RAM prices have risen sharply over the past 18 months, largely because the AI industry is consuming manufacturing capacity that would otherwise supply ordinary consumer memory. This matters because RAM is essential to phones, tablets and PCs, so higher component costs are likely to make new devices more expensive for some time.

Most global RAM production comes from Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron, while high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for AI data centres uses the same underlying wafer supply as consumer DRAM. Micron has said an HBM unit can consume roughly three times the wafer supply of DDR5 RAM; meanwhile, 32GB DDR5 kits cited by PCPartPicker rose from under $100 in early 2025 to over $400, with some higher-end 32GB kits exceeding $1,200.