Most PC gamers will simply wait for the RAM price problem to fix itself, not upgrade now, poll reveals
Any PC gaming enthusiast, or anyone who has recently looked at PC hardware prices, will know that RAM costs have skyrocketed in the past month or so. In the face of massive price hikes, what is the best thing to do? Well, PC gamers will have to either stomach the costs or wait it out – especially now that any Black Friday or Cyber Monday sales have ended. According to a recent poll we ran on our site, 80% of readers say they are doing the latter.
It has been established that the AI industry is taking up most of the supply to facilitate the massive expansion of AI data centers. The NAND industry is also affected, with SSD prices rising and even the collapse of one popular brand, Crucial, as owner Micron shifts its full focus to non-gaming hardware.
80% of people will wait for the prices to stabilize
We’ll keep the poll up and running if you still want to have your say, but the trend is already obvious. At the time of writing, nearly 300 responses say there are “waiting for prices to stabilize,” which accounts for 80% of votes. Just 15% say they recently upgraded before it gets even worse, and just 5% don’t think the prices are too bad.
However, if you do choose to wait it out, you’ll be waiting for some time. Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has claimed that RAM price hikes will be “a real problem for high-end gaming for several years” and it’s clear that demand for AI data centers isn’t slowing down right now, aside from an AI bubble burst – something Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has repeatedly dismissed the possibility of, for obvious reasons (Nvidia is the biggest company in the world by market cap thanks to the AI industry).
Going the prebuilt route was one way to avoid the hikes, but now that supply demands have caught up to PC building brands, the likes of CyberPowerPC have already announced price changes coming in the next few days. Maingear, another popular custom PC builder, has revealed it has been stockpiling hardware to try and keep costs low for consumers for as long as it possibly can. We’ve also seen cries from gamers to boycott buying RAM.
Deals season is here folks, and Amazon has already kickstarted its early Black Friday deals! We’ll be covering all the best deals in more details over in our deals hub, but if you haven’t got time to read through those, why not see our top picks below.
*Prices and savings subject to change. Click through to get the current prices.
Regardless of what you do, the fact is that RAM prices are one of the biggest problems PC gamers face right now – but not the only one. Memory shortages are also said to affect GPU costs, as GDDR RAM stock is scarce, too. GPU partners such as PowerColor say AMD Radeon prices are rising soon, while Nvidia has reportedly stopped bundling memory with its GPU chips for its partners, which will make them more expensive to build – a move that will hurt smaller brands the most.
