Consumers shopping for new laptops, PCs or smartphones may soon feel the sting of what people are calling ‘RAMageddon’, with global memory prices spiking to alarming levels.

New reports from Asia suggest Samsung has more than doubled the contract price of DDR5 memory supplied to manufacturers, claiming there is no stock.

The move reportedly pushes wholesale pricing for a single 16GB DDR5 module close to A$30 per unit at the contract level.

The price shock is not limited to next-generation memory. DDR4, long seen as the cheaper fallback for budget devices, is also rising sharply. With both options climbing, PC makers have fewer levers to pull to keep costs down.

At the heart of the crisis is surging demand from AI and cloud data centres.

Global memory giants Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron are prioritising lucrative AI contracts over consumer products, diverting capacity away from laptops, desktops and smartphones.

Micron has gone further, exiting the consumer market entirely and winding down its Crucial brand.

While Samsung’s price rises directly affect OEMs rather than shoppers, history suggests the impact will flow through quickly. Higher laptop and desktop prices are expected in 2026, alongside cost-cutting measures such as entry-level machines shipping with just 8GB of RAM.

Consumers may also face steeper upgrade prices to reach the memory levels increasingly required for modern software and on-device AI features.

Smartphones are not immune. With AI features pushing RAM requirements ever higher, manufacturers face a choice between absorbing costs or raising prices across future line-ups. Some forecasts point to noticeable handset price increases next year.