Back in May we wrote about why RAM and SSD prices had climbed so sharply, and how to spec around it without overpaying. We thought that piece would age like most market commentary does: useful for a few months, then quietly overtaken by events. Instead, the story has got worse, and rather more interesting.
A quick recap
In the spring, DRAM pricing had already risen sharply enough to change how we speced builds. Memory and storage that used to be a small line item on a quote had become a much bigger one. We put it down to a genuine supply squeeze rather than the usual seasonal noise, and we adjusted our advice accordingly: buy the capacity you need, not the capacity that looks impressive on a spec sheet.
That advice has aged well. If anything, it now looks understated.
What has actually changed since May
The headline number is stark. DRAM pricing rose roughly 90 per cent or more quarter on quarter in Q1 2026. That is not a normal fluctuation in a cyclical market, it is a genuinely severe move, the kind that gets talked about for years rather than one quarter.
Then, on 25 June 2026, a class-action lawsuit was filed against Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron, the three companies that between them make almost all of the world's DRAM. The allegation is collusion and price-fixing across the memory market. We are not going to speculate on the outcome of that case here, that is for the courts. But the fact that it has been filed at all tells you how far this has moved from ordinary supply and demand small talk into something regulators and lawyers now consider worth serious scrutiny.
The two stories reinforce each other. A 90 per cent quarterly jump is the kind of move that invites questions about how a market is behaving, and a lawsuit alleging price-fixing is the kind of event that makes people look twice at a chart they might otherwise have shrugged off as just the cycle.
This is not a blip any more
When we wrote the May piece, there was still a reasonable case that this was a sharp but temporary squeeze. That case is harder to make now. Analyst consensus as of mid-2026 is that there is unlikely to be meaningful relief in DRAM or NAND pricing before 2027 to 2028.
In other words, this has stopped being a short-term pricing story and become a structural one. If you are speccing a PC on the assumption that memory and storage prices will settle down again soon, that assumption no longer holds up. It is worth planning around the market as it is, not as we would like it to be.
What this means if you are buying now
None of this means you should panic-buy or panic-avoid a new PC. It means capacity choices matter more than they used to, and they are worth thinking through properly rather than defaulting to more is safer.
- Spec to your workload, not to a number that sounds reassuring. 32GB of RAM for general use and gaming is still plenty for most people. Doubling it just in case costs a lot more than it used to, for a benefit you may never notice.
- Do the same for storage. Work out what you actually use, add reasonable headroom, and stop there. Padding an SSD to a much larger capacity than you need is an expensive habit at any time, and a needlessly expensive one right now.
- Be wary of anyone padding a spec for margin. When component costs rise, so does the temptation for a builder to bundle extra capacity you did not ask for and quietly bake the cost into the total. It is worth asking why a spec includes what it includes.
- Expect prices to keep moving. With no meaningful relief expected before 2027 to 2028, this is not a market where you can assume a quote from three months ago still holds. Get current pricing before you commit.
Where we stand on this
Our view has not changed since May, it has just been reinforced. We would rather spec a customer's machine around what they actually do with it than push extra RAM or a bigger drive because it pads the invoice. That matters in any market, but it matters more when the underlying components are this volatile and this newsworthy.
If you already own a PC and are wondering whether an upgrade still makes sense in this climate, that is a slightly different question, and one we have covered separately. For now, the short version is this: the RAM and SSD story is no longer a temporary spike to wait out. It is the market for the next couple of years, and the sensible response is to spec carefully rather than defensively.
Build it with us
Have a play with our PC configurator, or just get in touch and tell us how you actually use your machine. Every system is hand-built to order here in our Stevenage workshop, stress-tested before it ships, and backed by our 5-year warranty.
