Dell’s XPS 14 currently costs more than $2,000. An AMD executive predicts that PC makers will make small improvements this year, instead of creating entirely new systems. And new AI computers from NVIDIA and AMD are boosting the RAM market. At CES 2026, it was hard not to see a bad year ahead for the computer industry, which will likely lead to higher prices and limited availability of consumer goods across the board.
In fact, however, the show has just confirmed what was seen as RAM prices have increased significantly in the past few months, driven by the demand for AI datacenters. As Samsung’s marketing leader, Wonjin Lee, told Bloomberg at CES: “There are going to be problems with semiconductor equipment, and it’s going to affect everyone. Prices are going up even as we speak.”
At first, it appeared that Dell’s new XPS 14 and XPS 16 were among the first systems hit by these demands. Last year’s models started at $1,699 and $1,899, respectively, and we were originally told that the new models will come in at $1,650 and $1,850 cheaper. Currently, the XPS 14 starts at $2,050, while the XPS 16 is $2,200. A Dell representative tells us that this is not an entry-level configuration, so we can expect to see cheaper systems under $2,000 in February. Although those numbers have not been finalized, representatives say they should be similar to previous figures we were given.
It’s also worth noting that it didn’t take much to fix previous models that cost more than $2,000. It’s just unfortunate that Dell doesn’t have a cheap configuration available to launch if its new systems, especially since they look so compelling. Meanwhile, Apple still hasn’t released the price of its $1,599 MacBook Pro 14-inch. At least the Dell still comes in cheaper than the $2,499 MacBook Pro 16-inch.
On the desktop front, AMD’s David McAfee, Business Vice President and GM of Client Channel Business, noted that the longevity of the company’s AM4 and AM5 platforms could be useful for gamers, as they can upgrade their CPUs without buying new RAM kits and motherboards. That allows for better performance without paying the nose for overpriced RAM.
“I think that’s going to be the trend we see in 2026 with incremental component upgrades, as opposed to full system releases and rebuilds,” he said in a team interview with Engadget and other outlets. “Some of the more popular CPUs are still running on half-core gamer platforms like the 2600 back in the Pinnacle Ridge days, or the 3000 series… Even going from there to the slightly more modern 5,000 series processors on the AM4 socket and motherboard, there’s a great improvement there.”
McAfee added that about 30 to 40 percent of AMD’s business still revolves around the AM4 platform, even outside of the wild memory market.
“There’s no product that has memory in it that doesn’t have some of these forces around DRAM pricing, and what it’s doing to the market,” he said, when asked about GPU price increases. “I think, the truth is the volatility we’ve seen in the last two months has been unprecedented.”
Looking ahead, he said he expects prices to drop within three to six months of the year, but did not elaborate on his thinking. As an aside, he also noted that AMD’s X3D chips, which include 3D V-cache, don’t really see much from slow RAM. Their high amounts of onboard L2 and L3 cache make the memory transfer speeds unreasonable, says McAfee.
That McAfee commented at all about the RAM situation is noteworthy. Every PC maker I asked, including Dell and Acer, declined to comment on the volatile state of the memory industry ahead of CES. Maybe they were hoping things would calm down before they priced in their new plans. Finally, they are recognized by the limited supply of RAM.
And where does all that memory go? At CES, NVIDIA announced its new supercomputer Vera Rubin AI, which supports up to 54TB of RAM across 36 Vera CPUs and 20.7TB of memory across 72 GPUs. AMD, too, announced its new Helios AI rack, which supports up to 31TB of memory across 72 AMD Instinct MI455X GPUs. Given the never-ending desire to use computing power for AI modeling and reduction, there is likely to be significant demand for these beast systems.
Simply put: Our global memory is being sacrificed to appease the AI industry. That’s good news for the likes of OpenAI, Microsoft and NVIDIA, but bad news for anyone who cares about the PCs and consumer products we use every day. Be prepared for a year of price increases.
Update 1/12, 3:00p: Added mention of low entry level settings coming last.
