RAM price hikes: the latest on the global memory shortage – The Verge

Decade-old RAM is making a comeback

2026-10-09T17:50:00-04:00

CPU 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 …

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Nvidia’s Shield TV Pro just got a $100 price hike

2026-10-05T11:43:13-04:00

Nvidia'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 …

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Samsung raised prices on the Galaxy S26 by $100

2026-10-01T09:17:16-04:00

The 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 …

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Valve’s virtual reality plans hit actual reality

2026-09-14T15:52:18-04:00

The 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' …

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The Trump phone just got a $250 price hike

2026-09-10T05:43:56-04:00

It’s going to take a lot more gold coins to buy the Trump Phone now. | Photo: Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Bad 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.

When I reviewed th …

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It’s the year of smartphone price hikes

2026-09-09T20:03:39-04:00

Paying 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, $10 …

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Framework is giving some customers a RAM refund

2026-09-09T11:36:37-04:00

In 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:

We are committed to passing on savings whenever we can and keeping computers as accessible as possible in the current environment, so we are rolling out price reductions across both already shipped and a subset of currently pending pre-orders. While these new costs remain above our origina …

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Intel CPUs are reportedly getting a 10 percent price hike in October

2026-09-08T10:03:35-04:00

Intel'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 …

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The real reason your phone is getting more expensive

2026-09-07T10:13:46-04:00

When 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 …

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Google tells Android app developers to cool it on memory use, or else

2026-08-27T14:33:11-04:00

The memory crisis just won’t quit. | Image: Alex Castro / The Verge

Google 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 …

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