PC gaming on a budget is under real pressure
PC gaming has never been truly cheap, but the idea of a budget gaming rig used to feel achievable. Today that entry point is being pushed further and further out of reach, and a big part of the problem is the rising cost of key components like RAM, SSDs and graphics cards.
Right now an affordable prebuilt gaming PC usually sits close to 1,000 dollars, and that is before you add a monitor, keyboard, mouse and headset. For many players that is already a painful total. The worrying part is that this might be the cheapest things will look for a while.
Behind the scenes, a memory pricing crisis is brewing. The cost of DRAM the stuff that powers your system RAM, SSDs and even GPU VRAM has started to spike and is expected to get worse heading into 2026. If that happens, the days of a capable sub 1,000 dollar gaming PC could be numbered.
The memory and storage crisis explained
A couple of years ago, 32 GB of decent DDR5 RAM had become impressively affordable. The example in the article is a Corsair Vengeance RGB DDR5 6000 kit that cost around 100 dollars not long ago. Today the same kit is listed at over 400 dollars when you can even find it in stock.
On major retailers the cheapest 32 GB DDR5 kits are now often in the 300 to 350 dollar range. That is the sort of money many people expect to spend on a mid range graphics card, not just their RAM. For anyone speccing out a new build, that is a brutal shift.
SSDs are following the same trend, just a little more slowly. Those once common 1 TB NVMe drives under 100 dollars are getting harder to find, and good quality 2 TB PCIe Gen 4 models are moving up toward the 200 dollar mark. If you want fast load times and enough space for modern game installs, you are looking at a serious slice of your budget going purely into storage.
The main culprit is the massive surge in demand from AI data centers. Training huge AI models consumes enormous amounts of high end memory, and there are only a handful of manufacturers that make these chips. When AI customers are willing to pay top dollar and supply is limited, prices go through the roof for everyone. Desktop RAM, SSD NAND and GPU VRAM all feel that pressure.
Layer on top a hardware market still recovering from pandemic era chip shortages, tariffs in some regions and retailers that know gamers will pay more than they used to, and you end up with a perfect storm for higher prices.
GPUs are not immune and budget parts are not cheap
Graphics cards have calmed down since the worst days of scalpers and extreme retailer markups, so many current generation GPUs now sell close to their official MSRP. Unfortunately, that MSRP is still high if you are building on a tight budget.
On the Nvidia side an RTX 5060 with 8 GB of VRAM can sometimes be found just under 300 dollars. It will handle 1080p gaming with the help of DLSS upscaling and Frame Generation, but once you want higher settings in heavier titles or resolutions beyond 1080p it starts to struggle. Bumping up to a more comfortable mid range option such as an RTX 5070 pushes you to around 500 dollars.
AMD is in a slightly better spot for value. A card like the Radeon RX 9060 XT with 16 GB of VRAM launched with a 350 dollar MSRP and is often praised as a rare win for budget conscious gamers. In reality even that card has been drifting closer to 380 dollars at major retailers, likely because demand is strong. When a 380 dollar GPU is considered a budget success, you know the market has shifted.
All of this is before we factor in potential VRAM price increases. The same DRAM pressures that drive up RAM and SSD prices also affect the memory chips on your GPU. If those costs are passed down, even so called budget graphics cards will creep higher.
Combine premium priced RAM, more expensive SSDs and pricier GPUs and the total cost of a new gaming build climbs rapidly. These are big sums for individual parts that still need a CPU, motherboard, case, power supply and cooling before you see a single frame rendered.
Why it matters for the future of PC gaming
Rising component prices are more than an annoyance. They change who can realistically get into PC gaming at all. Every hobby needs new people coming in at the bottom end to stay healthy. If the entry level becomes 1,500 dollars or more for a complete setup, a lot of younger players and budget focused gamers are simply locked out.
That hurts everyone in the long run. Fewer new PC gamers means a smaller audience for PC games, less demand for enthusiast hardware and less justification for developers to invest in pushing PC features. Even those who can afford high end rigs miss out because the ecosystem around PC gaming shrinks.
It also hits existing players who want to keep their machines up to date. Planning to grab an extra 16 or 32 GB of RAM, a new SSD for your growing Steam library, or a faster GPU for smoother frame rates in demanding games Maybe you were used to a rough estimate of what those upgrades would cost. Now the message is grim. Expect to pay significantly more than you did a couple of years ago.
There is no simple fix from the consumer side. You can still find occasional deals, consider previous generation hardware where it makes sense, or buy prebuilt systems that were priced before the worst increases land. But as long as AI data center demand stays high and a handful of companies dominate memory manufacturing, the overall trend is likely to keep climbing at least in the near term.
The bigger concern is that the heart of PC gaming its do it yourself, upgrade friendly and accessible nature is being strained. For many of us the path into the hobby was saving up for parts, swapping components over time and slowly building a machine we were proud of. If that path becomes reserved only for those who can swallow steadily rising prices, PC gaming risks losing some of what made it special in the first place.
Original article and image: https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/pc-gaming-has-a-pricing-problem-and-the-memory-crisis-is-compounding-it-in-a-way-thats-utterly-heartbreaking-for-our-hobby/
