RAM is quickly becoming a rare commodity in 2025, and moving to next year, prices won’t be coming down anytime soon. According to PCPartPicker’s pricing trend report, the average cost of a 32GB DDR5-6000MHz RAM kit is $350 right now (more than double compared to September 2025). The situation is so bad that Tom’s Hardware reports stores like Micro Center are removing fixed price tags. Currently, the market is so volatile that you have to ask for the actual pricing, and it’s fluctuating daily.
We were already speculating that incoming consoles/PCs like the Steam Machine and next-gen Xbox were going to be expensive, and the current situation further confirms it. Yes, this won’t just be an issue for PC gamers, as there are rumors that Xbox is once again thinking of raising prices for the Xbox Series X|S (marking a third price increase).
If You Want To Point Fingers, Blame AI
A $500 RAM kit might come as a shock to the average gamer, but tech enthusiasts saw this coming a mile away. Another post from Tom’s Hardware back in October tipped us off that OpenAI’s new project requires 40% of the global RAM output. They even teamed up with two memory manufacturing giants, Samsung and SK Hynix, to maintain supply.
OpenAI’s deal with Samsung and SK Hynix includes commodity DDR5 RAM, HBM memory for AI processors, and up to 900,000 DRAM wafers monthly. In plain English, they need all the RAM they can get.
That’s not all. Multiple AI data centers from Nvidia, OpenAI, Microsoft, and AWS have an explosive demand for memory, and as these companies expand their operations, the situation will only get worse before it gets better.
Unfortunately, this isn’t anything particularly new for the gaming world. The crypto mining boom of 2020 – 2021 caused a similar price inflation for graphics cards (GPUs). That was back when an RTX 3080 would cost up to $1600 or more, more than twice its retail price. Similarly, the PS5 launch was attacked by scalpers, with many gamers failing to get their hands on Sony’s latest console until 2022 or later.
Here’s my advice for you: if you have a current-gen console (Switch 2, Series X, or PS5) or a decent PC, hold on to it. If you sell now with the hopes of upgrading to something in the future, you will definitely experience the pain of sticker shock. And for all that is holy, please don’t overpay for a RAM kit unless you absolutely need to do so.
