If you’re into video gaming, especially PC gaming, it’s abruptly gotten even more expensive and is only going to get worse in the near future.
The price for DRAM memory modules, used in consumer PCs, has soared in the past few weeks, reports PC Gamer. Sticks of memory from leading manufacturers are now selling for triple, even quadruple what they cost in September.
Much of the blame is being put on AI. Deals have been put in place that will see scores of new data centres built over the next 2-3 years – those data centres require massive amounts of DRAM to meet the memory needs of modern AI models.
Not only are they locking down huge chunks of the world’s supply, but DRAM manufacturers are shifting their plants to manufacture more AI server-friendly HBM chips rather than the DDR or GDDR used in consumer PCs – thus reducing supply for consumer-grade memory.
It also means that even when the ‘AI Bubble’ bursts, which people were panicking about last week until NVIDIA reported record earnings, there won’t be a flood of cheap memory on the market as HBM chips are no good for consumer PCs.
Now comes news via TechSpot and WCCFTech that AMD and NVIDIA may halt production of mid-level and budget-level graphics cards (GPUs) due to the growing global DRAM shortage. This is expected to impact some of the most popular graphics cards on the market and potentially send their prices skyrocketing for computer components.
Overclock adds that AMD has issued a notice to its GPU partners that a price hike of ‘at least 10%’ is coming due to increased memory costs. Talk of potential game console price hikes is also swirling.
