Anyone who has done some PC part shopping lately may have noticed the grossly inflated prices of RAM kits right now. The price hikes apply to both DDR4 and DDR5 memory, in some cases doubling in price. It’s not a pretty sight for anyone in the market to upgrade, and it primarily stems from DRAM shortages as large AI firms eat up supply.

We’ve even seen retailers like Micro Center pulling RAM kits from its popular bundles, instead selling 2-in-1 motherboard & CPU combos, with RAM as an optional extra, so it’s safe to say the prices are pretty ridiculous right now. The bad news is that, alongside these DRAM shortages, NAND supply chains are also being affected.

AI demands more SSDs for inference

Phison, a leading supplier of NAND technology, recently had its Q3 earnings call. During the call, CEO Pua Khein-Seng revealed unprecedented demand, growing by 50-75% in a few months’ time. With the rise in demand, you can expect consumer NVMe SSDs and other NAND products to be affected.

“Demand in mobile and the PC is still very strong. Just suddenly the AI system need more storage for AI inference. You feel all looks like the demand coming from AI, true, but not true yet because the PC also has a really good amount consumption on the NAND.”

Pua Khein-Seng, Phison CEO, via Yahoo Finance

Despite Western Digital previously saying that hard drives are still important for AI, this is less true for AI inference – the process of using a trained AI model to make predictions or decisions on new or unseen data. Demand on the NAND industry will no doubt affect the PC market too, which Pua Khein-Seng notes is “still very strong”. The Phison CEO also notes in the earnings call that cloud and edge AI is “going to need more storage,” and that “hard drive deplacement [sic] is happening”. He expects NAND supply to be “tight for many, many years”.

The sudden spike in RAM prices has taken many PC builders off guard. It’s not quite as bad in the SSD sector, but it may only get worse. Looking at the Amazon price-tracking site Camelcamelcamel, we can see rising costs since the end of October on some popular NVMe drives. Upcoming sales events like Black Friday might be your best chance at a decent price.

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.