Why RAM and SSD Prices Are So High

DDR5 kits and SSDs cost far more than they did at launch, and the reason is a buyer you can't outbid. Memory makers are selling their output to AI data centers, which pay more and sign longer contracts than PC builders do. People have taken to calling it the RAMpocalypse. Here is what caused it, what is still disputed and how to buy around it.

AI data centers took the wafers

A memory factory can only start so many silicon wafers, and the memory on AI accelerators is far hungrier for them than the memory in your PC. High-bandwidth memory, or HBM, stacks DRAM right beside the processor. Coverage of Micron's December 2025 earnings call put it at about three times the wafer area of DDR5, so a wafer moved to HBM yields roughly a third as many gigabytes.

Customers worried about long-term access have been signing multi-year supply deals, and at the end of 2025 Micron said it could meet only half to two-thirds of demand from its key customers.

The forecast has not improved. On its fiscal 2026 earnings call this fall, Micron said it expects a tighter market in 2027 and 2028 than in 2026, that most of its output for next year is already sold, and that it can't see when supply and demand will come back into balance. Output is growing, with Micron expecting DRAM and NAND shipments to rise by a low-to-mid-20s percentage in each of the next two years. HBM is taking priority over conventional DRAM in that growth.

New factories take years. As of its December 2025 call, Micron expected the first of two new Idaho fabs to start producing chips in mid-2027, with a planned New York site following around 2030.

SSDs caught the same wave

SSDs use NAND flash rather than DRAM, but the same small group of companies makes it, and AI servers need enormous amounts of storage. In January, a Kioxia managing director said the company's production for the year was already sold out and that cheap 1TB drives were finished for as long as the AI boom lasts, and Tom's Hardware reported that the supply was likely spoken for through 2027 as well.

The damage reached every kind of drive. Tom's Hardware's price tracking from November 2025 to January 2026 showed double- and triple-digit percentage jumps across SATA, PCIe 3.0, PCIe 4.0 and PCIe 5.0 models, in just a couple of months.

One big consumer brand is leaving

In December 2025, Micron said it would wind down Crucial, its consumer memory and SSD brand sold to PC builders since 1996, and stop supplying retailers after late February 2026. It said it would keep honoring warranties on existing products, and it still supplies DRAM for PCs through other companies. Its stated reason was to free up supply for larger customers in faster-growing segments.

For you, that means one fewer large brand competing for your money at the affordable end. Our catalog still shows some of its kits and drives on sale this week.

Not everyone accepts the long forecast

Acer CEO Jason Chen argued in September that memory makers talk up the shortage to protect their margins. He expects PC prices to keep rising through the end of this year, level off in the first half of 2027 and then fall as cheaper capacity from Chinese memory makers comes online.

Micron's forecast points the other way, and each side has a stake in the answer. Micron profits from scarcity, and Acer sells more PCs when parts are cheap. We can't tell you who is right. Treat any end date you read, including these two, as a forecast from an interested party.

What to do if you are buying

Plan around today's prices and these five rules.

• Keep the memory you have. If you own DDR5, build around it. As of November 9, several 32GB DDR5-6000 kits in our memory category cost more than a Ryzen 7 9800X3D.
• Buy the right amount once. For a new gaming PC, 32GB is the target. If the budget forces 16GB, buy a two-stick kit and plan to replace it later, because adding a second pair usually makes DDR5 run slower.
• Skip speed you won't notice. DDR5-6000 is plenty for most gaming builds, and enabling its profile costs nothing. For storage, choose capacity first, then compare price per terabyte across our SSD listings.
• Price a prebuilt before parts. System builders bought memory earlier and in bulk, so some prebuilts now undercut the same parts bought separately. Our prebuilt vs custom guide shows how to compare them fairly.
• Buy from sellers with a real return policy. Shortages attract counterfeiters, so skip marketplace listings with no history.

If you are still deciding whether to buy at all, use our framework for building right now.