It’s no secret that PC gamers have been shocked by sudden RAM price hikes, as memory shortages have driven the cost of DDR5 and DDR4 kits. Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney claims the situation will be “a real problem” for gaming for the next few years, as AI data centers eat up supply. In early October, OpenAI teamed up with two suppliers to target 900,000 DRAM wafers per month.

Anyone who has gone to buy a new RAM kit lately will have noticed the sudden price jump, which is now more than double the cost in some cases. The effect is also being felt, to a lesser degree, in the SSD market due to a demand for NAND technology for AI inference workloads.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney says high-end gaming is affected

These comments from the Epic Games boss are in response to Theo Browne, YouTuber and developer of AI chatbot t3. Browne recently pointed out the massive price increase on 64GB of Crucial DDR5, which has jumped from $240 to $498. Sweeney points out that data centers are bidding “far higher” than companies building machines for consumers.

The term ‘high-end gaming’ could be interpreted in a few ways. Regardless, anyone building a brand new gaming PC designed for modern AAA titles will probably have to spend more than they’d like on RAM. Last-gen DDR4 RAM prices are also absurd, so even building an entry-level rig can be costly in the current market.

Prebuilt systems such as the upcoming Steam Machine may help soften the blow – if Valve can price it well. Memory shortages may also prove to affect the next generation of consoles, and they have already reportedly caused a big delay for Nvidia’s next graphics cards, RTX 50 Super, as well as drive up AMD GPU prices by an expected 10% or more.

In other Tim Sweeney news, he recently made a surprise appearance at Unity’s annual conference. Not to crash the party of the rival game engine company, but he was at Unite 2025 to announce support for Unity engine games in Fortnite, coming next year.

About the Author

Jack Goodall

At PC Guide, Jack is mostly responsible for reporting on hardware deals. He also specializes in monitors, TVs, and headsets and can be found putting his findings together in a review or best-of guide.