#ram-shortage

#ram-shortage

The time for gift-giving is over. Now, all that's left is the few days until New Year's revelries and the resulting hangover. So while we've all been spending time with friends and family, the folks on Gizmodo's consumer tech desk have also had the chance to reminisce on the year's best, wackiest, wildest, and worst tech products. Thankfully, there were a few standout products that have kept things interesting even as we slide into the new year.

Just weeks after raising the price of its RAM modules, Framework has announced that it's also increasing the price of its desktop PC in response to the global memory shortage. The Framework Desktop with 32GB of RAM and an AMD Ryzen AI Max 385 chip now starts at $1,139, instead of $1,099. "We held off on it for as long as we could, but we had to update our Framework Desktop pricing today to account for the massive increase in LPDDR5x pricing from our suppliers," Framework says in a post on X.

The memes about RAM prices are funny and all, but the consequences of the memory supply crunch are anything but. Word on the street is that 16GB RAM phones will become extinct next year and we will see the return of budget phones with 4GB RAM. We've already seen some flagships with hiked prices compared to their predecessors, and we are now hearing that Samsung plans to bump up the prices of its mid-range lineup in India.

I've been watching laptop prices slowly drop throughout 2025, a trend that peaked during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Regardless of the state of the economy, I feel like I can say that laptop prices have never been lower. Some of my favorite laptops have recently offered significant price cuts across Macs, Windows, and Chromebooks. In a time when money is tight for so many of us, that's welcome news.

Graphics card prices in the 2020s have undulated continuously as the industry has dealt with pandemic and AI-related shortages, but it's actually possible to get respectable mainstream- to high-end GPUs like AMD's Radeon RX 9060 XT and 9070 series or Nvidia's RTX 5060, 5070, and 5080 series for at or slightly under their suggested retail prices right now. This was close to impossible through the spring and summer.

"Costs are fluctuating daily as manufacturers and distributors adjust to limited supply and high demand," reads a message posted in the store's display case, as spotted by Steve Lin. "Because of this, we can't display fixed prices at this time." Micro Center is apparently doing the same: "Due to market volatility, we ask that you please see a Sales Associate for price," reads an in-store message captured by Redditor CassTexas (via Tom's Hardware).