It’s never a bad time to upgrade your gaming PC. Graphics card prices have fluctuated steadily throughout the 2020s as the industry grapples with the pandemic and AI-related shortages, but it’s actually possible to get respectable mainstream-end GPUs like AMD’s Radeon RX 9060 XT and 9070 series or Nvidia’s RTX 5060, 5070, and 5080 series right now at or slightly below their suggested retail prices. During the spring and summer this was almost impossible.
but this is No It’s a good time to build a new PC or replace your old motherboard with a new PC that requires DDR5 RAM. And that’s because of the shortage of RAM and flash memory chips that has suddenly sent SSD and (especially) memory prices into the stratosphere, largely caused by the ongoing AI boom and exacerbated by panic-fueled buying by end users and device makers.
To illustrate how quickly things have grown in a short time, let’s compare some of the RAM and storage prices listed in our system guide three months ago to the prices of the exact same components today. Note that many of these are based on the last available price and are currently sold out; We haven’t even looked at things like microSD or microSD Express cards that might be affected.
| Component | August 2025 price | november 2025 price |
|---|---|---|
| Patriot Viper Venom 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR-6000 | $49 | $110 |
| Western Digital WD Blue SN5000 500GB | $45 | $69 |
| Silicon Power 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 | $34 | $89 |
| Western Digital WD Blue SN5000 1TB | $64 | $111 |
| Team T-Force Vulcan 32GB DDR5-6000 | $82 | $310 |
| Western Digital WD Blue SN5000 2TB | $115 | $154 |
| Western Digital WD Black SN7100 2TB | $130 | $175 |
| Team Delta RGB 64GB (2 x 32GB) DDR5-6400 | $190 | $700 |
In short, there is no escaping these price increases, which affect both SSDs and DDR4 and DDR5 RAM kits of all capacities (although higher capacity RAM kits are slightly more impacted). If you’re thinking about an SSD upgrade, they haven’t increased Very Ridiculous yet, but if you’re thinking about a RAM upgrade, your best option is to hold tight to what you already have and hope nothing breaks any time soon.
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