2025 started out feeling like a normal year for anyone who loves hardware. We had the usual GPU launches, CPUs got a little faster, and prices actually seemed like they were settling into a sane rhythm. It really felt like we were finally past the chaos of the last few years and heading toward a stable market.
Then November hit and everything changed. Now that we are in early 2026, it is clear that 2025 was a breaking point. RAM prices are through the roof, SSDs are getting more expensive every week, and GPUs are the next target. We are looking at a massive, structural shift in how hardware works.
Why AI Is Eating Your Computer
The truth is that your next PC build is not being held back by typical supply chain issues. It is being cannibalized by the AI race. Companies like Microsoft, Google, and Meta spent over 150 billion dollars on AI infrastructure in 2025 alone. They are not just buying chips. They are vacuuming up every bit of DRAM and NAND memory they can find to build massive data centers.
To these giants, this is a winner takes all race for AGI. They believe that whoever gets there first will basically control the global economy for decades. In a game with stakes that high, someone trying to buy 32GB of RAM for a gaming rig is just collateral damage. These companies have deeper pockets than any consumer and they are clearing the shelves before parts even reach the store.
The Myth Of The Bubble
A lot of people say to just wait it out. They think this is just like the dot com bubble and that it will eventually burst so prices crash and hardware floods the market again. While that is a nice thought, the math does not look great this time around.
Unlike the companies from twenty years ago, today’s tech giants have nearly infinite cash. They can keep this arms race going for years rather than quarters. Even if the AI hype cools down, the sheer amount of infrastructure they have already built keeps the pressure on memory and storage supply. Waiting is not a neutral move. It is a gamble that assumes these companies will run out of money before you run out of patience.
Renting Instead Of Owning
The scariest part of this is not the price tag. It is the shift toward compute as a service. If hardware stays this expensive, owning a powerful PC might stop making sense for most people. The industry is quietly nudging us toward a world where you do not buy a computer because you rent one through the cloud instead.
Think about what happens when you rent your performance.
- Someone else decides which apps you can run.
- Someone else decides how many hours a day you can use your machine.
- They can raise the price or take away features whenever they want.
Once we stop owning the silicon, we lose the off switch. We become users of a service rather than owners of a tool.
A New Reality For Enthusiasts
The real question is not whether prices will eventually drop. It is whether the market we grew up with, where you could save up and own your own machine, is actually disappearing.
If this trend of renting compute takes over, that old school sense of ownership might never come back. It is a bleak outlook for enthusiasts, but it is the reality of a world where Big Tech is prioritizing AI over everything else.
If you need a computer for work, the best time to buy was yesterday and the right time is today because if you wait till the prices drop, you will just end up paying a lot more.
