A series of reports from Korean and Taiwanese outlets suggests growing pressure across the PC hardware industry as DRAM, NAND, and even NOR Flash prices continue to climb. Korea Economic Daily says NVIDIA, AMD, and other GPU makers are considering dropping some mid-to-high-end gaming cards where memory now makes up an unusually large share of total cost. Taiwanese PC brands, including ASUS, are also said to be looking at ways to reduce memory configurations in upcoming products. TrendForce warns that manufacturers may shift more production toward lower-margin models or raise prices across the board to cope with higher component costs. With most modern PCs, laptops, consoles, tablets, and phones now shipping with at least 16 GB of RAM, any further price spikes or supply shortages could force major brands to cut orders and increase retail pricing. Commercial Times reports that memory alone could add nearly NT$3,000 (about US $96) to basic office PCs next year.

According to Commercial Times, due to rising memory prices some motherboard makers and notebook ODMs vendors have paused new motherboard development or mass production. DRAM, NAND, and NOR Flash supply is tightening at the same time. DDR4 is becoming especially scarce as suppliers accelerate phase-outs and move mature-node capacity toward HBM and DDR5. WJ Capital Perspective estimates a DDR4 shortfall of around 70,000 wafers by the end of 2025, with 2026 unlikely to recover fully. NOR Flash demand is rising as well, driven by AI servers. Commercial Times says NVIDIA's GB200 NVL72 system already uses more than US $600 of NOR per rack, possibly reaching $900 within two years. This comes right after earlier reports that AMD is preparing GPU price increases and Samsung is raising memory prices by up to 60% due to tight supply.

More...