ASUS Issues PC Price Hike Warning Amid DRAM & NAND Shortage

During an online investor conference, ASUS co-CEO Shubin Hu has stated that the rise of DRAM prices is a problem for everyone across the PC industry, and that it is spurred by a combination of two factors: the massive increase in demand for RAM to fuel AI servers, and limited DRAM production increases over the past few years despite that growth. As we discussed last month, Phison's CEO has also spoken out about the flash memory shortage, which he fears could extend through 2035—and with the combination of NAND flash used for SSDs and RAM getting pricier to produce and acquire, building PCs will continue to grow in price for consumers and OEMs alike. GPUs are also in high demand due to a hungry AI market, though fortunately for gamers that demand will mostly be focused on high-end NVIDIA hardware rather than NVIDIA or AMD gaming GPUs.


These comments from ASUS and Phison are perfectly in line with warnings we've been hearing from the industry for the past few years. Sadly, there doesn't seem to be a real solution to the problem besides simply hoping that manufacturers are able (and willing) to increase production to meet the demand—but the demand does not seem to be slowing down. Recently, NVIDIA made a historical record by surpassing a $5 trillion USD market cap off of the AI boom.

While some critics are quick to call this AI-powered boom an AI bubble, particularly in the face of ever-growing AI backlash and limited enterprise adoption, that bubble doesn't quite seem primed to pop just yet. Such an event may in fact lessen DRAM and NAND flash pricing surges, but it could also have a negative impact on other aspects of the PC hardware industry, particularly considering the sizable investments that all the heavy-hitters seem to be making in OpenAI and each other.


Overall, only time will tell whether these ever-increasing prices will continue their upward trajectory, or demand will begin to lessen as AI fervor dies down. Right now, AI providers' biggest customers have largely been other AI services or hardware manufacturers themselves, rather than enterprise in general or consumers at large, where adoption is tentative or limited to free services like ChatGPT.

For AI to have a truly long-term lifespan in the market and continue to demand so much hardware from the market (and electricity/space from various regions, etc), widespread consumer demand is still required.

ASUS HQ photo by Wei-Te Wong (CC-BY-SA 2.0)
Pioneer Building photo by HaeB (CC-BY-SA 4.0)