Acer and Asus will also pass on surging memory costs to the consumer, highlighting a growing industry-wide consensus

If you were still thinking about finally upgrading your gaming setup with a new prebuilt or laptop in 2026, unfortunately, I have more bad news. Acer and Asus will join the growing list of companies passing on the cost of surging memory prices to consumers, which is expected to raise the price of both their commercial business hardware and their consumer PCs early in 2026.

We previously reported that Lenovo and HP had already warned customers of upcoming price hikes, while Dell will implement price increases of up to 30% as soon as December 17, according to Business Insider. Now, Commercial Times reports that both Acer CEO Jason Chen and Asus co-CEO Samson Hu have expressed that there is an industry-wide consensus that pricing will reflect spiking memory costs (via TrendForce).

Jason Chen told Commercial Times that once upon a time, memory only accounted for between 8% and 10% of the cost of a PC's Bill of Materials (or BOM). Between Q3 and mid-Q4 of 2025, memory prices rose anywhere between 30% and 50%, in turn seeing the overall BOM jump by between 2% to 3%.

While that's not a huge increase, Chen explained that some manufacturers may try to balance costs by lowering specs. For example, laptops with 16 GB of RAM may become less readily available than machines with 8 GB. There's also the fact that memory prices are continuing to rise, which will only further add to the BOM.

Though neither Acer nor Asus have officially revealed any higher MSRPs just yet, price spikes to kick off sound as though it will be just the beginning of a very expensive year for PC gamers if current trends continue.

Still, both Chen and Hu expressed hope that the memory pricing situation could stabilise before the end of 2026. Hu predicts prices may start to become slightly more sensible at some point during the first half of next year, while Chen hopes that an increase in the production capacity of memory chip manufacturers in mainland China will eventually allow the situation to stabilise.

Before then, though, a Mirror Daily report suggests laptop sales in the first quarter of 2026 will drop by at least 10% year-on-year in response to January price hikes. Q2 could potentially see a further fall of between another 10% to 20%. The memory apocalypse looks set to spare no one, whether they be a regular consumer or a massive manufacturer.

Best gaming rigs 2025

1. Best gaming laptop: Razer Blade 16

2. Best gaming PC: HP Omen 35L

3. Best handheld gaming PC: Lenovo Legion Go S SteamOS ed.

4. Best mini PC: Minisforum AtomMan G7 PT

5. Best VR headset: Meta Quest 3

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