By Nadav Suleymanov
A student replacing a four-year-old laptop this fall could pay hundreds of dollars more than they did last year, not because the computer got dramatically better, but because artificial intelligence (AI) companies are buying up the world’s memory supply.
According to pricing data from PCPartPicker, cited in a Tech Times report on the shortage, a 32GB kit of DDR5 (a computer’s fast and short-term memory that temporarily holds data for apps and programs in use) was selling for around $375 as of June 2026, up from under $100 about a year earlier. The cause isn’t a factory fire or a shipping delay. It’s the AI boom, and it’s driving up the price of the laptops students need this fall.
Overview
The price of RAM, the short-term memory of every laptop and desktop, has recently skyrocketed as the race to develop AI accelerates. As tech companies push for larger, more powerful AI models, memory manufacturers are devoting more of their production capacity to a more specialized, higher-margin chip called high-bandwidth memory (HBM). Semiconductor factories have limited production capacity, so every production line dedicated to HBM means less capacity available for standard DDR5 memory found in most regular laptops, desktops and gaming consoles.
TrendForce, a research firm that tracks the global memory industry, reported in January that AI and server demand were already heavily displacing DDR5 production and ramping up its price. TrendForce kept raising its price forecasts throughout the winter, projecting that DDR5 prices would rise 30 to 50 percent each quarter through the first half of 2026.
What RAM Actually Is
Think of your computer memory like a chef’s countertop. The chef can only work with what is spread out in front of him or her. A bigger countertop means more ingredients within reach, so the chef can cook faster instead of constantly running back to the pantry to trade out ingredients. RAM works the same way. The more of it a laptop has, the more tasks it can handle at once without slowing to a crawl, whether that’s a dozen browser tabs, a video call or a paper due at midnight.
Training an AI model means feeding it billions of text examples so it can learn patterns in language. This process requires thousands of processors working together, each needing enormous amounts of memory to hold the data it’s processing. Ordinary memory isn’t fast enough to keep up with such large-scale workloads, so manufacturers built a specialized alternative: HBM, which has its memory chips stacked on top of each other to move data far faster than a standard memory module you’d find in a laptop. That speed is why it sells at a much higher price than ordinary memory.
Manufacturers Are Following the Money
The three biggest manufacturers of the world’s memory chips, Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron, are increasingly dedicating their production capacity to HBM instead of standard DDR5. According to TrendForce data cited in the previous Tech Times report, producing one gigabyte of HBM consumes enough manufacturing capacity to produce roughly four gigabytes of standard RAM. The same report states that HBM now brings in close to 30 percent of total DRAM industry revenue while making up only about 8 percent of the memory actually produced, nearly a 4-to-1 ratio.
The chain reaction is straightforward. AI companies pay premium prices for high-performance HBM, so manufacturers shift factory capacity toward it. In turn, DDR5 production drops, making standard memory scarce and expensive. That financial burden lands on anyone buying a laptop, desktop or gaming PC. TrendForce forecasts a 90 to 95 percent jump in first-quarter 2026 DRAM contract prices. Abit reported that a certain 32GB DDR5 kit that retailed for around $225 in fall 2025 was going for $625 or more by June 2026. This is not limited to students; enterprise servers, office desktops and everyday consumer laptops are all pulling from the same shrinking supply of DDR5.
Will Prices Stay This High?
Analysts are split. On one side, AI demand shows no sign of slowing, and Samsung and SK Hynix have both said the memory shortage could last through 2027 or longer, according to the Tech Times report. Accio’s market analysis noted that Micron has begun signing five-year supply agreements with major customers to manage the volatility. On the other side, there are early signs of relief. Tom’s Hardware reported in July that price growth had started to cool, not because AI demand dropped, but because consumers had begun hitting a limit on what they were willing to pay, even as AI-driven demand kept prices climbing overall through the third quarter of 2026.
There doesn’t seem to be an end in sight; both Samsung and SK Hynix expect the shortage to last into 2027 or longer. The companies driving this shift aren’t thinking about the student trying to buy a laptop for the next four years of classes, papers and finals. But that student is paying for the companies’ AI arms race anyway. Every prompt typed into an AI chatbot now competes with the RAM inside the next student’s laptop.
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