to the demand spike driving up component prices.
Nvidia has already raised GPU prices this year, and we may hear more about its changes when it reports Q2 earnings on Wednesday.
Amazon just hiked the prices for Echo, Fire TV, and Kindle products by up to 60 percent
The Echo Dot Max went from $99.99 to $119.99 overnight, while its sibling the Echo Dot jumped to $79.99 from $49.99. Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The VergeCiting “significant increases in memory and storage component costs,” Amazon has raised prices on Echos, Kindles, Fire TVs, and Eeros by up to 60 percent, as first reported by Fortune.
The cheapest products in Amazon’s lineup were hit hardest, with the Echo Dot smart speaker jumping from $49.99 to $79.99. The Fire TV Stick 4K Max also rose by over 40 percent to $84.99, and the base level Kindle now costs $149.99, a nearly 37 percent increase.
Read Article >- The sub-$100 phone market is disappearing.
Sales dropped 64% year-on-year in Q2, according to research from Counterpoint, as manufacturers raised prices or simply stopped shipping cheaper models. Samsung and Motorola have been the only brands to benefit, as smaller companies became unable to undercut them on price. That helped both grow their market share in prepaid phones.
The prepaid phone market shifted in Samsung and Motorola’s favor. Image: Counterpoint - Gigabyte’s bringing back AM4 motherboards.
It’s launching a new B550 X series “engineered to be the most powerful refresh of the AM4 platform,” which is now 10 years old, as PC Gamer reports. The new motherboards were designed around the Ryzen 7 8500X3D that AMD recently relaunched as component shortages continue to drive up prices.
Xbox prices are increasing by up to €200 or £170
Photo by Tom Warren / The VergeWhen Microsoft announced its latest round of Xbox price bumps in June, it only gave US pricing. Now we know the pricing increases for the EU and UK, and they’re dramatic. Depending on the model, Xbox prices are increasing by up to €200 or £170. The 1TB Xbox Series X with a disc drive is going up by over 30 percent from £499.99 / €599.99 to £669.99 / €799.99. The 512GB Xbox Series S is getting a price increase of over 43 percent, jumping from £299.99 / €349.99 to £429.99 / €499.99.
While other consoles have received price bumps as RAM and storage prices skyrocket due to demand from the AI industry, none have been quite as dramatic as Microsoft’s. This is the third round of price increases since May of 2025, with the highest-end model now costing $300 more than its launch price of $499.99 in 2020. The 2TB model is also being retired in the face of the storage crunch. Here’s the full list of price changes:
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