Now is a decent moment to enhance your gaming PC. Graphics card prices throughout the 2020s have fluctuated continuously as the sector has navigated pandemic and AI-induced supply issues, yet it is indeed feasible to acquire decent mainstream to high-end GPUs such as AMD’s Radeon RX 9060 XT and 9070 series or Nvidia’s RTX 5060, 5070, and 5080 series for at or just below their recommended retail prices at the moment. This was nearly unattainable during the spring and summer.
However, it’s not an ideal time to assemble a new PC or replace your old motherboard with a new one requiring DDR5 RAM. The issue stems from a deficit of RAM and flash memory chips that has abruptly skyrocketed SSD and (particularly) memory prices, primarily driven by the ongoing AI surge and worsened by consumer and manufacturer panic buying.
To demonstrate just how steep the price increases have been in a brief period, let’s contrast some of the RAM and storage costs noted in our system guide from three months prior with the current prices for those identical components. Keep in mind that several of these reflect the last available price and are presently out of stock; we haven’t examined items like microSD or microSD Express cards, which may also be influenced.
| Component | Aug. 2025 price | Nov. 2025 price |
|---|---|---|
| Patriot Viper Venom 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR-6000 | $49 | $110 |
| Western Digital WD Blue SN5000 500GB | $45 | $69 |
| Silicon Power 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 | $34 | $89 |
| Western Digital WD Blue SN5000 1TB | $64 | $111 |
| Team T-Force Vulcan 32GB DDR5-6000 | $82 | $310 |
| Western Digital WD Blue SN5000 2TB | $115 | $154 |
| Western Digital WD Black SN7100 2TB | $130 | $175 |
| Team Delta RGB 64GB (2 x 32GB) DDR5-6400 | $190 | $700 |
In short, these price hikes are unavoidable, impacting SSDs and all capacities of DDR4 and DDR5 RAM kits (though larger capacity RAM kits seem to be slightly more affected). If you are considering an SSD upgrade, those price increases have yet to become too outrageous, but if a RAM upgrade is on your mind, your best option is to cling tightly to what you currently possess and hope that nothing fails soon.
