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RAM prices have soared, which is bad news for people interested in buying, building, or upgrading a computer this year, but it’s likely good news for people exasperated by talk of so-called AI PCs.

As Ars Technica has reported, the growing demands of data centers, fueled by the AI boom, have led to a shortage of RAM and flash memory chips, driving prices to skyrocket.

In an announcement today, Ben Yeh, principal analyst at technology research firm Omdia, said that in 2025, “mainstream PC memory and storage costs rose by 40 percent to 70 percent, resulting in cost increases being passed through to customers.”

Overall, global PC shipments increased in 2025, according to Omdia, (which pegged growth at 9.2 percent compared to 2024), and IDC, (which today reported 9.6 percent growth), but analysts expect PC sales to be more tumultuous in 2026.

“The year ahead is shaping up to be extremely volatile,” Jean Philippe Bouchard, research VP with IDC’s worldwide mobile device trackers, said in a statement.

Both analyst firms expect PC makers to manage the RAM shortage by raising prices and by releasing computers with lower memory specs. IDC expects price hikes of 15 to 20 percent and for PC RAM specs to “be lowered on average to preserve memory inventory on hand,” Bouchard said. Omdia’s Yeh expects “leaner mid to low-tier configurations to protect margins.”

“These RAM shortages will last beyond just 2026, and the cost-conscious part of the market is the one that will be most impacted,” Jitesh Ubrani, research manager for worldwide mobile device trackers at IDC, told Ars via email.

IDC expects vendors to “prioritize midrange and premium systems to offset higher component costs, especially memory.”

RAM shortage hits AI PCs

The increased costs have implications for the concept of “AI PCs,” a term OEMs have used consistently over the last two years as they sought to leverage the growth of generative AI chatbots to drive computer sales.

Shoppers, however, have been either too reluctant or too savvy to buy into manufacturer-made AI PC hype.

“PC OEMs had trouble selling the on-device AI message even before the memory shortages,” Ubrani said.

IT buyers will likely also consider local AI capabilities a lower priority if OEMs lower RAM specs to address the component shortage.

“General interest in AI PCs has been wavering for a while, since cloud-based options are widely available and the use cases for on-device AI have been limited. This indifference (between on-device and cloud-based) from a demand perspective might work in favor of PC OEMs, as they don’t need to provide large amounts of RAM,” Ubrani said.

With RAM pricing stability possibly not arriving until 2027, per Ubrani, it may be a while until RAM is readily available enough for it to make sense for PC companies to put as much emphasis on AI PCs, which generally require at least 16GB of memory, as they have in the past two years.

We’ve already seen a shift from AI PCs from Dell. In 2025, it discontinued its XPS brand of consumer laptops and desktops, partially due to the belief that “the AI PC market is quickly evolving,” Kevin Terwilliger, VP and GM of commercial, consumer, and gaming PCs at Dell, told media outlets at the time.

“Everyone from IT decision makers to professionals and everyday users are looking at on-device AI to help drive productivity and creativity,” he said.

At CES 2026, however, Dell resurrected the XPS brand and reframed its laptop marketing around build, battery life, and display quality. Terwilliger also sang a different tune.

“… what we’ve learned over the course of this year, especially from a consumer perspective, is they’re not buying based on AI,” Terwilliger said at a press briefing ahead of the show. “In fact, I think AI probably confuses them more than it helps them understand a specific outcome.”

Moving from the hype

Microsoft also seems aware of the shortcomings of AI PCs. In December, The Information reported that CEO Satya Nadella had sent an email to engineering heads expressing disappointment with the consumer version of Copilot. He reportedly wrote that tools for connecting Copilot with Outlook and Gmail “for [the] most part don’t really work” and are “not smart.” The publication also reported that Nadella delegated some of his responsibilities to spend more time on Copilot. Microsoft hasn’t commented on the report.

With that in mind, it stands to reason that we’re far from hearing the last about AI PCs. Currently, there are still plenty of stakeholders pushing AI PCs in 2026. But as we all await the end of the RAM shortage, it seems that at least some brands will attempt to build AI PCs with a significant and relevant purpose and scale back on trying to get people to buy a computer that can handle AI.

The idea of AI PCs isn’t inherently a bad thing. But in recent years, it felt like technology companies were exploiting generative AI to convince people and companies to buy more or more powerful devices, even if they didn’t need them or local AI processing.

Now, with a RAM crunch and lack of customer demand, there’s hope for AI PC marketing spiel to relent somewhat and for PC companies to try harder to prove that AI PCs are a solution to a problem, not a solution searching for a problem.