If there’s one thing that’s dominated headlines in the tech world all year, it’s the RAM crisis. Ever since the end of 2025, there’s been a huge shortage of memory worldwide, driven by AI data centers consuming nearly all the supply, which in turn has caused the price of RAM and storage to skyrocket, affecting everything from PCs and smartphones to laptops and tablets. Virtually any device with RAM and storage is affected by the rising cost of these components. And unfortunately, one of the world’s biggest memory suppliers is signaling that things aren’t going to get better anytime soon.
During its latest quarterly earnings call, Samsung predicted that the memory shortage will likely worsen in 2027 as demand continues to grow and supply falls short.
“Our supply falls far short of customer demand,” said Kim Jaejune, the executive in charge of Samsung’s memory chip business (via Reuters). “Based solely on the demand currently received for 2027, the supply-to-demand gap for 2027 is set to widen even further than in 2026.”
This means that if you were hoping for relief in RAM and storage costs next year, that likely won’t happen, and the RAM crisis will unfortunately only get worse before it gets any better.
The price of RAM might not recover until 2030
Prices have started to go up dramatically
With the RAM crisis set to worsen in 2027, the big question now is when the situation will improve, and prices will start to fall. According to Chey Tae-won, the chairman of SK Group, which controls SK Hynix, a leading RAM manufacturer, even with expanded production capacity, it likely won’t be enough to meet demand until “around 2030” (via Bloomberg).
So it looks like we’ll be hearing about the RAM crisis well into the next decade, and inflated RAM and storage prices probably aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, which isn’t good news for anyone’s wallet.
…the RAM crisis will unfortunately only get worse before it gets any better.
The RAM crisis has already begun to affect device prices, most notably for the PlayStation 5. Sony increased the price by $100 earlier this year, making the digital version of the PS5 $600 and the disc version $650. The PS5 Pro was raised to $900, up $150 from $750.
Of course, PCs are also heavily affected as well. To put it into perspective, the 32GB of DDR5 RAM I bought for my PC in 2024 was $160, and now it’s jumped to $520, a 225 percent increase.
Hopefully, RAM prices start to fall before 2030, but given Samsung’s outlook for 2027, it seems we may be waiting a long time for things to improve.
