Opinion: Now is the time to upgrade your PC or buy a console — prices are only going to get worse

At first glance, the current sharp rise in console and PC component prices makes this an especially bad time to buy new hardware. It seems logical to wait for the situation to return to normal rather than overpay. That is exactly what many analysts recommended last year, when tariff wars and rising memory prices made gaming a considerably less affordable hobby: consumers were advised to delay buying new gaming hardware for a year or even two in the hope that prices would return to familiar levels. Today, that optimism looks naive. Everything suggests that if you are considering a new PC or console, it is better to buy one right now. Yes, the deal is nowhere near as good as it was a couple of years ago, but the crisis will seemingly only deepen from here.

Although it may seem that the current problem came out of nowhere in late 2025, prices began rising much earlier. The groundwork was laid back in 2022–2023, when demand for electronics dropped sharply after the COVID-19 pandemic ended. Warehouses were overflowing with memory chips, prompting Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron to cut DRAM and NAND production. This allowed manufacturers to halt the decline in prices, but it also reduced the production capacity available to the market — capacity that would be desperately needed only a few years later.

Then came the generative AI boom. The world's largest technology corporations began building enormous data centers and signing long-term memory supply contracts. The server market is considerably more profitable for Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron than the consumer sector, so manufacturers started prioritizing memory and storage products for data centers. AI companies may not be buying up the same modules that gamers install in their PCs, but they are effectively competing with them for factory capacity.

Late last year, I examined what was driving the sharp rise in RAM prices. At the time, there was still hope that the crisis would mainly affect DDR4 and DDR5, with a much smaller impact on other components and finished devices. However, the situation deteriorated far more rapidly than expected during the first half of 2026. According to the available data, contract prices for conventional DRAM rose by approximately 93–98% in the first quarter alone, and forecasts suggest that this will not be the last major jump. SSD prices followed RAM upward.

In 2025, many companies stockpiled components and moved shipments forward, fearing another round of US tariffs. This kept retail prices in check for a while, but it did not solve the underlying problem. Supplies of cheaper components began running out in the first half of 2026, contracts had to be renegotiated, and the resulting cost increases were passed on to consumers. That is how the price hikes gradually spread to prebuilt PCs, laptops, graphics cards, and consoles.

Memory production cannot be ramped up quickly: building new factories takes several years. Unfortunately, the current crisis is looking less and less like a temporary price spike that consumers can simply wait out. A growing number of experts and senior representatives of the industry's largest companies are openly warning that there is little reason for optimism: the memory shortage is expected to persist even beyond 2027.

In 2025, graphics cards remained one of the few islands of stability: while RAM became more expensive, GPU prices barely moved. Dedicated production lines for GDDR memory were expected to protect at least these components from the crisis. Nevertheless, the shortage finally caught up with GDDR6 and GDDR7 this year.

NVIDIA manufactures only a fraction of its graphics cards itself. Most models are assembled by its partners, including ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte, and other companies. They purchase a bundle containing the graphics processor and VRAM from NVIDIA, mount it on their own circuit boards, and release the finished graphics cards. According to Taiwanese sources, the prices of these bundles rose by 10–15% in January, while NVIDIA raised prices for GeForce RTX 5090 manufacturers in May. As a result, even without an official MSRP increase, retail prices for individual graphics cards continue creeping upward. Partner versions of the RTX 5090 are currently selling for absurd amounts in the US — approximately $3300–4300.

To make matters worse, Taiwanese newspaper Economic Daily News recently reported that NVIDIA is preparing its third price increase of the year — this time by as much as 20–30%. While the May increase affected the RTX 5090, the other GeForce graphics cards equipped with GDDR6 and GDDR7 could now become substantially more expensive as well. NVIDIA itself has yet to confirm this information.

The unexpected return of the GeForce RTX 3060 illustrates just how bleak the situation has become. This year, NVIDIA and its partners resumed shipments of a graphics card originally released five years ago. These are newly manufactured units, not leftover inventory from warehouses.

Most frustratingly, the RTX 3060 has not become any more affordable. In Germany, it sells for approximately €334, compared with €245 in 2025. For that money, buyers get an old architecture without support for modern features such as frame generation, but at least it comes with 12 GB of GDDR6 — still a substantial amount compared with many newer budget models.

Meanwhile, AMD has effectively brought back 4 GB graphics cards as a product category. The company has confirmed the existence of a special Radeon RX 9050 created for a single CyberPowerPC prebuilt. It will not be available separately: this is an OEM-only solution intended to reduce the price of a budget PC. However, buyers should not expect much from such a machine. Even before the current crisis, we examined why even 8 GB of VRAM was no longer always enough for modern games, and AMD is now offering half that amount.

While the current situation has affected practically every hardware manufacturer, Valve has been hit especially hard. Until recently, Steam Deck was widely considered one of the best-value handheld PCs on the market, as it cost significantly less than its competitors while offering the user-friendly SteamOS. But Valve raised prices considerably in May: the 512 GB Steam Deck OLED went from $549 to $789, while the 1 TB model jumped from $649 to $949. The hardware inside the device did not change at all. Since then, recent analysis suggests that Steam Deck sales may have fallen by roughly 82%.

Steam Machine has not fared much better. The base version of this compact PC, equipped with 512 GB of storage and sold without a controller, officially costs $1049. Valve representatives openly acknowledged that the memory shortage made Steam Machine considerably more expensive to produce than originally planned. Given that the device offers roughly the same level of performance as PS5 — a console released in 2020 — it is fair to ask whether it is worth the money at all.

The most discouraging part, however, is the forecast from Valve engineer Yazan Aldehayyat. According to him, the situation continues to deteriorate, while the prices buyers currently see in stores lag at least 3–6 months behind what manufacturers are now paying for components. In other words, most of the hardware currently sitting on store shelves was assembled using components purchased before the latest price spikes. Once new batches of gaming devices built with more expensive memory reach stores, prices will have to be revised again.

What is happening to consoles this generation is unprecedented. Consoles usually become cheaper near the end of their life cycle as production grows more efficient and components become more affordable. Not this time: PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, both of which are about to turn six, have not only failed to become cheaper but also reached record-high prices.

Since April, the standard PS5 with a disc drive has risen in price in the US from $549.99 to $649.99, the Digital Edition from $499.99 to $599.99, and PS5 Pro from $749.99 to $899.99. That comes after another price increase last year. As a result, the standard PS5 now costs 30% more than it did at launch in 2020.

Microsoft's consoles are in no better shape. Prices will rise worldwide again this August: models with 512 GB of storage will become $100 more expensive, while the prices of 1 TB versions will jump by $150. In the US, the 512 GB Xbox Series S will cost $499.99 instead of $399.99, the 1 TB Series S will cost $599.99, the all-digital Xbox Series X will rise to $749.99, and the standard Series X with a disc drive will reach an eye-watering $799.99. These prices are absurd.

Microsoft directly attributed the increase to the component shortage. According to the company, the prices of console memory and storage have risen by more than 2.5 times and could double again by fall 2027. According to Windows Central, the sharp rise in memory costs means that Microsoft is losing an average of around $150 on every Xbox Series X/S from its latest production batches. The August price increase should reduce these losses, but it will not eliminate them completely — the company will continue losing money on every unit sold.

This creates an especially serious problem for the next-generation Xbox, known by the codename Helix. Based on the available information, Microsoft is developing a console-PC hybrid capable of running PC games, potentially including titles sold through Steam. If Helix owners can buy games from third-party digital storefronts, Microsoft will not receive a cut of those sales and will be unable to offset the losses from manufacturing the console. Analysts believe that Xbox Helix could easily cost more than $1000 under the current conditions.

Do not expect an affordable PlayStation 6 either. According to prominent insider Kepler_L2, the estimated cost of the console's components alone has risen by approximately $200 since March and now stands at $960. That figure does not yet include assembly, packaging, logistics, or retailer markups, meaning the retail price of PS6 will most likely exceed $1000. Especially since components are almost certain to become even more expensive before the system launches.

Despite the crisis, the insider still expects PS6 to launch in 2027. In his view, Sony has already invested hundreds of millions of dollars in development and should have signed manufacturing agreements with TSMC, possibly alongside contracts for GDDR7 supplies. Delaying the release would make little sense given all these commitments, especially since there is no guarantee that memory will become cheaper by 2029 or 2030. For Sony, the more logical approach would be to release an expensive console on schedule, sell several million units, and then gradually reduce the price as the market returns to normal.

Even Nintendo Switch 2, which launched in June 2025, has not escaped the price increases. The new prices will take effect in the US, Canada, and Europe on September 1. The console will cost $499.99 in the US — $50 more than before — and €499.99 in Europe instead of €469.99. This means that Switch 2 will sell in the US for the same price at which the more powerful PS5 and Xbox Series X launched in 2020. Even so, it remains a fairly good deal: the console was released relatively recently and is almost certain to receive new games for at least another six years. By the way, our site also has an extensive ranking of the best Nintendo Switch 2 games.

What does all of this mean? If you already own a good PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, or Nintendo Switch 2, take good care of your gaming hardware. People online joke that Gen Z and millennials will now treat their gadgets with the same care that sports car owners devote to their vehicles. Jokes aside, the value of six-year-old hardware has genuinely risen sharply and will continue to climb.

If you do not own a current-generation console but have been considering buying one, now may be the least bad time to do it. Do not wait and hope for prices to fall. If anything, gaming hardware will probably continue becoming more expensive. Some will argue that buying PS5 a year before the potential release of PS6 makes little sense. Yet the current-generation console is almost certain to remain relevant for a long time. Given the situation with components, the cross-gen period will probably drag on even longer this time, while PlayStation 5 and its current counterparts will continue receiving games into the early 2030s.

What do you think is the smarter move in this situation: wait and hope for prices to fall, or buy now before they climb even higher? Tell us in the comments.