A couple of weeks ago I reported on the idea that the AI was going to cause a run on all kinds of memory and storage hardware. Well, it's already happening according to no less an authority than the chairman of memory specialist ADATA.
ADATA's Chen Libai has said that supplies of all the major memory and storage technologies—DRAM, NAND, and HDD—are now in shortage. Chen says it's the first time that has happened in 30 years.
The reason is clear enough: demand from AI. "Our competitors in the fight for supply are no longer our peers, but giant CSPs (cloud service providers)," Chen said. By way of example, OpenAI alone (yeah, it's always OpenAI) has signed a deals with Samsung and SK Hynix for fully 900,000 DRAM wafers per month, which is equivalent to 40% of current global DRAM output.
Moreover, the AI-driven surge in demand is prompting manufacturers to prioritise production capacity for high-margin applications. Sound familiar? It's all rather too reminiscent of the GPU market for comfort, and we know what happened to graphics card prices in the last few years. Ouch.
In terms of ADATA's own business, which majors in memory modules, Chen says the company has had to instruct sales staff to "sell sparingly and support key customers." He also thinks unprecedented demand from the AI industry means that the usual boom-and-bust DRAM cycle has been broken.
As for what this means for we poor PC gamers, well, it looks like there's a good chance that RAM and SSD prices are set to join GPUs as significant pain points. Indeed, it's already happening.
By way of example, this popular Crucial 32GB DDR5 kit was ticking along at $84.99 for much of 2025 on Amazon. Now it's $119.99. How high it will go in the coming months is hard to say.
The good news is that, for now, SSD prices seem to be holding steady. But the implication of Chen's comments is that SSDs are likely to follow suit. Indeed, we've touched on the impact of AI companies sucking up all the HDDs and turning their attention to SSDs recently, too.
All of which means PCs will probably be more expensive in the short term and stay that way for the medium term, which is a bummer. Oh, and if you're considering a new SSD, now seems like a good time to pull the trigger. It looks very likely that prices are only going one way.
1. Best overall:
WD_Black SN7100
2. Best budget:
Biwin Black Opal NV7400
3. Best PCIe 5.0:
WD_Black SN8100
4. Best budget PCIe 5.0:
Crucial P510
5. Best 4 TB:
TeamGroup MP44
6. Best 8 TB:
WD_Black SN850X
7. Best M.2 2230:
Lexar Play 2230
8. Best for PS5:
Silicon Power XS70
9. Best SATA:
Crucial MX500
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