As AI supply disruptions grip the market, almost two thirds of PC owners have no plans to upgrade

Parroted as the end-all, be-all of modern living, AI has proved to be more of a nuisance to everyone and, ironically, has hit tech enthusiasts the hardest. Instead of bettering their day-to-day, AI is only helping to surge prices and make them unavailable to the general populace while big-name corporations rake in the surplus and enjoy the shortage. And that leaves you, the average Joe, unable to go in and buy new components or bring your machine up to snuff since some corporation out there (cough, OpenAI, cough) said "pretty please" to all the RAM manufacturers, and all of them somehow jumped ship and started only selling to them (who weren't actually buying them, just promising that they would, maybe). Now, according to Tom's Hardware, 60 percent of PC owners have no plans to upgrade over the next two years. That is the result of a survey of 1,500 Tom's Hardware readers done over the last couple of weeks, thus reflecting the current state of PC enthusiasm or lack thereof. There's a small fortune in this image now. Image via Andrey Matveev/Pexels What's even more interesting is just how few people are planning to actually kit out their PC with some shiny new tech within the next year or less. Only 25 percent are aiming to upgrade by this time next year, while only four percent are wishing to do the same throughout the next 90 days. Now those are some alarming numbers. I'll tell you what. But they're not surprising whatsoever. Everything is more expensive now, and not only RAM. Anything that contains any sort of memory within it (read: almost every piece of tech under the sun) has seen a marked rise in costs. While most are reflecting on RAM, we've seen an unthinkable uptick in SSD and storage prices overall, with older generations of CPUs also on the rise as new buyers are desperately trying to go back to "cheaper" alternatives. The cheapest 32GB DDR5 kit I could find on Amazon at the moment sits at $359, while the most popular option is $431. The latter is a pair of 16GB Corsair Vengeance 6000MHz sticks, which last January were priced at $91, or nearly five times less. As for DDR4, a pair of G.Skill Ripjaws V 16GB 3200MHz sticks is $259, whereas it was $46.99 just over a year ago, or around 5.5 times more. DDR4-compatible CPUs like the 5800X3D aren't even available new on Amazon as of this article, and neither are DDR5 ones like the 9800X3D. The sharp and rapid rise in memory prices seems to have stabilized near the start of this year, as a lot of funding uncertainties have hit the AI industry. However, with governments around the world now all growing myopic and not seeing the forest for the trees, we're only going to get into even more hot water as time goes by. Data centers are being approved across the globe, and especially in economic powerhouses like the US. And that means more trouble than just tech prices. Gas, water, and electricity are all about to skyrocket, and that is if the grid even supports it. I'm being a little more pessimistic than I perhaps should be, but looking at the worst-case scenario (which is becoming more and more apparent by the hour) is the only way we can actually regard this situation. It's going to take some time to build these centers and make them operational, and once they're all up and running within the next couple of years, you can bet that buying RAM is going to become a thing of the long-lost past. The post As AI supply disruptions grip the market, almost two thirds of PC owners have no plans to upgrade appeared first on Destructoid.

May 18, 2026 - 01:44

As AI supply disruptions grip the market, almost two thirds of PC owners have no plans to upgrade

Parroted as the end-all, be-all of modern living, AI has proved to be more of a nuisance to everyone and, ironically, has hit tech enthusiasts the hardest. Instead of bettering their day-to-day, AI is only helping to surge prices and make them unavailable to the general populace while big-name corporations rake in the surplus and enjoy the shortage.

And that leaves you, the average Joe, unable to go in and buy new components or bring your machine up to snuff since some corporation out there (cough, OpenAI, cough) said "pretty please" to all the RAM manufacturers, and all of them somehow jumped ship and started only selling to them (who weren't actually buying them, just promising that they would, maybe).

Now, according to Tom's Hardware, 60 percent of PC owners have no plans to upgrade over the next two years. That is the result of a survey of 1,500 Tom's Hardware readers done over the last couple of weeks, thus reflecting the current state of PC enthusiasm or lack thereof.

There's a small fortune in this image now. Image via Andrey Matveev/Pexels What's even more interesting is just how few people are planning to actually kit out their PC with some shiny new tech within the next year or less. Only 25 percent are aiming to upgrade by this time next year, while only four percent are wishing to do the same throughout the next 90 days. Now those are some alarming numbers. I'll tell you what.

But they're not surprising whatsoever. Everything is more expensive now, and not only RAM. Anything that contains any sort of memory within it (read: almost every piece of tech under the sun) has seen a marked rise in costs. While most are reflecting on RAM, we've seen an unthinkable uptick in SSD and storage prices overall, with older generations of CPUs also on the rise as new buyers are desperately trying to go back to "cheaper" alternatives.

The cheapest 32GB DDR5 kit I could find on Amazon at the moment sits at $359, while the most popular option is $431. The latter is a pair of 16GB Corsair Vengeance 6000MHz sticks, which last January were priced at $91, or nearly five times less.

As for DDR4, a pair of G.Skill Ripjaws V 16GB 3200MHz sticks is $259, whereas it was $46.99 just over a year ago, or around 5.5 times more.

DDR4-compatible CPUs like the 5800X3D aren't even available new on Amazon as of this article, and neither are DDR5 ones like the 9800X3D.

The sharp and rapid rise in memory prices seems to have stabilized near the start of this year, as a lot of funding uncertainties have hit the AI industry. However, with governments around the world now all growing myopic and not seeing the forest for the trees, we're only going to get into even more hot water as time goes by. Data centers are being approved across the globe, and especially in economic powerhouses like the US.

And that means more trouble than just tech prices. Gas, water, and electricity are all about to skyrocket, and that is if the grid even supports it. I'm being a little more pessimistic than I perhaps should be, but looking at the worst-case scenario (which is becoming more and more apparent by the hour) is the only way we can actually regard this situation.

It's going to take some time to build these centers and make them operational, and once they're all up and running within the next couple of years, you can bet that buying RAM is going to become a thing of the long-lost past.

The post As AI supply disruptions grip the market, almost two thirds of PC owners have no plans to upgrade appeared first on Destructoid.

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