Memory Price Hike Strikes a Bitter Chord

The current situation with rising DRAM prices is not only expanding to other segments, as it already is, but may also persist for several years. The issue is so significant that Morgan Stanley analysts have lowered stock price targets for PC OEMs across all directions.

Companies like Dell, HP, HPE, Lenovo, Asus, Acer, Gigabyte, Pegatron, Compal, and many others are “under the gun.” The shortage of DRAM and the already ensuing incredible price spikes pose a serious obstacle for PC manufacturers and threaten to increase the cost of various computing and electronic devices for at least a couple of years.

Graphic cards are also becoming more expensive. It has been reported that AMD has already increased prices for the Radeon RX 9000 series due to rising memory costs. Analysts have calculated that up to 40% of the material costs for a “high-performance” server are accounted for by RAM alone. For “general-purpose” servers, it’s not much better-30%. Standard PCs will suffer the least: for them, it’s about 15-20%, but only because a home computer usually comes equipped with significantly less RAM.