[STEAM] Spiking memory prices mean that it is once again a horrible time to build a PC

[Steam 0]

It’s not a bad time to upgrade your gaming PC. Graphics card prices in the 2020s have undulated continuously as the industry has dealt with pandemic and AI-related shortages, but it’s actually possible to get respectable mainstream- to high-end GPUs like

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and

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or

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,

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, and

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for at or slightly under their suggested retail prices right now. This was close to impossible through the spring and summer.

But it’s not a good time to build a new PC or swap your older motherboard out for a new one that needs DDR5 RAM. And the culprit is a shortage of RAM and flash memory chips that has suddenly sent SSD and (especially) memory prices into the stratosphere, caused primarily by

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and exacerbated by panic-fueled buying by end users and device manufacturers.

To illustrate just how high things have jumped in a short amount of time, let’s compare some of the RAM and storage prices listed in

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to the pricing for the exact same components today. Note that several of these are based on the last available price and are currently sold out; we also haven’t looked into things

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, which could also be affected.

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