What Happens When PC Memory Prices Are Too Much to Handle?

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Despite the hit of President Donald Trump’s boneheaded tariff scheme, the tumult of 2025, and rampant price fluctuations, laptops did alright in 2025. Unfortunately, 2026 will bear even less sunshine and rainbows. The largest PC makers don’t imagine the personal computer will stay the same. The next PC you buy may either be more powerful than ever, or it could be dependent on the cloud computing that is the reason prices are skyrocketing in the first place.

Data released by analyst firm IDC on Monday showed that PC shipments grew nearly 10% year-over-year compared to 2024. None of today’s largest laptop makers did better than Lenovo. The company still holds 25% of the PC market share with 70.8 million PCs shipped in 2025 (HP, the next-largest company, shipped 57.5 million). The company’s market share grew compared to 2024. There’s more likelihood that a PC buyer will be looking at a ThinkPad or a ThinkBook than the next Dell XPS.

The memory shortage has wreaked havoc throughout the entire PC market. Desktop PCs took the initial hit, with RAM costs soaring through the stratosphere and up into high orbit—more than 500% in some cases. Laptops were sure to follow. Dell has already told Gizmodo it would modify prices depending on what happens in the future. IDC warned PCs won’t just be more expensive; they may have less RAM inside to compensate for ballooning costs. In recent months, SSD (solid-state drives for storage) prices have similarly blown through the roof. This won’t just impact do-it-yourself PC builders, but every single PC buyer in 2026.

During CES 2026, I sat down for an exclusive interview with Steve Long, Lenovo’s commercial head in charge of its intelligent devices group. I wanted to gather more about the future of PCs, beyond mere prices. I’ve heard the fears from more than one consumer about the end of consumer-end computing. AI data center compute has created such a fervor for high-end memory that all three major semiconductor companies in charge of memory—namely Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix—have tuned their business to supplying firms like OpenAI for its multi-state Stargate data centers. With data centers sucking all the oxygen out of the room, what’s left for consumers who want higher-end compute for work or gaming? The future may be split between those who have access to local compute for high-end tasks and those who don’t.

“I don’t believe in a world that it’s all going to the cloud [or] it’s all going to be local,” Long said. “It’s going to be a hybrid world.”

Silicon companies will dictate RAM for your next PC

Lenovo may be able to manage the memory shortage better than other companies. Last November, Bloomberg reported that the world’s largest PC maker had hoarded RAM just before prices started getting truly untenable, stockpiling upwards of 50% more than usual. Long confirmed the company had made long-term agreements with vendors all the way back in late September and October to meet the expected memory demand for 2026. However, the memory shortage will likely last far longer than just this year. Experts have claimed the RAM shortage will last through 2027 and into 2028.

I asked Long if Samsung was the PC maker’s main memory supplier, at least based on recent reports from reliable outlets like DigiTimes, though he demurred and said the company used “multiple vendors” for all the regions the company operates in. Meanwhile, other companies as large as Google, Microsoft, and Meta have reportedly camped operatives in South Korea, home to two of the big three memory makers, to relentlessly beg for DRAM.

Lenovo made it clear that it may have to raise future prices due to the RAM shortage. Long said, “We’re getting prices from our supply chain that are coming up higher for us.” The Lenovo exec is in charge of the company’s B2B (business-to-business) side of the chain, though he’s had previous experience at other companies on the consumer end. When tariffs drove up prices on gadgets, consumers saw a variance of impact since OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) and retailers all had to take a hit at varying points in the chain. For example, in 2025 Lenovo raised the price of gaming gear like its Legion Go S with SteamOS twice in the year, from an expected $550 to $600, and later to $650 after release.

Long said more PCs will edge toward premium with higher-end specs—more RAM and more storage—plus higher-performance chips. Better specs will inevitably cost more, even when PC producers try to offer finer components to go along with pricey memory. The lower-end market, on the other hand, may be forced to rely on expanding cloud compute. It won’t be an immediate shift but a long slide toward a changing PC ecosystem.

PC makers may have fewer choices of RAM sizes. In an interview with Wccftech, Micron’s VP of marketing, Christopher Moore, said that having so many options for RAM, such as 12GB, 16GB, and 24GB would “drop our output.” Instead, Micron is trying to produce more standardized quantities of DRAM for PCs. Essentially, RAM sizes used to be dictated by PC makers. Now, memory is being generated by the whims of the silicon manufacturers. Even if Micron ends up supplying consumer products, it will have more say over how much RAM your next PC gets to use.

Fewer choices of PC

Costs for computing components were already at record highs, though chipmakers are starting to push the highest-end processors harder than ever. At CES 2026, Intel finally dropped the full details of its Intel Core Ultra Series 3 (Panther Lake) chips slated for this year’s laptops. AMD and Qualcomm also sport new higher-end processors, most notably the top-end ARM-based Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme. Whereas most of the previous-gen lightweight laptops came with mid-range Intel Lunar Lake chips, a greater number of Intel-based devices this year will come with a Core Ultra X9 388H CPU, the top-end configuration.

“Memory is a hard business, from a silicon standpoint,” Long said. “Silicon is going to be constrained as well, like your CPUs and some of the other components.”

Lenovo is managing the situation better than most, at least according to Long. So what happens to the smaller companies who don’t have the advantages Lenovo has? The Lenovo VP said, at least from his company’s standpoint, they “wouldn’t mind” some consolidation. That doesn’t mean we’ll only have one or two PC providers. Consumers may have fewer brands that don’t linger on Best Buy shelves to choose from. Companies like Framework, which makes customizable and repairable PCs, have had to increase the costs of their laptops and desktops several times since the tail end of 2025.

More choices for OS

Sure, PCs likely won’t become monopolized any time soon. One of the reasons I enjoy covering the computing landscape is because of the depth of work spinning out of makers big and small. Perhaps the one good thing to come from this mess of AI is the expansion of operating systems on offer. There has been a sizable backlash to Microsoft’s push for Copilot AI in Windows 11. That leaves an opening for open-source Linux. Long said Lenovo is open to more devices running different software (the company’s Legion Go 2 handhelds will include a version running Linux-based SteamOS). Hell, we now have Valve coming out with its own Steam Machines that have the gaming-specific version of Linux set to arrive early this year.

Meanwhile, Google is planning to combine ChromeOS with Android, meaning low-end Chromebooks may have more native app options available. All but the most high-end Chromebooks (like the overpowered Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14) will still need to rely on the cloud for most on-device tasks.

Our options for personal computers aren’t dwindling, at least not yet. There’s still a huge market among the hardcore DIYers and the laypeople alike for personal computing power. However, the era of cheap PCs may be coming to an end, to be replaced with even more devices reliant on the cloud—plus a paid cloud subscription—to handle what we could once do on our own.

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