The State of PC Gaming in 2026: Why This Is the Worst Time to Build a PC

I've been doing this for over 10 years. I've lived through the GPU scalping nightmare during COVID, the crypto mining era where you literally couldn't find a graphics card — all of it. But I'm gonna be real with you: what's happening right now in 2026 is worse. And I don't say that lightly. This isn't one component getting expensive or one product being hard to find. It's everything, all at once, and the CEOs of the companies that make this stuff are literally going on record saying it's gonna get worse before it gets better.

So let's break this down. I'm gonna tell you exactly what's going on with RAM, GPUs, SSDs, laptops — the whole thing. Because it's all connected. And then I'm gonna tell you what I'd actually do about it if I were building a PC right now.

The Root of Everything: AI Ate the Memory Supply

Okay so if you've been paying any attention at all, you know RAM prices have gone completely sideways. But I don't think most people understand just how deep this goes, because it's not just a "prices went up" situation. The companies that make memory have basically decided you're not worth selling to anymore.

Here's what happened: Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron — these three companies make basically all the world's memory — they looked at AI data centers and they looked at you, the PC gamer, and they picked the AI data centers. And honestly? I get it. High-bandwidth memory for AI servers pulls 40–60% margins compared to like 15–25% for the consumer stuff that goes into your laptop or desktop. So they took their limited factory capacity and pointed it at the thing that makes them way more money. Can you blame them? Kind of. But that's the reality.

IDC is calling this a permanent shift. That's the word they used — permanent. Every wafer that gets turned into an HBM stack for an NVIDIA AI chip is a wafer that doesn't become the RAM in your next laptop or the SSD in your next build. And right now, the AI companies are winning that fight and it's not even close.

Micron literally shut down their Crucial consumer brand. Just straight up walked away from it. If that doesn't tell you where the industry's head is at right now, I don't know what will. And Phison's CEO confirmed that every single NAND manufacturer told him 2026 capacity is completely sold out. All of it. Gone.

The GPU Situation: NVIDIA Is Leaving Gamers Behind

Okay, this one really gets me. Because the GPU situation isn't just about supply problems — it's about NVIDIA actively choosing to deprioritize the people who made them what they are. Gamers built NVIDIA. Let's be real. And now? It kinda feels like they're leaving us behind.

The RTX 5090 — their $1,999 flagship — is going for over $3,000 if you can even find one. The RTX 5070 Ti launched at $749 and has climbed past $1,250 for most models. And here's the thing that really got me: ASUS straight up confirmed the 5070 Ti 16GB was going end-of-life. Their PR team scrambled to walk it back with some "supply constraints" language, but come on. The proof is in the supply — or I should say, the complete lack of it.

And the RTX 50 SUPER series? Yeah, that's not happening. Multiple sources say it's been postponed indefinitely, and the RTX 60 "Rubin" series has been pushed back too. So if you're sitting there thinking "I'll just wait for the next thing" — you could be waiting a very long time.

The one bright spot? And I'm genuinely excited about this — AMD's Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT. Both come with 16GB of VRAM and they're actually competitive now. They're not immune to price creep, both have drifted above MSRP, but they're available and they don't feel like they're being deliberately abandoned. Intel's Arc B580 is also a legit option for budget 1080p gaming at around $250. If you told me two years ago I'd be recommending Intel GPUs in a buying guide, I'd have laughed at you. But here we are.

SSDs: Welcome to the NAND Apocalypse

Remember when SSDs just kept getting cheaper every single year? Like, that was the one thing you could count on? Yeah, those days are done. Phison's CEO confirmed that NAND prices have more than doubled in six months. The same 1TB TLC chip that cost $4.80 in July 2025 now costs $10.70. And all NAND production capacity for 2026 is already sold out. Let that sink in — it's February and the entire year's supply is spoken for.

Enterprise SSDs have been hit the hardest — a 30TB enterprise drive went from around $3,000 in mid-2025 to close to $11,000. But consumer drives aren't being spared either. Tom's Hardware literally ran a piece calculating that SSDs now cost more than gold by weight. That's not a joke. That's actual math.

And here's the thing that blew my mind: Western Digital announced they're sold out of hard drives for all of 2026, with deals already locked in for 2027 and 2028. Hard drives! Even spinning rust can't save you right now. HDD prices are up like 46% since September.

Laptops: Pay More, Get Less

Okay, this is the part that hits closest to home for me because I review laptops for a living. Like, this is literally what I do every single week. And I'm watching the industry do something I have never seen before: raise prices and cut specs at the same time.

Lenovo, Dell, HP, Acer, ASUS — all of them have confirmed 15–20% price hikes. Dell's COO said he's "never seen memory-chip costs rise this fast." Lenovo told their retail partners that all existing pricing expired January 1, 2026. These aren't rumors. These are confirmed industry-wide contract resets.

But here's the part that really drives me crazy: they're not just charging more. They're quietly downgrading specs to absorb some of the cost too. I literally just reviewed a laptop that shipped with 8 gigs of RAM — in 2026! The same line had 16 gigs standard last year. Some OEMs are cutting display quality, reducing battery capacity, using cheaper build materials. Consumer Reports is calling it "shrinkflation" and that's exactly what it is — that $600 laptop you buy today might look identical to last year's model, but under the hood? It's a worse machine. And that freaking kills me.

And according to TrendForce, both Lenovo and HP are considering delaying new laptop launches entirely rather than shipping products at these prices. So not only are the laptops that exist more expensive and worse-specced — new models might just not come out on schedule. Wild.

The Windows 10 Factor: Worst Timing Imaginable

Okay, and here's the cruel twist that makes all of this even worse. Windows 10 hit end-of-life back in October 2025. Microsoft's not providing security updates anymore unless you pay $30 for a one-year extension that runs through October 2026. After that? You're on your own.

There are still hundreds of millions of PCs running Windows 10. A lot of them can't even upgrade to Windows 11 because of that TPM 2.0 requirement and other hardware restrictions. So these people are essentially being told: buy a new computer. And they're being told to buy a new computer at the exact moment when PCs are the most expensive they've been in years. The timing could not be worse.

IDC is calling this a "perfect storm" for the PC industry — the Windows 10 refresh cycle slamming headfirst into the memory crisis. They're saying the PC market could shrink by nearly 9% even though demand for new machines should theoretically be at an all-time high. That's how broken this situation is.

When Does This End?

I wish I had a clean answer for you. I really do. But I'm not gonna sugarcoat it — here's what the industry is actually saying:

So What Do You Actually Do?

Alright, enough doom and gloom. Let's talk about what you actually do, because there are still smart moves you can make right now.

The Bigger Picture

Here's what I keep coming back to, and I think this is the most important thing to understand: this isn't a normal cycle. This is not like COVID where the factories shut down and then reopened. The factories are running. They're running at full capacity. The problem is that full capacity isn't enough when AI data centers are eating an ever-growing chunk of the output, and the memory companies have zero reason to change that because the enterprise margins are so much better.

PC Gamer started calling this "The RAMpocalypse" and honestly that doesn't even go far enough. Motherboard sales are down 50% because enthusiasts are just getting priced out. GamersNexus had to design a budget build around a Ryzen 5 5500 and Intel Arc B570 just to keep a system under $700. Sony is reportedly looking at pushing the PlayStation 6 back to 2029 because of memory constraints. Like — this is affecting everything.

We're not in a pricing cycle. We're watching the tech industry decide who its real customer is. And right now? It's not gamers. It's not laptop buyers. It's not you or me. It's the AI companies with the deepest pockets who are willing to prepay for three years of supply up front.

That doesn't mean PC gaming is dead. Not even close — people are still building, still playing, still having a great time. But it does mean 2026 requires a different mindset. Buy smart, buy what's actually available, protect what you have, and stop chasing paper launches or waiting for phantom price drops. The best time to build a PC was six months ago. The second best time is right now, before it gets worse.