I'm clinging to the hope that the memory supply crisis resolves sooner rather than later as much as the next PC gamer. Unfortunately, judging by how much of next year's memory supply has been locked down by long term agreements, it looks like things are about to get much worse before they get better.

80% of Samsung's 2027 memory output has already been secured by long term agreements, according to Korean investment firm KB Securities (via Yonhap News).

Hyperscalers pushing forward with the big data centre build out will likely be jostling for the remaining 20%. As for Samsung's commodity memory output—your DRAM, your NAND, and so on—70% is already said to be covered by five year contracts.

Yearly agreements account for 100% of the company's High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) output (which is most often used by graphics cards and accelerators for data centres). As a result, KB Securities predicts that the average selling price for this specialised memory will increase by between 100 and 150% year-over-year. Bottom line, that will have a knock-on effect on the consumer market too, with a double-digit quarter-over-quarter price increase expected on the other side of the coming new year.

So, while it's one thing for the odd big tech CEO saying "It's impossible for the shortage to last until 2030," we do still need to make it to that ballpark year first. Unfortunately for this rapidly overextending metaphor, the field is on fire. If you've been camping out under the bleachers, trying to ignore how hot it's feeling, I recommend taking a look at our freshly updated memory crisis explainer here. Long game made short, yes, it is all AI's fault.

On the flip side for those so inclined, now might be the time to invest in Samsung as KB Securities also predicts "earnings growth virtually guaranteed." The firm predicts Samsung's operating profit to see a 57% year-over-year increase in 2027, reaching 555 trillion Korean won (or a little over $4 billion).

This prediction arrives in the wake of last week's big AI and semiconductor stock sell off. KB Securities note that Samsung saw a share price decline of 19% during this time, which sure ain't nothing!

This hasn't swayed the investment firm's prediction though, with KB Securities saying, "We believe the sell-off is attributable to weaker sentiment [regarding AI investments more broadly] and valuation adjustments amid macro uncertainties, rather than any deterioration in the company’s earnings fundamentals. Macro variables may boost near-term volatility, but are unlikely to affect the direction of earnings growth, given the output reserved by LTAs and rising prices. In short, we believe earnings growth in 2027 is virtually assured."

Well, that investor jargon is all very well and good for a massive corporation like Samsung. For the rest of us, I still don't advise panic buying hardware, but it does look like prices are only going to get worse in the near-term.

Many of tech's heaviest hitters have seen their share prices decrease significantly this week. For instance, Nvidia has seen a decrease of about 8% over the last five days—and this AI company is far from the only one seeing such a dip.

Over the last five days, we've seen share prices fall by 13% for AMD, and nearly 15% for Intel. Looking more broadly across the AI and semiconductor industries, CNBC reports 20 of the most valuable players have shed more than $1 trillion in value as investors sell off stock.

The bigger picture doesn't look any better: over the last five days, Samsung Electronics has seen its share price decrease by nearly 20%, SK hynix is down 18%, and Micron has seen a dip of over 15%.

A combination of factors have likely triggered this big chip stock sell off, including concerns that the memory supply crisis may actually reverse into oversupply come 2029, according to a recent column in South Korea's Maeil Business Newspaper.

There's more going on than just the CEO of Acer insisting "It's impossible for the shortage to last until 2030!" We also know that many chip manufacturers have already been working to boost their production capacity, though TSMC's next-gen Arizona fab is fully booked before it has even been built.

Chinese manufacturer CXMT is also growing, which is likely to go at least some way towards putting a dampener on the western market's aspirations. It's been stocking up on western DUV machines and is estimated to match Micron in terms of DRAM manufacturing capabilities this year. The chip manufacturer also recently claimed it had created breakthrough chip architecture that increases memory density. Make no mistake, CXMT is one to watch.

On top of that, The CEOs of both Intel and Broadcom recently claimed that financing could become a bigger hurdle to overcome for the AI industry than even securing memory or electricity supply. The uptick in interest rates means that investors may feel the balance between borrowing and the return on investment for big tech's data centre build out is looking increasingly lopsided.

So, is the AI bubble finally popping? Even as air is clearly escaping, it's still hard to say. The resulting lower share prices from this widespread stock sell-off may inspire some investors to buy, for one thing.

Despite the high price of these infrastructure projects, the demand for AI computing remains robust according to tech analyst Dan Ives for merchant bank Yorkville Ives. Ives told CNBC, "What would change our view is a demand signal, not [an increased interest] rate signal."

As such, big tech likely won't be ditching data centres any time soon, and the AI bubble may once again reach for something more party-balloon shaped in the future.

Let's face it, buying a PC sucks right now. With the memory crisis in full swing, memory, storage, and even graphics cards are rising, and they're likely only going to rise until at least next year, and maybe longer. But if you've got to build yourself a PC anytime soon, there are still some deals to be had.

Like this Newegg bundle for $781. It pairs fast memory with a solid SSD, a decent AMD CPU, a motherboard to slot it into and a cooler as a cherry on top. Newegg says you're saving almost $300, but that doesn't even include the price of the $80 cooler. If you shop outside of Newegg, you can make up this bundle, minus the cooler, for just shy of $1,000, so it really is a solid deal.

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That Zen 5 chip is still very fast, and we gave it 81% in our review a few years ago. It's listed for $220 at Newegg but only $180 at Amazon, so if you were buying it for the CPU alone, I'd be looking elsewhere. Still, it's a decent chip, with six cores of the latest Zen 5 architecture, and more than capable of some very solid gaming.

Moving from here to the star of the show, the 6000 MT/s memory from Team Group is mighty powerful and comes embedded with RGB if that's your kind of thing. At 32 GB, it has a high capacity, and will be able to handle pretty much anything you can throw at it.

Team Group's G50 SSDs are certainly intended to be a more budget-friendly option, with sequential read speeds of up to 5,000 MB/s and write speeds up to 4,800 MB/s, but that's not bad at all for modern gaming. The only issue that might pop up here is capacity. 1 TB is still pretty low, but it's more than enough to throw Windows on and a couple of games.

The Gigabyte B850M Eagle is a solid Micro-ATX AM5 motherboard and it offers two M.2 slots, as well as Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet, and a smattering of USB ports.

Following this all up is the Cooler Master 240 mm all-in-one liquid CPU cooler. It's on the budget side, but with two 120 mm ARGB fans, going from 600 to 2100 RPM, it's plenty capable of cooling that low wattage AMD chip. Especially for free.

All you need from here is a PSU, case, and graphics card, and you're all set.

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We all know RAM and SSD prices have been significantly impacted by the memory supply crisis. But it's easy for some to forget just how much dedicated memory modern graphics cards rock these days. And when I say 'some' I mean those not still trying to hunt down a reasonably priced Nvidia RTX 5090. Alas, it sounds like the broader situation shows no signs of improvement.

Unfortunately for its Add-in Board partners, AMD has reportedly raised its prices for the GDDR6 memory that comes with its GPUs. According to sources on Chinese forum Boardchannels, the price increase took effect October 1 (via Benchlife).

If AIBs are having to pay more for AMD GPUs, they'll likely also raise their prices and pass the expense on to the consumer. Long story short, PC gamers will likely have to spend more on team red's wares in the near future. We've been actively monitoring graphics card prices for some time now, and sadly this is far from an unusual development.

Back in July, Nvidia made a similar move with the pricing of its GDDR6 and GDDR7 cards. Reports followed that Nvidia graphics card prices were rumoured to increase by as much as 30%.

In August, our Dave advised gamers to "avoid any Nvidia card with more than 8 GB VRAM, if you value your bank balance". It's also not just memory prices gamers have got to worry about when it comes to graphics cards, but increasingly limited supply too. Indeed, RTX 5090s have been particularly hard to find at US retailers online.

While celebrating the RTX 4090's fourth birthday earlier this week, rumours swirled that Nvidia had reportedly halted GeForce RTX 5090 production in favour of AI data centre GPUs. There's much ink I could spill on the AI industry's role in the memory supply crisis more broadly, but AMD and Nvidia are having to raise prices for reasons beyond that too. For instance, various components, such as the PCB, are also going up in price due to the war in Iran.

Bottom line, it's a tough time to be a PC gamer looking for a reasonably priced upgrade.

With companies, tech execs, and outlets such as yours truly telling everyone over and over again—sometimes very literally—that it's difficult to get your hands on memory right now and will be for some time, it can be a bit jarring to think about what the AI bigwigs are getting up to. I picture that scene where The Joker slides down a pile of cash, except it's DRAM. Anyway, case-in-point is a new AI-focused GPU from Intel that's rocking more than just a little memory.

Intel's new GPU D-Series, previously codenamed 'Crescent Island', crams up to 480 GB of LPDDR5X memory alongside its processor:

"Built on Intel's latest Xe3P architecture, the GPU combines up to 480 GB of LPDDR5X memory, 1.5 TB/s of memory bandwidth and 1.3 petaflops of FP8 compute within a 350-watt power envelope. This balance of memory capacity, compute performance and power efficiency reflects Intel's approach to optimizing infrastructure for real-world inference workloads."

The GPU, Intel says, is "designed to simplify deployment within existing data center environments while supporting application portability across Intel GPU platforms."

Intel's previous attempts at AI GPUs, codenamed Gaudi, failed to compete with Nvidia to any significant degree, which led to the cancellation of its follow-up 'Falcon Shores' GPUs. This time around, though, Intel is more directly targeting AI inference workloads rather than training, too.

Intel's VP of AI Products and GTM Anil Nanduri explains: "Inference is becoming the defining AI workload, and enterprises need infrastructure that delivers the right performance at the right cost. With Intel GPU D-series, we're focused on making high-capacity inference practical to deploy and economical to scale."

For context on the memory front, Intel's previous Gaudi 3 chip features 128 GB of unified HBM. Obviously this isn't apples-to-apples, as there's also a switch in the kind of memory it's using, from HBM to slower but more efficient LPDDR5X memory. "Target applications," Intel says, "range from multi-tenant AI services to robotics and other latency-sensitive workloads."

Whatever the case, it's a lot more than we see in our gaming GPUs, and perhaps worryingly is closer to the kind of memory we see in our consumer devices—worrying, that is, because it signals yet more production lines that could have been tailored to us being tailored to AI use cases.

At least we might be getting more memory in the RTX 5080 next year. Except oh, wait, if that happens it'll be tailored for AI, too, and almost certainly priced accordingly. I'll just wait for all this to blow over.

If you don't fancy hunting down every part of your build but want to put together a new rig, this Newegg bundle is the best way to do so. If you happen to already have a case you want to use, or a graphics card, that makes the bundle even better

For $630 at Newegg (with discount code FTTF7667), you can get an AMD Ryzen 5 9600X CPU with 32 GB of DDR5 memory, a Gigabyte B850M motherboard, and you can even throw in an MSI MAG Coreliquid cooler for free. The CPU is a tad cheaper over at Amazon, but as an entire bundle, I've not been able to find a better-priced grouping of parts.

• We're curating all the best Prime Day PC gaming deals here

Let's start with the main attraction: the memory. This particular kit of RGB-laden DDR5 memory fetches $479 at Newegg right now, making it the majority of the price of the bundle. You're getting two CL38 sticks here, rated at 6000 MHz, so it's a good performer for the price.

Moving on, we're big fans of the AMD Ryzen 5 9600X, giving it 81% in our review back in the latter half of 2024. Zen 5 chips are very fast; you're getting great gaming performance here, and they're relatively easy to cool. This CPU is currently $175 on Amazon, but it works out to a better deal in this bundle if you need all of the bits.

As you might expect from the bundled chip, the Gigabyte B850M Eagle Wifi 6E motherboard here is an AM5 modle, with four DDR5 DIMM slots, two M.2 slots, 4 SATA ports, Wifi 6E wireless connectivity, and a whole smattering of ports. It's a solid all-rounder.

Last but not least, the MSI MAG Coreliquid A13 240 cooler is, as you might expect from the name, a 240 mm liquid cooler. That's two 120 mm fans. It's also covered in RGB, and most importantly, it's free. Well, free if you buy the bundle, so not really. Anyway, it'll cost you $70 otherwise, so it's well worth throwing into your basket.

Grab yourself a PSU, storage, graphics card, and a case, and you have a full-on build. The memory crisis has made building rigs for reasonable cash much more difficult, but sorting out a load of components at once makes it a whole lot easier.

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I've said it once, and I'll say it again: Handheld gaming PCs are cooked right now. Even the Steam Deck, which was our budget hero once upon a time, will now set you back nearly 790 smackers at least. Gutting! But not all hope is lost, as our James has spotted a cracking deal on Lenovo's Legion Go S that makes it more affordable than Valve's handheld.

Whether you're picking up a handheld gaming PC during the Prime Day sales, or you got one back when they were much more reasonably priced, the next thing to navigate is storage. The form factor handhelds require, coupled with the still raging memory supply crisis, makes this a bit of a mission. However, I've found a deal on a 2 TB SSD that works out to $0.13 per GB.

Specifically, it's the 2230 form factor version of the WD_Black SN770M for $260, meaning it should handily slot into your handheld of choice. 2 TB is a lot of room for such a compact drive, and you're getting decent speeds with this one too (5,150 MB/s on the read, and 4,850 MB/s on the write).

• We're curating all the best Prime Day PC gaming deals here

Considering that to date I've found only one other SSD similarly priced, and that came with some caveats, I've got to wonder why this little guy is so reasonably priced. For starters, this is a TLC SSD with a very respectable 1200 TBW, so it's not really down to write endurance this time.

As you may already be aware, Western Digital used to own SanDisk, though the companies went their separate ways in 2025. Western Digital pulled back from consumer SSDs while SanDisk carried on, eventually announcing that the WD_Black and WD Blue product lines would eventually be rebranded as SanDisk Optimus. Bottom line, the WD_Black SN770M that's the subject of our deal today is likely old stock that Best Buy may be looking to clear out. Hey, I'll take it!

In his WD Black SN770M review, our Zak gave the 1 TB version of this drive his seal of approval. He wrote, "Although it lacks the sequential punch of some of its competitors, random 4K performance is top-tier, making it ideal for gaming handhelds, and for those on a budget looking to maximize those load times."

Now, those words were written before our current times of memory supply crisis. However, even as I wish the memory of last year's prices wasn't quickly fading from the rearview mirror, $0.13 per GB is arguably still in the spirit of Zak's verdict.

👉Shop all of Amazon's SSD deals here👈

Let's face it, memory and SSD prices aren't going back to normal for some time, so you've gotta take the wins when they come, and this Samsung drive is a real Prime Day win.

For under $197, you can pick up the Samsung 9100 Pro 1 TB model over at Amazon. That's a $143 saving, or just over 40% off. That's not pre-memory crisis pricing, but it's the best we'll likely get for some time.

• We're curating all the best Prime Day PC gaming deals here

As we noted in our review of the 2 TB model last year, the 9100 Pro is a super speedy drive that can be surprisingly efficient. This Gen 5 drive was among the fastest of the drives we tested at the time, with it performing phenomenally in sequential performance tests.

In CrystalDiskMark, we saw it land at an average of 14,322 MB/s on write, and 13,318 MB/s on read. If you are looking to do productivity work on the drive, it will absolutely blaze through your PC.

However, there is a caveat here: in random 4K performance, we found read speeds to be just a smidge above average performance and 4K write speeds to place below the likes of the Seagate FireCuda 540 and Crucial T700 2 TB. Random 4K performance is good for gaming specifically, so that means this SSD's gaming performance won't be the fastest out there.

Still, you're getting an impeccable drive, and with the memory crisis ongoing, we have less freedom to pick and choose among the best drives. If you need something fast under $200, this Samsung drive is worth a look. Right now, storage is in such a bad place, economically, that we'll take all the deals we can get, and by current standards, this is a bit of a steal.

There is a model you can pick up with an included heatsink, but it's around $150 more, and in our testing, the heatsink isn't great anyway.

If you aren't satisfied with just 1 TB in your machine, you can pick up a much bigger model. The 4 TB version is currently available for $735 right now, which is a lot of money but almost $700 less than its retail price at Amazon.

Alternatively, if you can handle half the speeds and a PCIe 4.0 drive, the Crucial P310 2 TB SSD has dropped to $250.

As well as this, you can bump your storage all the way up to a mighty 8 TB for $2,280, which is a drop of just over $400. Given the memory crisis is likely to continue to rage for at least another year or so, now is a decent time to pick up a drive if you need to upgrade any time soon. The 2 TB model was down at this price briefly in June, but we haven't seen it this low since prices started to rise at the beginning of the year.

👉Shop all of Amazon's SSD deals here👈

Alright, stop what you're doing because I've just been alerted to an actually decent SSD deal. Well, 'decent' requires some qualification given the memory supply crisis and all—we're not talking about 2 TB SSD going for last year's prices. Still, this is perhaps the best value 2 TB SSD deal I've come across during Amazon Prime Day.

I've been tracking the spiraling prices of SSDs for some time now, and over the last year the Crucial P310 has often been top of the list when it comes to prices approaching anything near reasonable.

Our Zak had plenty positive to say about the 1 TB version of this drive when he reviewed it, but today the 2 TB is what draws my attention—mainly because its sale price at Amazon breaks down to $0.12 per GB.

• We're curating all the best Prime Day PC gaming deals here

To be clear, that means you're still paying a smidge over $250 for a 2 TB SSD. However, the memory supply crisis has ensured that's the best SSD deal I've seen all week. I did say yesterday that if I found something better value than the PNY CS2241, I would be shouting it from the roof tops—so here we are.

If you're looking to expand your internal storage, this is a supremely cost-effective SSD to pick up. Better yet, it's also decently nippy with a 7,100 MB/s read and a 6,000 MB/s write speed. Your Steam backlog won't know what hit it.

That said, there are drawbacks to this SSD and the big fly in the ointment here is that this is a QLC drive with no DRAM cache. Bear with me as I break this down a bit: QLC can pack in more data at a lower cost in terms of both power and manufacturing, but it has lower write endurance than similar data storage tech like TLC, and it's quite slow once you get down to pure NAND speeds.

So, this drive is at a reasonable price point because it's QLC, but that also has some drawbacks. This 2 TB SSD has a 440 TBW, which should be fine for gaming (and less fine for anything more write heavy). If you're still not sure though, a five year warranty should offer some peace of mind.

👉Shop all of Amazon's SSD deals here👈

The head honcho of Micron, Sanjay Mehrotra, says that memory may be even harder to come by in the next two years than it is today. Now, a memory company's CEO is gonna say stuff like that during a historically momentous upturn in its business— anything to the contrary would be bad news for its share price—but it is a stark warning for all of us regular consumers still feeling the burn of the memory crisis.

"Industry demand has strengthened since our last earnings call," says Mehrotra during the company's Q4 earnings call (transcript from Investing.com), "and we expect memory and storage supply demand conditions to be much tighter in fiscal 2027 and 2028 than they were in 2026."

Here's Mehrotra again later in the call:

"We expect memory and storage supply-demand conditions to be much tighter in calendar 2027 and 2028 than they were in 2026."

And again…

"As we noted, in calendar 2027 as well as 2028, we see demand exceeding supply."

Alright, thanks, Mehrotra.

"We have shared with you that we do not see line of sight when supply catches up with demand."

Enough!

Mehrotra says this mostly comes down to AI, which is no surprise, with growing demand for agents, bigger models, and growing context. And it's not just Micron. Samsung came out this week with a similar warning: HBM demand is surging (that's the memory most often used for AI accelerators) and is expected to take another 10% of Samsung's capacity next year. As Samsung's capacity is finite and new fabs take a very long time, that's actively taking away capacity from DRAM, meaning DRAM supply may be more limited next year.

Mehrotra said something similar in the latest earnings call about capacity:

"We see continuing tight supply conditions because, first of all, clean rooms take a long while to build. Even after they are built, even after first wafer output, production ramps up only gradually in the clean rooms. That’s just the nature of what it takes to bring up production."

Yes, so that's bad news for us lot. Price rises that are biting now will continue to bite throughout the next few years. And that will affect product launches and MSRPs. We're expecting two new generations of graphics cards in that time (Vera Rubin and RDNA 5), two next-gen consoles, and a pile of CPUs from Intel and AMD. What does it mean for those? Nothing good.

On the flip side, we have heard from a CEO with a little less skin in the game, and they were more critical of the supposed memory crisis. Acer's CEO reportedly said it's "impossible for the shortage to last until 2030" and said some of this is just messaging to keep margins high and share prices plump. There are other dissenting voices, too, such as Michael Burry of 'big short' fame. He suggests the AI bubble may burst sooner rather than later, citing the Acer CEO's comments and accelerating timelines for the shortage coming to a close.

Comms app Discord is a notorious resource hog. So, news that a resource-light "Game Mode" for Discord is in the works is definitely welcome. The catch? Early sightings indicate the new mode will reduce "Discord's CPU and GPU usage while a game is running." Notably, there's no specific mention of reducing the app's memory footprint. Doh!

First mentioned by the unofficial Discord Previews X account and then confirmed by Discord itself, Game Mode "will automatically reduce animations and disable effects when it detects a game being played, freeing up CPU and GPU resources that might help your game run smoother."

Of course, as many observers note, arguably the biggest issue here is the basis of Discord on Electron, a framework for desktop applications that uses Chromium, the latter being the same core technology that powers the Chrome browser—itself not exactly known for its efficient use of resources like memory.

Late last year, Discord addressed long standing issues with Discord using excess memory. It even implemented a feature that restarted the app when the memory footprint exceeded 4 GB.

At the time, the Discord rep said on Reddit that the measure was not meant to be permanent. However, it's still there as far as we know.

Our own investigation into the impact of Discord on gaming frame rates found that maybe the problem wasn't so bad after all. Our Nick concluded, "I have to say, I can't see any serious issues at all."

However, that investigation was more about how Discord's process priorities are handled by default. Nick found that it wasn't much of a problem, but that it was easy enough to demote Discord process priorities in Task Manager if you were getting micro stutters from having it running in the background during games.

Arguably more of a worry, especially in the current context with memory prices spiralling ever higher, is RAM usage. And this new Game Mode doesn't seem to address that at all.

At best we can point to the throw-away comment at the bottom of Discord's X announcement on the matter, which reads, "aiming to add more resource-saving features over time." Here's hoping reducing that memory footprint is now the number one priority.

If you assume any trailer with the Nvidia logo plastered on the side is loaded with electronics, you would be sorely mistaken. And if you're anything like the thieves who stole two trucks from self-driving truck software company PlusAI, you will be left with 40,000 lbs of sand instead.

As reported by Wired, an executive at PlusAI reportedly received a message from an acquaintance stating, “I have been proud of you for your adventure and success at PlusAI. Just saw two of your trucks near my work place! :)”

The problem here is that those two trucks were supposed to be outside a warehouse half a mile away.

It turns out that PlusAI has partnered with Nvidia (hence the Nvidia-emblazoned truck) to work on its autonomous vehicles, and these two trucks were part of a simulation. They were each filled with 20,000 lbs of sand. The trailers were forcibly detached from their vehicles, and thieves drove off with the cargo, only to dump it outside the acquaintance's office when they discovered the silica, instead of silicon, stashed inside.

If you were going to try and steal a truck trailer full of pricey equipment, it makes sense why anything with an Nvidia logo would be a potential target. The big green juggernaut became the world's first $5 trillion company late last year and has cashed in majorly on the AI boom.

Nvidia is continuing to make money hand over fist thanks to AI, and therefore one might expect that Nvidia-labelled trucks are filled with powerful GPUs or other such expensive equipment.

Still, this theft is probably a good sign to PlusAI that it needs to be very careful when it comes to monitoring stock, especially when it's got such a high-value company name slapped on the side of its trailers. If the sand simulation was a test to see if thieves would steal from its warehouse, I'd say its results have been well and truly achieved. I'd say the real reason was likely a bit more boring, though. Given it's a simulated load, that implies it was for weight-testing purposes.

All 40,000 lbs of sand have now been recovered by PlusAI, though the thieves have not yet been caught.

We all know that path tracing is a bit of a GPU hog, and if you plan on running it in the remaster of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, you're going to need a beefy and relatively new rig for this graphical mode. However, to get the game up and running on the lowest settings at 30 fps, you won't need a very recent GPU.

With The Witcher 3 Remastered going live today, CD Projekt Red has shared what you can expect to run with every major CPU and GPU brand, with Low graphics at 30 fps requiring a relatively meagre Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 / AMD Radeon RX 550 XT / Intel Arc A580, plus an Intel Core i5 8400 or AMD Ryzen 5 2600.

However, for path tracing, you will need an Intel Core i9 13900K or AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, paired with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080. To get the estimated 60 fps at 4K, you will have to not only run DLSS, but you will need to use frame generation. That does mean it should fare better at 1440p or 1080p. CD Projekt Red does not specify which level of upscaling (though it says it's on Auto, whatever that means) or what level of frame generation is present for this setting.

As we saw in our investigation of Pragmata's path tracing earlier this year, we are expecting The Witcher 3 Remastered's path tracing to offer better shadows and highlights to generally make the world feel more 'real'. However, whether or not it's worth the hit to performance will be dependent on your tastes (and your rig). I'm not personally sold on even ray tracing's benefits all of the time, so it would be a tough sell for me, even if I had a rig good enough to run it.

Also notably, the RX 9070 XT isn't listed as an option for this top-tier graphics mode. That's most likely because this GPU struggles more than equivalent Nvidia ones to deal with path tracing, and at any rate it's less powerful in general than the RTX 5080 listed.

At the higher end, the 24 GB memory requirement may be tough for some rigs, what with the memory crisis continuing to rage. Still, the bottom end of this table isn't too bad. The GTX 1660 was a mid-range graphics card that launched seven years ago. That does mean that your rig you played the original The Witcher 3 on at launch won't be able to run the new remaster even on low settings, in case you were wondering.

But if you own the original game, you will be able to play the new remaster for free, and the Complete Edition is half off if you somehow don't already have it. With a new expansion out next year, it might finally be time for that replay.

Show of hands, who is sick of the memory crisis? One, two… ah, all of you. We've been dealing with it for pretty much a year now and it's showing no signs of it stopping soon. Some even suggest the supply shortage won't work its way out of the system until 2030. Except for Acer CEO Jason Chen.

I prefer Chen's take on the whole situation. In the Economic Daily, he reportedly said DDR4 and some DDR5 chips aren't actually in short supply. Neither are CPUs, for that matter. Though I don't think we've been worrying about those as much. In regard to the whole affair, Chen is reported to have said (machine translated): "It's impossible for the shortage to last until 2030!"

According to DigiTimes and Tom's Hardware, it's high-speed DDR5 chips that Chen says are in short supply. That's more like the sorta memory we see packaged alongside Intel's Panther Lake chips than desktop PCs.

"So they keep putting out the message: 'let me tell you, prices won’t come down until the year 20-whatever.' ”. Chen reportedly said of the memory manufacturers, whose margins and share prices are on the line.

Chen doesn't expect all this to blow over in a couple of months, mind you. He reckons that PC prices will continue to rise through the final few months of 2026, with an average price increase between 5-20%. That's on top of the already gargantuan price hikes we've seen all year—gaming PC deals are few and far between these days.

It is said that Chen expects a drop in prices to occur around the middle of 2027. Further to that, a proper price drop towards the end of next year. That does mean a lot of turmoil yet to come for PC gamers, but it's also a whole lot sooner than many others.

I'd love to take Chen's word on this one, but we do have a pile of forecasts to the contrary on this one. DRAM demand has been expected to outstrip supply by double-digit exabytes in 2030; SK hynix's CEO predicts it may go beyond 2030, though as the leader of a major memory manufacturer, it's tough to know what to make of that; Micron has previously guessed that demand will outstrip its own supply through the foreseeable future; and while all memory companies have expansion plans, fabs take a very long time to build.

On the flipside, Chinese DRAM manufacturers are closing the gap on Korean and American competition. CXMT has reportedly snapped up 7% of the market, according to Counterpoint Research. That puts pressure on those companies to act outside of their pre-defined plans for maximum profitability. New production capacity, especially in China, is one of the things that Chen suggests could see the shortage ending earlier than expected.

I'd love to take Chen at face value here, but in all honesty, I'm still not convinced we'll see this one sorted for a while. Power of positive thinking?

This appeared on my X feed this morning and it's been bouncing around in my brain since I saw it. Titled as the "first $100,000 RAM kit" it caught my eye. The first thing to note is that this is, inevitably, server grade memory, and 2 TB of the stuff as well.

It's DDR5-5600 of ECC RDIMM in a 16-pack kit for precisely $101,451.99 at Amazon, for all you server engineers out there. But the question that has been burning my bonce is who is buying their server farm memory directly from Amazon? But hey, Nemix RAM has been around a while now, and if it really is offering lifetime warranty on your $100k+ purchase that ain't bad. But surely, surely, you're getting a better deal from whoever you deal with, because if you're looking after datacenter hardware you must have been getting your kit from somewhere else originally, right?

But then, I think we're probably at the point in the memory crisis where it really is any port in a storm, and people are getting memory wherever they can find it. So I guess this is just a sign of where we're at right now.

I've got to the point where I grimace when I see a listing for a gaming PC. The memory crisis has so severely gutted pricing and availability that I've found my eyes glazing over PCs whenever they're on the screen in front of me.

One glance at our roundup of the best gaming PC deals shows that even getting a rig under $1,000 with a discrete graphics card is a bit of a struggle, and you are making significant compromises to get the price that… low. Okay, yes, it doesn't feel low, but that's the new normal. All praise our new AI overlords.

And iBuyPower routinely features among the most budget rigs. That's because, be it smart compromises, the ability to buy in bulk, or a prayer to some sort of hardware god, its rigs are somewhat reasonable for prebuilds.

The RDY Scale B06 I've had across my desk shoves a budget Intel CPU and budget Nvidia GPU into its surprisingly large case, alongside a pretty small SSD and single-channel memory.

Features

RDY is iBuyPower's preconfigured range, which means they are ready to ship pretty much the moment you hit 'buy'. As such, the RTX 5060 / Intel Core Ultra 5 225F model I've got my hands on is the only version of the B06 you can currently buy.

For its relatively budget-friendly price, it makes some compromises, the biggest of which you will find in its memory and storage.

The memory is DDR5, but with a CAS latency of 40 and overall speed of 5200 MT/s, it's not super fast. There's also only one stick, so you are taking a hit to performance over dual-channel memory of the same capacity. How much depends on the game or workload, but there will be a hit.

Should you have the funds and the patience, you could technically track down a second module matching this same stick and bump your capacity up to 32 GB, but that's a hard sell, and was even before the memory crisis. Most of the time, you are better off selling a single stick and buying two (at a loss) if you're looking to upgrade, as it can be tough to track down the exact stick you need and even that doesn't guarantee compatibility.

There's just 1 TB of storage in this machine. That is pretty much the minimum I would want in a gaming rig right now, especially when you consider the actual storage available to you will likely be 50-100 GB lower than 1 TB.

The 1 TB in my rig translates to 952 GB. That doesn't include browsers and any other Windows apps. Then, you might have Steam, Epic Games, likely the Nvidia app, plus any drivers, and any other media apps like Spotify. By only downloading the games I used for the benchmarks below, I was left with around 300 GB on the drive.

Now, we would have received twice the memory capacity for the price if it weren't for the memory crisis, but you have to expect to pay more for gaming PCs right now, and those compromises make some sense from iBuyPower.

Performance

This rig is a sign of how bad the memory crisis has gotten. Late last year, we checked out the Acer Predator Orion 3000, which was just $20 more, came with a full-fat RTX 5070, a better Intel chip for multithreaded workloads, and even came in a cute compact case.

Because of that higher-tier GPU, the Orion outpaces this iBuyPower rig in every gaming test I conducted. Some by just a few frames, and some more convincingly so. Acer did make compromises here with PCIe 3.0 storage speed and 16 GB DDR4 memory, but it's still all in all a better rig, and a much more compact one. The caveat, though, is that while you can find RTX 5070 PCs at this price on occasion, they are becoming ever more rare, and this SKU of the Orion 3000 is nowhere to be seen these days.

1440p gaming performance

This chart shows average and 1% low frame rate results in various tested games at 1440p resolution

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (1440p Ultra)Cyberpunk 2077 (1440p RT Medium)Cyberpunk 2077 (upscaling) (1440p RT Medium)Baldur's Gate 3 (1440p Ultra)Black Myth: Wukong (1440p Very High)Black Myth: Wukong (upscaling) (1440p Very High)Metro Exodus: Enhanced Edition (1440p Ultra)

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

ABS Cyclone Aqua | RTX 4060 Ti | 7800X3D

42

33

Acer Predator Orion 3000 I RTX 5070 I 14700F

88

43

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | 8945HX

44

38

iBuyPower RDY Element 9 Pro R07 | RX 9070 XT | 7800X3D

68

27

iBuyPower RDY Scale B06

36

24

0255075100

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (1440p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
ABS Cyclone Aqua | RTX 4060 Ti | 7800X3D	42 Avg FPS, 33 1% Low FPS
Acer Predator Orion 3000 I RTX 5070 I 14700F	88 Avg FPS, 43 1% Low FPS
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | 8945HX	44 Avg FPS, 38 1% Low FPS
iBuyPower RDY Element 9 Pro R07 | RX 9070 XT | 7800X3D	68 Avg FPS, 27 1% Low FPS
iBuyPower RDY Scale B06	36 Avg FPS, 24 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

ABS Cyclone Aqua | RTX 4060 Ti | 7800X3D

32

25

Acer Predator Orion 3000 I RTX 5070 I 14700F

57

40

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | 8945HX

32

26

iBuyPower RDY Element 9 Pro R07 | RX 9070 XT | 7800X3D

66

55

iBuyPower RDY Scale B06

35

28

020406080

Cyberpunk 2077 (1440p RT Medium) Data

Product	Value
ABS Cyclone Aqua | RTX 4060 Ti | 7800X3D	32 Avg FPS, 25 1% Low FPS
Acer Predator Orion 3000 I RTX 5070 I 14700F	57 Avg FPS, 40 1% Low FPS
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | 8945HX	32 Avg FPS, 26 1% Low FPS
iBuyPower RDY Element 9 Pro R07 | RX 9070 XT | 7800X3D	66 Avg FPS, 55 1% Low FPS
iBuyPower RDY Scale B06	35 Avg FPS, 28 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

ABS Cyclone Aqua | RTX 4060 Ti | 7800X3D

50

42

Acer Predator Orion 3000 I RTX 5070 I 14700F

139

49

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | 8945HX

86

69

iBuyPower RDY Element 9 Pro R07 | RX 9070 XT | 7800X3D

184

102

iBuyPower RDY Scale B06

90

67

050100150200

Cyberpunk 2077 (upscaling) (1440p RT Medium) Data

Product	Value
ABS Cyclone Aqua | RTX 4060 Ti | 7800X3D	50 Avg FPS, 42 1% Low FPS
Acer Predator Orion 3000 I RTX 5070 I 14700F	139 Avg FPS, 49 1% Low FPS
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | 8945HX	86 Avg FPS, 69 1% Low FPS
iBuyPower RDY Element 9 Pro R07 | RX 9070 XT | 7800X3D	184 Avg FPS, 102 1% Low FPS
iBuyPower RDY Scale B06	90 Avg FPS, 67 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

ABS Cyclone Aqua | RTX 4060 Ti | 7800X3D

90

58

Acer Predator Orion 3000 I RTX 5070 I 14700F

73

38

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | 8945HX

59

42

iBuyPower RDY Scale B06

71

43

0255075100

Baldur's Gate 3 (1440p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
ABS Cyclone Aqua | RTX 4060 Ti | 7800X3D	90 Avg FPS, 58 1% Low FPS
Acer Predator Orion 3000 I RTX 5070 I 14700F	73 Avg FPS, 38 1% Low FPS
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | 8945HX	59 Avg FPS, 42 1% Low FPS
iBuyPower RDY Element 9 Pro R07 | RX 9070 XT | 7800X3D	N/A
iBuyPower RDY Scale B06	71 Avg FPS, 43 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

ABS Cyclone Aqua | RTX 4060 Ti | 7800X3D

29

24

Acer Predator Orion 3000 I RTX 5070 I 14700F

46

31

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | 8945HX

26

20

iBuyPower RDY Element 9 Pro R07 | RX 9070 XT | 7800X3D

56

49

iBuyPower RDY Scale B06

30

23

015304560

Black Myth: Wukong (1440p Very High) Data

Product	Value
ABS Cyclone Aqua | RTX 4060 Ti | 7800X3D	29 Avg FPS, 24 1% Low FPS
Acer Predator Orion 3000 I RTX 5070 I 14700F	46 Avg FPS, 31 1% Low FPS
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | 8945HX	26 Avg FPS, 20 1% Low FPS
iBuyPower RDY Element 9 Pro R07 | RX 9070 XT | 7800X3D	56 Avg FPS, 49 1% Low FPS
iBuyPower RDY Scale B06	30 Avg FPS, 23 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

ABS Cyclone Aqua | RTX 4060 Ti | 7800X3D

49

41

Acer Predator Orion 3000 I RTX 5070 I 14700F

70

48

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | 8945HX

37

33

iBuyPower RDY Element 9 Pro R07 | RX 9070 XT | 7800X3D

83

51

iBuyPower RDY Scale B06

47

39

0255075100

Black Myth: Wukong (upscaling) (1440p Very High) Data

Product	Value
ABS Cyclone Aqua | RTX 4060 Ti | 7800X3D	49 Avg FPS, 41 1% Low FPS
Acer Predator Orion 3000 I RTX 5070 I 14700F	70 Avg FPS, 48 1% Low FPS
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | 8945HX	37 Avg FPS, 33 1% Low FPS
iBuyPower RDY Element 9 Pro R07 | RX 9070 XT | 7800X3D	83 Avg FPS, 51 1% Low FPS
iBuyPower RDY Scale B06	47 Avg FPS, 39 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

ABS Cyclone Aqua | RTX 4060 Ti | 7800X3D

61

42

Acer Predator Orion 3000 I RTX 5070 I 14700F

97

27

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | 8945HX

52

36

iBuyPower RDY Element 9 Pro R07 | RX 9070 XT | 7800X3D

115

42

iBuyPower RDY Scale B06

65

45

037.575112.5150

Metro Exodus: Enhanced Edition (1440p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
ABS Cyclone Aqua | RTX 4060 Ti | 7800X3D	61 Avg FPS, 42 1% Low FPS
Acer Predator Orion 3000 I RTX 5070 I 14700F	97 Avg FPS, 27 1% Low FPS
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | 8945HX	52 Avg FPS, 36 1% Low FPS
iBuyPower RDY Element 9 Pro R07 | RX 9070 XT | 7800X3D	115 Avg FPS, 42 1% Low FPS
iBuyPower RDY Scale B06	65 Avg FPS, 45 1% Low FPS

The RTX 5060 is a solid 1080p card that becomes a decent 1440p one if you are willing to stomach a bit of frame generation or upscaling. Still, it's one of the weakest offerings of the RTX Blackwell generation.

In our tests, I spotted similar scores to RTX 4060 and RTX 4060 Ti rigs, and that's partly because this same price point would have gotten you better CPUs a few years ago to throw alongside it, but also because the generational leap between the RTX 40- and RTX 50-series isn't monumental.

The RTX 5060 / Intel Core Ultra 5 225 F combo is decidedly budget, as far as modern offerings are concerned, and you will spot that in our gaming tests. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora at Ultra on 1440p barely cracks 30 fps, and the same is true for Cyberpunk 2077 and Black Myth: Wukong. Upscaling makes these games much more playable, and the older Metro Exodus can stay around 60 fps.

The AtomMan G1 Pro, with its low-profile RTX 5060 and AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX, outperforms it in Avatar, but the Scale B06 takes the win in everything else. The G1 Pro is kitted out with 32 GB of DDR5 5200 memory. That is double the capacity of the Scale B06, and dual-channel. That means it has not only twice the capacity but twice the available bandwidth, too. But the Intel chip helps the iBuyPower PC pull through for the win.

Notably, the 1% lows are almost the same for both rigs in Baldur's Gate 3, despite the Scale B06 easily outpacing the G1 Pro in average fps. That's likely down to the memory. Baldur's Gate 3 is quite a CPU-heavy game, and the slower, lower-capacity RAM is hindering what should be a much faster chip in the Scale B06.

The Intel CPU in the Scale B06 has fewer physical cores and a lower boost clock than the 8645HX, but higher base clock speeds and a great L1 and L2 cache. In Cinebench, I saw a slightly higher single-core index for the Intel chip, but a significantly better multithread index for the AMD one. The Atomman G1 Pro has, however, gone up significantly in price even since our review in April.

The RTX 4060 Ti ABS Cyclone Aqua we reviewed last year seems to outpace or match this 5060 rig in most tests, only firmly losing in the Black Myth: Wukong upscaling benchmark. And with the RTX 5060, you pretty much need to get used to some level of upscaling if you want a smooth experience in modern games. Upscaling technology has gotten much better over time, and so has frame generation, but it's still a pretty weak card as far as pure rasterisation is concerned.

System performance

The laptops are here tested against intensive benchmarks that mostly test the CPU, but also the GPU, for productivity tasks.

3DMark Time Spy Extreme3DMark StorageCinebench 2024Blender 4.2.0 (junkshop)7zip 24.07Handbrake UHD to 1080p conversion

CPU index

GPU index

Overall index

ABS Cyclone Aqua | RTX 4060 Ti | 7800X3D

10593

6124

6555

Acer Predator Orion 3000 I RTX 5070 I 14700F

7307

10663

9975

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | 8945HX

9435

6380

6705

iBuyPower RDY Element 9 Pro R07 | RX 9070 XT | 7800X3D

6031

14162

11779

iBuyPower RDY Scale B06

6051

6536

6458

03,7507,50011,25015,000

3DMark Time Spy Extreme Data

Product	Value
ABS Cyclone Aqua | RTX 4060 Ti | 7800X3D	10593 CPU index, 6124 GPU index, 6555 Overall index
Acer Predator Orion 3000 I RTX 5070 I 14700F	7307 CPU index, 10663 GPU index, 9975 Overall index
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | 8945HX	9435 CPU index, 6380 GPU index, 6705 Overall index
iBuyPower RDY Element 9 Pro R07 | RX 9070 XT | 7800X3D	6031 CPU index, 14162 GPU index, 11779 Overall index
iBuyPower RDY Scale B06	6051 CPU index, 6536 GPU index, 6458 Overall index

Overall index

Avg bandwidth (MB/s)

Access time (us)

ABS Cyclone Aqua | RTX 4060 Ti | 7800X3D

2155

381.13

86

Acer Predator Orion 3000 I RTX 5070 I 14700F

1525

261.85

118

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | 8945HX

1493

259.42

122

iBuyPower RDY Element 9 Pro R07 | RX 9070 XT | 7800X3D

2343

403.37

77

iBuyPower RDY Scale B06

2152

371.21

84

07501,5002,2503,000

3DMark Storage Data

Product	Value
ABS Cyclone Aqua | RTX 4060 Ti | 7800X3D	2155 Overall index, 381.13 Avg bandwidth (MB/s), 86 Access time (us)
Acer Predator Orion 3000 I RTX 5070 I 14700F	1525 Overall index, 261.85 Avg bandwidth (MB/s), 118 Access time (us)
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | 8945HX	1493 Overall index, 259.42 Avg bandwidth (MB/s), 122 Access time (us)
iBuyPower RDY Element 9 Pro R07 | RX 9070 XT | 7800X3D	2343 Overall index, 403.37 Avg bandwidth (MB/s), 77 Access time (us)
iBuyPower RDY Scale B06	2152 Overall index, 371.21 Avg bandwidth (MB/s), 84 Access time (us)

Single core index

Multi thread index

ABS Cyclone Aqua | RTX 4060 Ti | 7800X3D

124

1668

Acer Predator Orion 3000 I RTX 5070 I 14700F

114

1024

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | 8945HX

111

1323

iBuyPower RDY Element 9 Pro R07 | RX 9070 XT | 7800X3D

110

1046

iBuyPower RDY Scale B06

119

802

05001,0001,5002,000

Cinebench 2024 Data

Product	Value
ABS Cyclone Aqua | RTX 4060 Ti | 7800X3D	124 Single core index, 1668 Multi thread index
Acer Predator Orion 3000 I RTX 5070 I 14700F	114 Single core index, 1024 Multi thread index
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | 8945HX	111 Single core index, 1323 Multi thread index
iBuyPower RDY Element 9 Pro R07 | RX 9070 XT | 7800X3D	110 Single core index, 1046 Multi thread index
iBuyPower RDY Scale B06	119 Single core index, 802 Multi thread index

CPU (samples)

GPU (samples)

ABS Cyclone Aqua | RTX 4060 Ti | 7800X3D

130

920

Acer Predator Orion 3000 I RTX 5070 I 14700F

72

1642

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | 8945HX

132

953

iBuyPower RDY Element 9 Pro R07 | RX 9070 XT | 7800X3D

83

918

iBuyPower RDY Scale B06

64

931

05001,0001,5002,000

Blender 4.2.0 (junkshop) Data

Product	Value
ABS Cyclone Aqua | RTX 4060 Ti | 7800X3D	130 CPU (samples), 920 GPU (samples)
Acer Predator Orion 3000 I RTX 5070 I 14700F	72 CPU (samples), 1642 GPU (samples)
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | 8945HX	132 CPU (samples), 953 GPU (samples)
iBuyPower RDY Element 9 Pro R07 | RX 9070 XT | 7800X3D	83 CPU (samples), 918 GPU (samples)
iBuyPower RDY Scale B06	64 CPU (samples), 931 GPU (samples)

Compressing (GIPS)

Decompressing (GIPS)

ABS Cyclone Aqua | RTX 4060 Ti | 7800X3D

164

182

Acer Predator Orion 3000 I RTX 5070 I 14700F

84

119

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | 8945HX

87

199

iBuyPower RDY Element 9 Pro R07 | RX 9070 XT | 7800X3D

115

131

iBuyPower RDY Scale B06

70

78

050100150200

7zip 24.07 Data

Product	Value
ABS Cyclone Aqua | RTX 4060 Ti | 7800X3D	164 Compressing (GIPS), 182 Decompressing (GIPS)
Acer Predator Orion 3000 I RTX 5070 I 14700F	84 Compressing (GIPS), 119 Decompressing (GIPS)
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | 8945HX	87 Compressing (GIPS), 199 Decompressing (GIPS)
iBuyPower RDY Element 9 Pro R07 | RX 9070 XT | 7800X3D	115 Compressing (GIPS), 131 Decompressing (GIPS)
iBuyPower RDY Scale B06	70 Compressing (GIPS), 78 Decompressing (GIPS)

ABS Cyclone Aqua | RTX 4060 Ti | 7800X3D

88

Acer Predator Orion 3000 I RTX 5070 I 14700F

42

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | 8945HX

80

iBuyPower RDY Element 9 Pro R07 | RX 9070 XT | 7800X3D

75

iBuyPower RDY Scale B06

57

0255075100

Handbrake UHD to 1080p conversion Data

Product	Value
ABS Cyclone Aqua | RTX 4060 Ti | 7800X3D	88
Acer Predator Orion 3000 I RTX 5070 I 14700F	42
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | 8945HX	80
iBuyPower RDY Element 9 Pro R07 | RX 9070 XT | 7800X3D	75
iBuyPower RDY Scale B06	57

Outside of gaming, the Team Group T-Force G50 SSD is decently performant and speedy, clocking in an overall index score of well over 2,000 in 3DMark's storage test. Other creator tests don't perform quite as well, with the CPU at this machine's heart being fairly slow to handle a Handbrake video conversion, and sitting well behind the likes of the Aqua and G1 Pro in Time Spy Extreme and 7zip.

Though single-core Cinebench scores are solid, multithread scores are lacking. This all means that if you're looking for a heavy-duty content creator machine, you'd best be looking elsewhere. In fairness, the single-channel memory should have already put you off, anyways.

Thermals

Real-world temperatures

temperature results recorded in different testing suites

Gaming TempsCreator tempsIdle temps

Avg CPU Temp (°C)

Max CPU Temp (°C)

Avg GPU Temp (°C)

Max GPU Temp (°C)

ABS Cyclone Aqua | RTX 4060 Ti | 7800X3D

62

79

64

40

Acer Predator Orion 3000 I RTX 5070 I 14700F

63

92

65

45

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | 8945HX

89

91

77

67

iBuyPower RDY Element 9 Pro R07 | RX 9070 XT | 7800X3D

63

71

60

43

iBuyPower RDY Scale B06

53

59

65

67

0255075100

Gaming Temps Data

Product	Value
ABS Cyclone Aqua | RTX 4060 Ti | 7800X3D	62 Avg CPU Temp (°C), 79 Max CPU Temp (°C), 64 Avg GPU Temp (°C), 40 Max GPU Temp (°C)
Acer Predator Orion 3000 I RTX 5070 I 14700F	63 Avg CPU Temp (°C), 92 Max CPU Temp (°C), 65 Avg GPU Temp (°C), 45 Max GPU Temp (°C)
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | 8945HX	89 Avg CPU Temp (°C), 91 Max CPU Temp (°C), 77 Avg GPU Temp (°C), 67 Max GPU Temp (°C)
iBuyPower RDY Element 9 Pro R07 | RX 9070 XT | 7800X3D	63 Avg CPU Temp (°C), 71 Max CPU Temp (°C), 60 Avg GPU Temp (°C), 43 Max GPU Temp (°C)
iBuyPower RDY Scale B06	53 Avg CPU Temp (°C), 59 Max CPU Temp (°C), 65 Avg GPU Temp (°C), 67 Max GPU Temp (°C)

Max CPU temp (°C)

Max SSD temp (°C)

Max VRM temp (°C)

ABS Cyclone Aqua | RTX 4060 Ti | 7800X3D

91

67

70

Acer Predator Orion 3000 I RTX 5070 I 14700F

69

27

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | 8945HX

93

58

71

iBuyPower RDY Element 9 Pro R07 | RX 9070 XT | 7800X3D

80

46

iBuyPower RDY Scale B06

67

53

0255075100

Creator temps Data

Product	Value
ABS Cyclone Aqua | RTX 4060 Ti | 7800X3D	91 Max CPU temp (°C), 67 Max VRM temp (°C), 70 Max SSD temp (°C)
Acer Predator Orion 3000 I RTX 5070 I 14700F	69 Max CPU temp (°C), 27 Max SSD temp (°C)
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | 8945HX	93 Max CPU temp (°C), 58 Max VRM temp (°C), 71 Max SSD temp (°C)
iBuyPower RDY Element 9 Pro R07 | RX 9070 XT | 7800X3D	80 Max CPU temp (°C), 46 Max SSD temp (°C)
iBuyPower RDY Scale B06	67 Max CPU temp (°C), 53 Max SSD temp (°C)

CPU (°C)

GPU (°C)

ABS Cyclone Aqua | RTX 4060 Ti | 7800X3D

27

35

Acer Predator Orion 3000 I RTX 5070 I 14700F

33

22

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | 8945HX

51

38

iBuyPower RDY Element 9 Pro R07 | RX 9070 XT | 7800X3D

42

37

iBuyPower RDY Scale B06

33

43

015304560

Idle temps Data

Product	Value
ABS Cyclone Aqua | RTX 4060 Ti | 7800X3D	27 CPU (°C), 35 GPU (°C)
Acer Predator Orion 3000 I RTX 5070 I 14700F	33 CPU (°C), 22 GPU (°C)
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | 8945HX	51 CPU (°C), 38 GPU (°C)
iBuyPower RDY Element 9 Pro R07 | RX 9070 XT | 7800X3D	42 CPU (°C), 37 GPU (°C)
iBuyPower RDY Scale B06	33 CPU (°C), 43 GPU (°C)

Perhaps owing to the large capacity of the case allowing smooth, unblocked airflow, or partly due to the large fan on the CPU, or maybe because both the CPU and GPU are fairly low wattage, this rig is positively frosty. Measuring temperatures during our range of creator applications, it is among the coolest we've tried in recent times, sitting well below the iBuyPower RDY Element 9 Pro R07. Admittedly, the latter iBuyPower machine is much more powerful, but its max CPU temps are significantly under the RTX 4060-equipped Lenovo Legion Tower 5i (Gen 8), the RTX 4060 Ti ABS Cyclone Aqua, and the RTX 5060 AtomMan G1 Pro. In fairness, the AtomMan is a very compact build, so you would expect higher thermals.

Still, the point stands that this iBuyPower handles its heat in a particularly cool fashion. Unfortunately, my model's motherboard doesn't appear to have a VRM temp sensor, so I couldn't grab those temperatures, but the CPU and SSD heats were very manageable in the creator suite.

For gaming, it's much the same story, with the GPU only maxing out at 67 °C. This is particularly impressive because it averaged 65 °C. It's a similar story with the CPU, with both average and max sitting in the 50s.

Aesthetics

The Scale B06 feels like an oddly large PC for what inside is a fairly compact build. You don't have extra coolers hogging up space here, and the Asus RTX 5060 is a fairly small card, too. That means there is tons of empty space in the case. Its dimensions make it fairly similar to the Maingear MG-1 MK.II, but at least the Maingear with its overhead cooling and large RTX 5090 fits the space a bit better. Still, I suppose that means you can throw a few Hatsune Miku figures in the RDY Scale B06 and I'd be confident they won't melt.

Other than the RGB fans and the iBuyPower logo slapped on the bottom of the front panel, the Scale B06 is fairly plain. It's just a big black case with a clear side panel. Though the RGB in the fans do give it a bit of a gamer look. My model has pretty great wiring, all funnelling through the back of the rig tidily, so it's super clean.

The first time I unboxed it, the Scale B06 was a bit of a task to get on the PC Gamer test bench table. It's not only bulky, but quite heavy at 16 kg too. You are going to need quite a bit of space (and a few muscles) to fit it into your gaming den.

One thing that surprised me when taking the panels of this PC off is that they aren't held in with screws. They are simply wedged into the side, but they require a bit of a yank to come out, which makes me feel comfortable that they won't just pop off and spread broken tempered glass all over the floor when a breeze comes through the office.

Sound

As far as sound is concerned, the B06 offers a downright pleasant experience, only ever rising to a light hum at its most intensive. That translates to around 40 decibels, which is light enough that even a relatively quiet office will drown it out. In a totally silent environment, you will definitely hear the Scale B06, but you have to accept that with pretty much any bit of hardware, especially one with so many parts.

Even when I put my ear directly against the tempered glass while the rig was working its hardest, I could only make out a soft hum from the fans.

Software

My review rig showed up with a fresh Windows install, and the only other preinstalled software was Realtek audio drivers, Intel drivers, and the Nvidia app. iBuyPower doesn't appear to load the Scale B06 with its own software, and that's a boon given the size of modern PC games and the capacity left in the 1 TB drive that comes with it. It was easy to set up otherwise, and it took me mere minutes to get rid of Copilot and install Google Chrome.

Value

Though the iBuyPower RDY Scale B06 retails at $1,479, it is currently available for $1,379 (and it was $100 less than that last week with a code). That puts it much closer to the rigs we tend to see in our roundup of the best gaming PC deals every week. But even then, it is outpaced by the iBuyPower Element SE, which is $80 less and comes with a better graphics card (RTX 5060 Ti) and a better gaming CPU (AMD Ryzen 7 9700F).

Then, if you simply want an RTX 5060 rig, the ABS Cyclone Aqua offers that, plus 32 GB of DDR4 memory (more of it, but worse speed) and an Intel Core i5 14400F (another 10-core chip but with less cache) for $230 less. There are some compromises with this ABS build (as you will be making with pretty much any build right now), but its compromises are in good places.

As you might expect from iBuyPower, it has thrown a gaming keyboard and mouse into the box, and you get a month of Xbox Game Pass with it too. I'd say the peripherals are decidedly meh, with the Chimera KM7 membrane keyboard feeling a bit too squishy and weak under the fingers, and the wired mouse being rather slow. But for something free in the box, that's slightly above what I was expecting. And the keyboard even comes with a media dial, which is a slight plus. If I spent my entire budget on the PC, I'd be happy enough using the mouse and keyboard until I got together the budget for something better.

This is one of the hardest reviews I've ever written, because the market is ever-changing (for the worse), and this flux state means we have to accept less for more until at least 2027, and likely longer.

So, to simplify things, I thought I'd ask myself, 'Would you buy this rig today if you absolutely had to get one?' and my answer would be 'definitely not for its full price'. However, I have seen this rig go as low as $1,280, and for that price, it does put up a fight among the most budget rigs. In fact, it could even eke out the Element SE and its RTX 5060 Ti at the right time.

The only problem is that iBuyPower only seems to sell the RDY models via its own website, so you have less of a chance of picking one up at a big discount at Walmart or Best Buy. But giving more options for relatively reasonable prices is only a good thing in my book, and if it gives a potential buyer slightly more choice at the $1,000-$1,500 range, it's a solid enough addition to the market. iBuyPower has made some decent concessions for that price point; it's just a shame it has to do that in the first place

As a PC builder it seems like your best bet these days is to start keeping an eye on Newegg's bundle deals if you're looking to put together a new gaming rig. Even then, it's not cheap or easy, or even more affordable than just buying a discounted prebuilt gaming PC.

But PC building is one of the best things about this hobby and I'll be damned if any AI-generated memory crisis is going to take that away from me. So I'm regularly playing around with the Newegg combo builder, and right now there's a decent AMD deal that nets you an Asus motherboard, a six-core Zen 4 CPU, and 16 GB DDR6-6000 for $546.98 at Newegg. And you even get a free 240 mm Cooler Master CPU cooler in the mix.

Just add in an RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB card—for just $389 at Walmart still—and you're getting more or less an entire gaming PC for $936. Okay, you still need a PSU, a case, and some storage, but what's an SSD between friends?

The parts

A little bonus for you...

Alternatively, you could just go for a full prebuilt gaming PC, such as this one from iBuyPower that Jacob highlighted last week that is still live and kicking today. It's another RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB machine, but comes with a 1 TB SSD and 32 GB of DDR5-5200 memory.

You could potentially build a system up with the Newegg combo that would get close to that, but if you did want a 1 TB SSD and 32 GB of memory in there then you are going to blast past the $1,400 price tag of the iBuyPower system.

Sadly, this is another nail in PC building from a value perspective, but I still maintain it's the best way to get to know your PC; getting elbow deep into its innards and bringing it to life.

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Yawyore Gaming PC | Ryzen 5 5600GT

The integrated graphics on this processor won't get you gaming at higher resolutions or higher settings in modern games, but it's a great way to get into some light 1080p gaming. This gaming PC mainly acts to get you up and running, and you can then upgrade with a (relatively low-power) discrete GPU down the line, though bear in mind if you want the latest and greatest specs, including processor and RAM, you'll have to upgrade the entire PC, motherboard, too. Also note that you won't be able to keep many games installed at the same time on that 500 GB drive. Key specs: Ryzen 5 5600GT | 16 GB DDR4-3200 | 512 GB SSD

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ABS Cyclone Aqua | RTX 5060

You're making quite a lot of sacrifices here to keep the price tag well under $1,000—namely a pretty lacklustre CPU and only 16 GB of previous-gen RAM. But you are getting an RTX 5060 machine for a very reasonable price in today's market. That means decent, discrete graphics for 1080p and even some lighter 1440p gaming. Key specs: Core 5 120 | RTX 5060 | 16 GB DDR4 | 1 TB SSD

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Stormcraft Sirius | RTX 5060

This is a decent little rig for $1,000, primarily thanks to that CPU-GPU combo. For 2026 prices, you're getting some decent 1080p gaming performance for a reasonable price tag. Just bear in mind that you're only getting 16 GB of DDR4 RAM, and upgrading to DDR5 in future (presumably when the memory shortage eventually ends) will require a platform upgrade, too. Key specs: Core i5 14400F | RTX 5060 | 16 GB DDR4-3200 | 1 TB SSD

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ABS Cyclone Aqua | RTX 5060

If you're on a budget of around $1,000, this is where it's at right now. That's because you're not just getting the RTX 5060, but also a decent Core i5 CPU and 32 GB of RAM. It's not DDR5, but even 32 GB of DDR4 is rare these days thanks to the memory shortage, so this is a great all-round deal. Use promo code ABSIGD20 for the full discount. Key specs: Core i5 14400F | RTX 5060 | 32 GB DDR4-3200 | 1 TB SSD ** 14/09/2026 - OUT OF STOCK **

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CyberPowerPC Gamer Xtreme | RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB

The main reason to opt for this rig is that in addition to the RTX 5060 Ti, it's also rockin' a 250KF Plus. We love the non-F version (which is the same but has integrated graphics) as it's a genuinely great current-gen processor. The only real downside here is it looks like that 16 GB of RAM is a single stick. Welcome to 2026 and the memory shortage, I guess. Key specs: Core Ultra 5 250KF Plus | RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB | 16 GB DDR5 | 1 TB SSD ** 14/09/2026 - PRICE UP **

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iBuyPower Element SE | RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB

If you're looking for a budget PC, this one is a good shout if you're looking for something for more than just gaming. The Ryzen 7 here is a great mid-range processor that beats many others in its price bracket, and you're getting DDR5 RAM which means the AM5 platform will have some longevity to it. Just note it is only a single stick of DDR5 you're getting. Key specs: Ryzen 7 9700F | RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB | 16 GB DDR5 | 1 TB SSD

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MSI Codex Z2C | RTX 5070

The headline here is obviously that you're getting an RTX 5070 in a very reasonably priced rig given the 2026 market. The caveat is that CPU is not a full-fledged desktop one, rather a repurposed power-limited and low-cache chip. It's socket AM5, though, so swapping to a decent Ryzen chip should work wonders. Key specs: Ryzen 7 8700F | RTX 5070 | 16 GB DDR5 | 1 TB SSD

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iBuyPower Slate | RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB

This is about as cheap as you'll find a gaming PC that not only gives decent 1080p and 1440p gaming performance but also gives plenty of wiggle room in the general processing department. That's thanks not only to the Core i7 chip but also the 32 GB of DDR5 RAM, which offers plenty of peace of mind during this global memory shortage. Sadly you're only getting the 8 GB version of the GPU, though. Key specs: Core i7 14700F | RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB | 32 GB DDR5-5200 | 1 TB SSD

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HP Omen 35L Valorant | RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB

Yes, this is pushing close to RTX 5070 gaming PC territory, but it's still a bit cheaper than decent RTX 5070 rigs. And more importantly, here you're getting a full-fat 16 GB RTX 5060 Ti, which will be enough VRAM to give the GPU some real longevity. Key specs: Core i7 14700F | RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB | 16 GB DDR5-6000 | 1 TB SSD ** 14/09/2026 - PRICE UP **

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MSI Codex R2 AI | RTX 5070

For mid-range gaming, this is about as good as you'll get for value in 2026. It might only have 16 GB of RAM, but you're getting a decent processor and an RTX 5070, which makes this gaming PC great for 1080p and 1440p gaming. Key specs: Core Ultra 7 265F | RTX 5070 | 16 GB DDR5 | 1 TB SSD ** 14/09/2026 - PRICE UP **

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Skytech Gaming Blaze 5 | RTX 5070

We're in the time of compromises, it seems, because this might offer some serious gaming grunt for the cost, but it also skims pretty significantly on memory. 16 GB of DDR4-3200 isn't great all-round, but purely for gaming it should be fine. And you're getting a very nice midrange CPU-GPU combo. Key specs: Core i7 14700F | RTX 5070 | 16 GB DDR4-3200 | 1 TB SSD

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Acer Nitro 85 | RTX 5070

Another RTX 5070 gaming PC around the $1,500 mark makes me very happy, given the general dearth of great mid-range rigs for under, say, $1,800. This one only has 16 GB of RAM, but that's mostly expected in 2026 given the memory shortage. Key specs: Core Ultra 7 265F | RTX 5070 | 16 GB DDR5 | 1 TB SSD ** 14/09/2026 - PRICE UP **

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Both reporting on and reading about the raging memory supply crisis has meant a procession of bad news. So when someone actually has a win to share, I'll gladly take it. Case in point, purveyor of modular laptops Framework is actually lowering the price of some of its memory products.

"We have a positive update today on LPCAMM2 pricing!" The company wrote on X, "We were able to source a limited quantity at lower cost, and are retroactively reducing prices for orders that shipped at higher price, as well as offering the lower price to orders through Batch 10."

In a blog post, Framework explains that it's been able to secure a limited supply of Micron 32 GB and 64 GB LPCAMM2 memory modules at a lower cost than before.

The company adds, "We are committed to passing on savings whenever we can and keeping computers as accessible as possible in the current environment, so we are rolling out price reductions across both already shipped and a subset of currently pending pre-orders."

These modules were previously the subject of bad news back in July, when Framework shared that its supplier's memory prices were 'more than double' its previous shipment. Framework admits that the pricing of this latest, lower-cost batch of memory is still "above our original pre-order launch baseline," but that "they are lower than the last cost update that drove our current pricing for new pre-orders."

If you were eyeing an upgrade for your own Framework Laptop 13 Pro, now is the time to scoop one as the lower price stock likely won't last. Framework wrote in a follow up post on X, "We have a limited quantity available, so are offering this first-come, first-serve to customers through Batch 10. If we're able to source additional quantities or have remaining inventory, we'll open it to later batches and then to new pre-orders."

Similarly, if you'd just placed an order, Framework should've automatically refunded you the cost difference—even if it's already shipped. What's more notable is that folks who have already received their DIY Edition Framework 13 Pro can reach out via this contact form if they'd like to switch to a 32 GB or 64 GB memory module at the new reduced price.

Framework appears to be going out of its way to pass on the benefits of this cost-reduced stock. It doesn't feel all that dissimilar to the tariff refund situation with Panic, where those who bought the company's Playdate handheld at a higher price due to US tariffs received a refund. To paraphrase Panic co-founder Cabel Sasser, perhaps Framework also feels that any savings it makes on this latest LPCAMM2 memory shipment is just not its money to keep.

As the spawn of two IT professionals, my childhood home is still steeped in a whole lot of old hardware. It's amazing what my folks have lying around—but I very much doubt they've got a horde of RAM they've just neglected to tell me about.

One Redditor recently revealed they have roughly $10,000 AUD (about $7,200 USD) worth of RAM squirrelled away in their garage. The stash appears to contain multiple 64GB DDR4 sticks. The poster said in a follow-up comment that this small fortune came from "an old work server that they let me keep." Some hardware professionals get all the luck.

PC gamers should be no strangers to how much memory servers can gobble up, with at least some of the blame for our present memory crisis moment resting on the shoulders of AI data centres. Worse still, not all server memory will be compatible with your rig; modern desktop PCs tend to use UDIMMs, whereas servers use RDIMMs—Corsair breaks down the differences here.

Basically, if the AI bubble bursts tomorrow, leaving lots of server memory floating around in its wake, that wouldn't automatically be great news for your gaming rig.

Today, if you happen to stumble upon a windfall of server memory yourself, leveraging runaway memory pricing to your advantage and selling the stash is the most practical option. The Redditor who shared their stash hasn't yet said what they plan to do with it—though folks in the comments are already asking if they could be sold a stick or two. I suppose desperate times call for desperate measures, such as commenting on a Reddit thread.

The fact that world powers are engaged in a technological arms race is now pretty common knowledge. AI capabilities are starting to serve as national and international litmus tests for soft and hard power, but these capabilities depend on the physical hardware underneath them. And while China has been lagging behind the West in this regard, it has very quickly been playing catch-up.

It's not all as simple as east vs west, however, as much of China's hardware is still, in fact, bought from the Western company ASML. The Financial Times reports that, "according to a person with knowledge of the matter", [Chinese memory makers] CXMT and YMTC have managed to stock up on enough DUV machines from western machine-maker ASML to support their next three years of expansion plans.

This is despite the push—not just from the Chinese government but also from companies such as Huawei, as the FT also reports—to back domestic production and eliminate foreign tech from China. Domestic alternatives are still said to be a few years behind ASML machines' productivity levels.

Deep ultraviolet (DUV) machines aren't the latest and greatest ones—extreme ultraviolet (EUV) ones are—but they're still what a lot of chipmakers, even in the West, still use. It's recently been confirmed that Samsung and TSMC will be moving to high numerical aperture (high-NA) EUV production by 2028 and 2030, respectively, and these two already use low-NA EUV, but the older DUV tech is still very widely used for chip production even by these companies.

There's been a rumour for some time that China has its hands on an EUV machine, and there have even been concerns that the country might have its hands on one made by ASML despite the newer tech being banned for sale and export to China, though the Dutch machine maker denies this.

At any rate, even without EUV capabilities, China can still play a mighty quick catch-up with DUV. CXMT and YMTC having three years' worth of machines for their planned chipmaking expansion will certainly help. China is reportedly making its own DUV machines, but buying some ready-made from ASML will do the job.

The former company has been quickly and steadily increasing its market share of late, and while its memory is still almost solely ending up in domestic products, that's not guaranteed to always be the case. Plus, Chinese customers keeping away from Western memory still puts competitive pressure on Western memory makers and manufacturers.

CXMT's memory has even started to adorn RAM kits that match our preferred specs for gaming PCs here in the West, which gives us a particularly concrete idea of how far the Chinese memory industry has come. And with plans for ever-more fabrication plants, it's all to play for.

With Fable (it's just called Fable, but it's technically Fable 4) set to release on February 23 next year, we finally have its system requirements. And for a big budget game launching in 2027, they're not too bad.

That's according to the newly updated Fable FAQ, which says you will need an Intel i7 6850K or an AMD Ryzen 5 2600, paired with either an RTX 5050 / RTX 2060, a Radeon RX 6600, or an Intel A580 to run the game on a minimum. Minimum in this case means running the game at 1080p at 30 fps.

With the RTX 2060 being a budget-to-mid-range graphics card from 2019, and both suggested CPUs being nearly a decade old, these are reasonably unintensive requirements, assuming you can stomach 30 fps. Especially for what looks to be a very good-looking game.

The recommended specs (which in this case means running the game on Medium) are an Intel i5 11600KF or AMD Ryzen 5 5600 paired with an RTX 5060 / RTX 3060 TI, or an AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT / RX 7600 XT. There's no Intel GPU mention on this one, and 'recommended' entails playing the game on 1440p at 30 fps or at 1200p at 60 fps.

Fable supports DLSS 4.5, FSR 3 and 4, and XeSS 2.1, though Xbox tells us the fps targets don't include any upscaling. That's good news, and should mean you will get more out of your rig if you're willing to do a bit of upscaling.

With the game still a good few months out, these may not be the absolute final requirements, but they paint a good picture of what you could roughly expect out of your rig.

Still, early signs are decent here, and the 12 GB memory requirement isn't too bad, even with the memory crisis in full swing. In fact, with the memory crisis also taking the price of SSDs with it, its 135 GB of storage requirement may be the hardest for me to make room for. Hey, maybe you've got a few hundred GB in your recycle bin, like I did a buddy of mine did.

With the memory crisis in full swing, it's taking severe chunks out of the supplies of both NAND (used for SSD storage) and DRAM, which is used for RAM modules. Chinese memory maker YMTC has had a lucrative couple of years with the former, yet it's not done yet. YMTC reportedly wants to sit at the very top of the pile for NAND flash memory, and it wants to do it very soon.

According to the Financial Times, citing "two people with knowledge of the matter", YMTC told investors that it wants to be the leader in the market (ahead of Samsung and SK hynix) by the end of 2027. That's a pretty bold claim considering it would need to more than double its current market share.

According to Counterpoint Research, YMTC holds a 13% market share, while NAND memory leader Samsung holds 29%. In fairness, though, YMTC does appear to be building up its infrastructure to handle growth.

In April, it was reported that YMTC was aiming to more than double its wafer production. It would do so by building two additional foundries and finishing the build of a third foundry that was already under construction.

NAND memory is a very lucrative business right now. In the first quarter of 2026, NAND flash memory makers earned $46 billion in revenue, which is over 3.5 times what they made in the same quarter last year. NAND memory is only getting more expensive, and data centers are mopping it all up to train AIs and store all that data. But YMTC has even had a win in the consumer market, seemingly putting its SSDs into some Lenovo laptops. That's something it may have struggled to do previously, if it weren't for memory and storage supplies being so limited.

YMTC is reportedly also planning to make moves in the DRAM memory market, but it has CXMT, a different Chinese memory brand, to compete with there. CXMT has managed to pull in a 7% market share in the memory business, which isn't loads compared to the 39% held by Samsung, the 26% SK hynix has, and the 26% that Micron currently enjoys, but is quickly and steadily increasing.

It seems like China has two major memory manufacturers coming more decidedly into the global market, and given their surprisingly substantial market shares, they're coming in swinging.

As for the SSDs that you and I may put in our PCs, the market is looking mighty rough. We round up the best cheap SSD deals every week, and a 2 TB drive will cost you at least $200 right now.

More supply is obviously a good way of tackling the memory crisis, but one has to hope the supply goes up at a quicker rate than the already substantial demand, or we won't see any of the benefit of this heightened memory production. Even Samsung reckons we're in for a 'severe' memory supply crisis next year, so things are looking bleak at least in the short-to-medium term.

My kid sister's gaming laptop has finally died a death, so I'm on the hunt for a replacement prebuilt gaming PC. Unfortunately, her one ask was that I find something that will eventually be able to run Grand Theft Auto 6, but who knows what system requirements that will ask for. Instead, I've found a prebuilt that won't break the bank, and will be able to play at least the last few PS5 timed exclusives that came to PC.

Now, what I've found is still a bit pricier than I'd like to recommend to someone who has literally just moved out of our parents' place, but it's definitely a cost-effective way to score a whole load of RAM during the memory supply crisis. Without further ado, this AVGPC Max Series Gaming PC packs in 32 GB of DDR4, plus an 8 GB RTX 5060 Ti GPU for only $1,209 from Newegg.

In the midst of the RAMpocalypse, what good deals there are come with plenty of caveats, and this one's no different. As you'll know, DDR4 memory is far from bleeding edge, though it's still fine to game with. 32 GB of the stuff is nothing to sneeze at either, but it's also worth noting that all of this last-gen memory is also paired with a fairly old CPU.

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This prebuilt gaming PC features the AMD Ryzen 5 5600X which, though we really liked this CPU when it debuted in 2020, is hardly a spring chicken anymore. Basically, this isn't the most future-proof prebuilt you can buy, even with the 50-series card inside accounting for nearly half of the price.

Obviously, at this point, no one can guarantee what hardware will play well with the eventual PC port of GTA 6. However, my sister offered Marvel's Spider-Man 2 as another performance yard stick, and on this prebuilt I feel confident she'll be web-slinging with the best of them.

At the very least, this machine's 1 TB of SSD storage should offer lightning fast loads across New York. As for the bundled peripherals, I think I'll direct my kid sister to our best gaming mouse and best gaming keyboard guides instead, as I very much doubt the included keyboard and mouse will be worth typing home about.

To summarise, the AVGPC Max may not be bleeding edge, but it won't bleed your budget dry either. The CPU and DDR4 memory is older hardware, but the RTX 5060 Ti graphics card makes for a modern compromise.

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Nvidia's latest earnings call is in and, as you can probably guess, the GPU maker turned AI hardware creator is raking in cash hand over fist. But alas, a projected 70% revenue increase for the 2028 fiscal year is apparently conservative, as the blasted memory crisis is getting in the way. You know, that memory crisis, which Nvidia's AI aspirations are currently making worse.

When asked about that 70% figure specifically, CEO Jensen Huang confirmed that it's a "constrained" number that is informed by the lack of available memory in the market

Huang says, "The unconstrained would be a lot higher. We grew 100% year-over-year this year. The unconstrained is significant. And so we're just going to have to work hard to get more capacity. And we have a large supply chain".

Nvidia's financials paint an interesting picture, specifically one where data centers account for the majority of revenue, and consumer demand lacks in response. Nvidia made $96.2 billion in the latest quarter, with a gross margin of 75% and data center revenue accounting for $89 billion. That's a 117% jump from last year.

Annoyingly, Nvidia doesn't report gaming in financial earnings, and instead wraps it into 'Edge Computing', which includes gaming, workstations, physical AI PCs and robotics. That accounts for $7.1 billion in the latest earnings call. That's a 27% jump from last year.

In regard to Edge Computing, Nvidia says "increases were driven by strong sales of Blackwell workstations, partially offset by slower consumer PC sales that were tempered by elevated memory and systems prices."

As of today, the RX 9070 XT and 9060 XT are sitting atop the Amazon and Mindfactory GPU sales. It's not yet clear if pricing, stock, or a combination of both are responsible for this shift.

Huang says many investors expressed concerns regarding gross margins with rising component costs, and confirms "we are experiencing extreme pricing conditions in memory. The magnitude of the price increase has exceeded our prior expectations and [is] headed even higher into next year."

However, he argues, "We have a really gigantic supply chain. And so we have incredible partners, and we've secured a lot of supply, but we just need a lot more."

It seems the memory crisis is really hitting everyone and is unlikely to end any time soon. Even the likes of Samsung has warned of a 'severe' memory supply crisis next year. Pour one out for poor old Nvidia, who will have to pay more for the fire it is currently throwing even more wood onto.

With the memory crisis only continuing to get worse, a PC gamer's fear right now is likely their memory, storage or GPU borking, and needing to spend an inflated price to replace it. One such Redditor had an external drive die in just one year, and Crucial only offered a refund of the original price they paid, which was a lot less than similar drives go for now. That was until they brought their problems to Reddit.

Over on the PCMR subreddit, user CarefulMeasurement99 shared that they bought a 4 TB Crucial drive a year ago for $200, and when it broke, Crucial offered that original price in a refund. That same drive seems to fetch up to $800 now (thanks, AI).

Crucial originally set up an RMA for the drive in order to pick it up and send it back to the company. The Redditor replied to this saying, "Due to the recent global increase in SSD prices, $199.999 is unfortunately no longer enough to purchase a new 4 TB drive in the current market", and officially requested a direct replacement.

This story gets a tad complicated because Micron announced the closure of the Crucial consumer business late last year, which threw its ability to actually replace the drive into question.

Crucial responded to this request saying, "after reviewing the current inventory situation, we must advise that we do not have any replacement units available for this product" and again stated they could only approve the original refund.

Crucial does clarify in the warranty section of its website, "We understand that replacement costs may be higher today. However, warranty coverage is tied to the original purchase."

An important point to note is that the Redditor buying this drive from Crucial last year meant they didn't buy one from a competitor. In getting a faulty drive, they missed out on getting a fresh one at the lower price they originally paid. Therefore, one would assume that Crucial should cover the replacement, as it sold a drive it believed would last longer than a single year.

When this problem was taken to Reddit, CarefulMeasurement99 was advised to inform Crucial "that a refund was unacceptable" and they "demanded a 4TB equivalent replacement (or alternative), and mentioned that this issue was gaining massive traction here on Reddit."

They also, on Reddit's advice, cited the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, which is an act that, among other things, tightened consumer remedies for active warranties. In this case, they seemingly threw in the reference to suggest that they would take some legal action if necessary.

Micron, being one of the big three memory manufacturers, certainly has the cash to spare, and it has profited heavily from the memory crisis that is causing the prices of memory to skyrocket.

Just a few hours after sending this email, Crucial approved a 1-to-1 replacement, confirming it had "limited inventory available to replace the drive with a new one".

Triumphantly returning to the subreddit, CarefulMeasurement99 said: "Holy shit, pushing back actually worked!"

On the one hand, given the global memory shortage and astronomical RAM prices, it's hard to get excited about any news from the memory industry. On the other hand, there's always the chance that developments could alleviate some of the supply strain, and today we have the latter: Chinese memory has broken the 9,000 MT/s barrier.

That's according to Colorful, which shared the accomplishment on Chinese social media site Weibo (via TechPowerUp).

The company says: "Following its impressive overclocking results of 8600 MT/s and 8800 MT/s, the Colorful iGame X870E VULCAN W OC motherboard has achieved another breakthrough, successfully reaching a high frequency of 9000 MT/s when paired with iGame Shadow II 24G×2 domestically produced memory chips, unlocking a new height in the overclocking field of domestically produced memory chips on the AM5 platform."

So, that's 48 GB of "domestically produced", ie, Chinese, DDR5 RAM hitting 9,000 MT/s. Admittedly, we're far beyond that with Western memory, having hit over 8,700 MT/s all the way back in 2021 and 10,000 MT/s the following year. Now, we're at over 13,000 MT/s.

Still, 9,000 is an achievement for Chinese memory and shows how fast the country is progressing in its DRAM development. In fact, Asus ROG also recently shared that Chinese memory now works at 6,000 MT/s with low CAS latency timings of C28 and C30. Notably, this is exactly the kind of fast DDR5 RAM we like to buy for gaming PCs in the West: DDR5-6000 memory with low latency.

The main Chinese memory maker is CXMT, and we've recently seen the company's shares surge as it continues to collect more of the global memory market. This is possible because there's just so much demand for memory these days, thanks to the AI boom, that demand far outstrips supply and will do for quite some time.

Importantly for us gamers, we've even started seeing Chinese RAM land in laptops from companies such as HP, Asus, and Acer, but only in the Chinese market. Even if Chinese RAM only ends up in the Chinese market, however, CXMT's expansion still makes for more memory supply globally, and any dent in demand can't be a bad thing for prices.

But there's me putting my hopeful face on again. The fact that demand will outstrip supply is said to be accounting for CXMT's growth, too, so let's not get carried away. We're still in it for the long haul.

PC gaming has always been an expensive hobby, but the memory supply crisis has driven up costs even more. It's not just RAM and SSDs seeing spiking prices either, with plenty of other components becoming increasingly costly. The fact that picking up an entire prebuilt gaming PC has been the most cost-effective way to secure a decent amount of memory for months now is just one sign of the times.

Picking up a cheap prebuilt gaming PC is great if this is your first rodeo, but kind of a headache for the average PC upgrader. Thankfully, Newegg is offering a selection of stripped down bundles that ditch bulkier elements like the PC case and focus on the most important components, namely an AM5 socket motherboard, an AMD CPU, a Teamgroup T-Force Vulcan 2x 16 GB kit (which is still our top pick for the best budget DDR5 kit), and even a free Cooler Master Elite Liquid 240 CPU AIO Cooler while stocks last. Better yet, each one of these DDR5 memory bundles costs comfortably under a grand, too.

Quick list

• Team Group T-Force Vulcan 16 GB DDR5-5200 | Asus B850 Max Gaming WIFI W motherboard | AMD Ryzen 5 9600X | $525 @ Newegg
• Team Group T-Force Vulcan 16 GB DDR5-5200 | Asus TUF Gaming X870E-Plus WIFI7 motherboard | AMD Ryzen 9 9900X | $659 @ Newegg
• Team Group T-Force Vulcan 16 GB DDR5-5200 | Asus B850 Max Gaming WIFI W motherboard | AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D | Samsung 9100 Pro 1 TB SSD | $974 @ Newegg

PC component bundle deals

I'll start with the most affordable option: for a couple of cents shy of $525, you're getting 16 GB of DDR5 5200, an Asus B850 Max Gaming WIFI W motherboard, and an AMD Ryzen 5 9600X CPU. Sure, that's not the most bleeding-edge list of components, but it's still a very affordable basis for a first gaming PC build (especially since 16 GB of RAM is absolutely fine for PC gaming in 2026).

Obviously, hunting down a GPU to go along with that affordable clutch of components is another matter entirely. Staring down rising graphics card prices, our Dave advises avoiding any Nvidia card with more than 8 GB VRAM. Beyond that, you can take a gander at our graphics card price watch for something that will suit your budget.

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In an attempt to outpace the creeping despair of graphics card pricing, I'm going to move on. Today's second bundle also features 16 GB of DDR5-5200, but also includes the Asus TUF Gaming X870E-Plus Wi-Fi 7 motherboard and an AMD Ryzen 9 9900X processor—all for $659. It's always good to have options, but I'm going to move swiftly on to the most expensive bundle.

Let's get it out of the way: the final bundle that caught my eye costs $974. For that price, you're getting another 16 GB of DDR5-5200, plus an Asus B850 Max Gaming WIFI W motherboard. So far, so familiar, but you're also getting the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, which is still an exceptional processor for gaming—in fact, it's our pick for the best CPU overall. Then, on top of that, this bundle throws in the 1 TB version of the Samsung 9100 Pro SSD.

At the very least, that's one less thing to worry about, but otherwise it's up to you whether this bundle has any right to cost nearly as much as a prebuilt PC. I'd argue that picking up an AM5 socket motherboard alongside the best CPU for gaming decently future-proofs whatever you end up building with this bundle—especially as component prices will likely get worse before they get better.

👉Check out all of Newegg's PC Gaming combo deals👈

A slight bastion of hope for those affected by the memory crisis (ie, anyone who wants to buy new electronics in the next few years) is the planned arrival of new fabrication facilities, pumping out vast amounts of wafers that will be turned into memory modules. According to Micron, though, we shouldn't hold our breath.

Sumit Sadana, the executive vice president and chief business officer of Micron, spoke at a tech and finance forum earlier this week. According to Sadana:

"All of this growth in [AI server-critical] HBM pressures the supply that is left for everything else, which means that the wafer supply has to increase dramatically, and that is just not easy to do."

"It takes a long time because the whole industry got itself into a state where most of that expansion needed to be done in greenfield expansion," Sadana continued. "Which means you go to an empty space that is nothing but trees, and you have to create an entire massive fab cluster there. That is a very challenging endeavour.

"It is one of the most complex engineering projects in the world from a construction perspective to build such fabs."

Certainly, anyone who envisions a new wafer facility being thrown together in a few months will need to take a hefty dose of reality pills, at least from Micron's perspective. Sadana points out that fabs are not like data centers, which seem to have been sprouting from the ground like weeds in recent months.

"Building a data center—no offense to our customers—is considerably easier than building a sophisticated leading-edge technology front-end fab," Sadana continues.

"It takes a long time for these fabs to come online, and this leading-edge technology... takes a long time to ramp. Because of all these reasons, we do not have line of sight as to when that supply vector will intersect the demand vector."

That's corporate speak for "everyone wants memory modules, and we're not sure when we'll be able to produce enough wafers to make enough of them," if you ask me.

Which, to speak more casually, sucks for the average consumer. It's not just Micron that's investing in new fabs, of course, as SK hynix and Samsung are also busy building extra production facilities for themselves. But estimates vary wildly as to when meaningful amounts of new memory modules might enter the supply chain.

Whatever the situation, the memory crisis is still expected to continue for a long while yet, with predictions for its demise ranging from the end of 2027 to 2030 and beyond.

In the meantime, it looks like we've got what we've got. Of course, new, memory-optimised AI models might enter the market, taking some of the server demand out of the equation. Or, y'know, the AI house of cards could come tumbling down in often-predicted ways.

Failing that, it's difficult to find a silver lining. As you were, folks. We're in it for the long haul, it seems.

We all know the cost of RAM is ridiculously high these days thanks to the global memory shortage. But it can be useful (and depressing) to put these prices into context historically.

To that end, scientist, developer, and software performance expert Daniel Lemire commented on X that "On a historical basis, computer memory has been falling at an exponential rate for decades. But we just undid about 20 years of progress. RAM on a per unit basis is about as expensive as it was in 2007."

They show a couple of charts that track the historical $/GB metric for RAM. However, these are a little hard to parse because of the scale and duration of the changes, so I thought I'd check with some specific prices, comparing RAM kits from 2007 to today. In other words, comparing the prices for memory that you and I, as gamers, would have actually used.

After a bit of a nostalgic scour through some of my old forum posts around that time (when I was a mere 13 years old), I discovered that in 2007 I was the proud owner of 4 GB (2x 2 GB) of DDR2-800 RAM. I'm pretty sure it was 2x 2 GB of TeamGroup Xtreem memory—and yes, that '800' means just 800 MHz.

Scouring a little more, I found that 4 GB capacity was on the upper end for 2007, and a lot of people were still using 2 GB (2x 1 GB) of DDR2, which was enough for 32-bit Windows (remember that?).

Looking at forum posts discussing deals on RAM kits, we can see that good deals on 4 GB RAM kits cost about $100 at the time. In fact, some users back then were shocked to see 4 GB of DDR2 going for so cheap. Bear in mind that these were deal prices, ie, cheaper than the norm.

Looking to 2 GB kits, there are threads highlighting deals at around $60 (or $45 after rebate).

Judging from these, for the top capacity, back then we were looking at about $25/GB, and for the more common capacity we were looking at about $30/GB.

What are we dealing with today? Well, whether we look to 32 GB or 16 GB kits, at the time of writing the price per GB for reasonably-specced DDR5 is about the same for both: $15–16 per GB. A decent 32 GB (2x 16 GB) DDR5 kit, for instance, goes for about $500 right now.

So, we can see that—at least when considering some of the most popular high-end RAM kit capacities then and now—memory is still technically cheaper per GB today. But of course, that's not the full story.

It's probably more useful to instead compare simply how much it cost to get a 'good' amount of RAM for a gaming PC. Back then, that was 2 GB or 4 GB. These days, the equivalent would be 16 GB or 32 GB, with a weighting toward the latter.

Today, you have to spend $500 to get some decent RAM for a high-end gaming PC (32 GB), or about $250 for a reasonable minimum (16 GB). Back then, you had to spend only $65–100. Even factoring in inflation, that would have been about $100–$160. Even if these numbers aren't completely accurate, they're so far from today's RAM prices that the gulf between the two certainly holds.

Compare that to last year, before the memory crisis, and we see prices for 32 GB of fast RAM sat around $100–150. In other words, about what you could expect to spend for 4 GB of fast RAM in 2007. In that sense, all that progress, which permitted 32 GB to be sold for the same price as 8x less capacity cost in 2007, has been undone.

So, while it might not be straightforwardly true, at least as far as end-consumer RAM kits are concerned, that we've completely undone 20 years of progress from the simple perspective of price-per-GB, it is true that RAM now costs a heck of a lot more than back then thanks to the memory crisis.

Last year, you would spend the equivalent of what you would in 2007 to buy a decent amount of RAM for a high-end PC. Now you have to spend 4x that.

It's not been the happiest trip down memory lane, but there we go.

If you've looked at memory prices recently, you've probably seen Corsair DIMMs selling for astonishing prices. The 32 GB Vengeance DDR5 RGB kit sitting in my PC right now is selling for $480 at Amazon, whereas I bought it for $90-$100 just a couple of years ago. Corsair RAM can still be some of the cheapest comparatively, but it's very pricey nonetheless.

So, Corsair must be raking in money hand over fist, right? Not quite, at least according to its recent filings with the SEC. The figures show a ~9% decline in Q2 2026 gaming component and system revenue overall compared to last year—although gross profit was up 17%. Memory revenue itself has increased, but its "other component products" revenue has decreased significantly.

According to the company: "We are both a seller of memory products and a purchaser of memory and other components from third-party suppliers. As a result, elevated pricing benefits net sales and margin on the memory products we sell, while also increasing our cost of components across our broader product offerings."

Corsair sells memory, but doesn't manufacture the actual modules themselves, sourcing them instead from Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron (plus CXMT now, too, for some of the RAM it sells in China). It's also a system builder, and is thereby affected by higher component prices across the board, an unwanted knock-on effect of the ongoing memory crisis.

The company believes that traditional consumer demand is suffering as a result: "In addition, elevated component costs have made it more difficult for cost-sensitive consumers to upgrade or build new systems, which we believe is negatively affecting overall demand within our Gaming Components and Systems segment," says Corsair.

It's not all bad news, though. The company says its "core market position remains centred on the enthusiast-level PC builder, a demographic that has historically demonstrated less price sensitivity than the broader market, which we believe partially mitigates this impact."

Corsair also thinks that the AI workstation market might be its future. "As the costs of running critical business tasks on public cloud-based Large Language Models increase, there is growing demand to operate local LLMs on private workstation hardware," says the company.

"We believe we are well positioned to address this emerging trend by delivering high-performance memory components and fully integrated, purpose-built systems necessary to support local AI processing workloads."

So hey, if cost-conscious gamers are more reluctant to buy, there's always the workstation market to tap up with its Corsair Pro lineup of AI workstations and servers. And it must be said, with gross profit on the up-and-up (even if Q2 system and component revenue is down), it doesn't seem like Corsair is falling victim entirely to the current pricing fiasco.

As PC gaming enthusiasts, though, it's still a tough situation to swallow. Those at the very top of the AI hardware gold rush are raking in staggering sums of money, whereas those further down the chain (including us little ol' individual consumers down the bottom) are paying the price. Or not, as the case may be.

Roll on the end of 2027, I guess. Or was it 2028? No wait, 2030? I lose track these days, but I certainly won't be upgrading my home PC's system RAM at any time in the near future—and it seems like I'm far from alone.

If one thing is true about AI, it's that there's a lot of money in it. Nvidia became the first $5 trillion company because of its role in the explosion of AI data centers, and OpenAI has been rounding up tens of billions in investments. So you'd think AI companies could buy pretty much whatever they want—but one farming family in Northern Kentucky showed that's not the case by turning down a $26 million bid.

As reported by WKRC-TV Local 12, Ida Huddleston was offered the sum for half of her 1,200-acre farmland this year, which an unnamed company would turn into an AI data center. Huddleston's daughter, Delsia Bare, reportedly said she would "stay and hold and feed a nation" and that "$26 million doesn't mean anything."

AI data centers have become an ethical and ideological battleground, with Elon Musk's SpaceXAI only this week agreeing to take down 69 temporary methane turbines in Memphis over the next year in reaction to resident concerns over local disruption.

In this case, Bare claims there's history to the site that the data center company would be ignoring. She told Local 12, “My grandfather and great-grandfather and a whole bunch of family have all lived here for years, paid taxes on it, fed a nation off of it." She continues, “[They] even raised wheat through the Depression and kept bread lines up in the United States of America when people didn’t have anything else.”

Bare claims to be among "dozens of landowners" approached by the anonymous buyer, who reportedly represents a major AI company. Notably, Local 12 claims that the land where Bare lives is worth around $6,000 per acre, which makes the offer around ten times the actual value.

Huddleston tells Local 12, “They call us old stupid farmers, you know, but we’re not. We know whenever our food is disappearing, our lands are disappearing, and we don’t have any water—and that poison. Well, we know we’ve had it.”

Huddleston is also sceptical of claims of economic growth as a result of the AI data center. “I say they’re a liar, and the truth isn’t in them. That’s what I say. It’s a scam.”

Data center pushback has been a common theme of the growth of AI, with concerns of both an environmental and ethical nature being front and centre. And AI companies have a lot of money to throw around.

Even if you own a lot of land, $26 million must be a life-changing amount of money to anyone but the richest of the rich; it would even be enough to buy some of the RAM that AI data centers have been gleefully sucking up over the last few years. Just a thought.