Building a PC is about to get pricier, but not for the reasons you think

Summary

• SSD prices have shot up considerably since late last year, and are set to keep rising in the next few months.
• DDR5 RAM prices are set to increase as well, pinching price-sensitive buyers the most.
• Consider waiting if possible; prices might start declining in the last quarter.

Building a PC might be a lengthy journey from research to assembly, but it's always satisfying. The giddy feeling you get from unwrapping new components and powering on the PC for the first time is unparalleled. Recent generations of CPUs and GPUs have made it more costly to tap into this feeling, and it seems the era of budget gaming PCs that deliver decent performance is about to end.

The next few months are about to bring additional price hikes, not for the best CPUs or the best gaming GPUs this time, but for two other essential PC components: SSDs and RAM. High-speed M.2 NVMe SSDs and DDR5 RAM are now much more in demand among PC builders than they were a few years ago. Until the last quarter of last year, SSD prices were at an all-time low, and even DDR5 RAM prices seemed to have bottomed out. However, all of that is about to change in the second half of 2024.

SSDs have already gotten more expensive

It's about to get all pricey up in here

If you've been browsing SSDs on Amazon in the last 6-7 months, you may have noticed a steady rise in prices that started around October 2023, and is continuing to date. Popular SSDs like the Crucial MX500 and Samsung 980 Pro have shot up in price by about 75%-85% compared to their September 2023 prices. This rapid price hike is mostly the result of manufacturers like Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron steadily raising NAND flash prices, which have gone up by almost 20% every quarter starting in 2024.

You might want to get used to a 1TB SSD with fast NVMe costing around $100 for the near future.

While manufacturers have had to raise NAND prices as a means to correct prices and break even, this means consumers will have to say goodbye to any hope of a 1TB SSDs costing just $50-$60 anytime soon. If you've been eyeing an SSD purchase, you might want to get used to a 1TB SSD with fast NVMe costing around $100 for the near future. And if reports are to be believed, prices will keep going up even more throughout the remainder of 2024 as well, reverting the storage market to its early 2022 highs.

The last year has been terrible for the NAND industry, as many players were on the verge of bankruptcy. With the price trends we're seeing now, things look much better for them, but at the consumer end, this could easily add $50-$100 to the total build cost. For price-sensitive builders targeting $600-$700 systems, this would represent a major increase of around 15% to the build cost. Having the best SSDs in your new build will pinch more than usual.

DDR5 RAM is about to get more costly too

Spurred by shifting priorities and lower production

If pricey SSDs weren't enough, RAM prices are also about to skyrocket, if market reports are any indication. As a result of the rising demand for AI servers, High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) prices are set to experience an increase in the coming months. Why should that affect DDR5 RAM prices, you might ask? Well, it turns out that memory makers have decided to allocate more resources and production capacity to HBM, thus reducing the production of DRAM. This will decrease supply and increase prices for consumer DDR5 RAM.

Reports suggest these factors will contribute to a 15% to 20% increase in DDR5 memory. A $20 hike for a 32GB kit (16GB x 2) that costs around $100 now might not seem like a big deal, but again, for those on a tight budget, this stuff adds up. Plus, going with the cheaper DDR4 option with Intel's 12th, 13th, or 14th Gen and AMD's AM4 processors is getting increasingly hard to recommend, considering Intel's 15th Gen processors and AMD's Zen 5 CPUs are on the horizon, set to make new DDR4 builds obsolete within months.

Before these price hikes actually materialize at the retail level, you better scoop up your favorite memory kit soon.

Opting for the best DDR5 RAM is the way to go if you're planning a new build right now. There are tangible performance benefits to be had, plus you won't end up tying yourself to a dead platform. Before these price hikes fully materialize at the retail level, you better scoop up your favorite memory kit soon.

Should you buy now or wait?

As always, it depends

While it's tempting to get ahead of impending price increases and just build a new PC as soon as possible, it might make sense to wait it out if you aren't in a hurry. According to some reports, prices might start showing a downward trend toward the end of the year after staying high for the next few months. To what extent that ends up happening is not known, but if your PC upgrade isn't too urgent, you might as well wait and find out once you're truly ready.

Besides, the months for the potential price decrease will coincide with the year-end sales anyway, so it might be a good idea to delay your purchase if you're satisfied with your current hardware. On the other hand, if you've been waiting for quite some time and really want to build a new PC right now, then take advantage of the current prices before SSDs get pricier and DDR5 RAM price hikes materialize.