The AI Domino Effect: How the Data Center Race Is “Destroying” Memory Supply and Crushing the Consumer Market

The computer components market has been hit by a crisis that is especially visible in the memory segment. The cause of these drastic changes is the still-growing demand for computing power for artificial intelligence and the components that provide it. At this moment, we are witnessing a sharp shortage of computer components and a rapid increase in their prices.

These are classic consequences of the so-called “AI bubble” effect, when the explosive growth of one segment destroys adjacent stable markets.

Sales Crisis and Price Surge: Not Only DRAM, but Also NAND

The “domino effect” began with dynamic random-access memory (DRAM), whose prices started rising back in October 2024. This has dealt a global blow to component sales: for example, motherboard shipments in China collapsed by almost 50%. These trends have forced users to massively postpone PC upgrades, as rising prices have made upgrades unjustifiably expensive.

The crisis has not been limited to RAM alone but has also spread to storage devices:

• SSD supply crisis: Transcend officially announced the suspension of SSD shipments because major corporations such as SanDisk and Samsung decided to allocate all NAND memory chips to the largest AI data centers. This caused chaotic price growth of up to 100% in just one week.
• Exit of well-known players from the market: The prioritization of AI forced one of the key memory manufacturers to shut down its consumer brand, Crucial, by the end of February 2026, after nearly 30 years of operation. Micron will now focus primarily on the enterprise segment and high-speed HBM memory for AI accelerators and server-class modules.

The Race for Profitability: What and How AI Is Changing

The spread of AI primarily affects business priorities. Data centers for developing and training artificial intelligence models require enormous amounts of memory—both DRAM and NAND. NVIDIA and other major companies are now actively buying up components for these purposes, which is triggering the crisis.

At the same time, memory manufacturers such as Samsung and SK Hynix are deliberately limiting overall production to avoid market oversupply and maintain high prices. They are focusing their capacity on high-margin AI-related products (HBM, LPDDR), forcing PC component suppliers to pay significantly more.

Consequences for Consumers

The impact on end users is already being felt:

1. The cost of PCs has increased. Major manufacturers such as Acer, Asus, and Lenovo are operating on the edge of profitability to maintain old prices, but laptop and desktop PC prices have still risen by dozens of dollars.
2. Price growth will continue. Manufacturers have already warned that new models planned for release in 2026 will cost at least 20% more.

For the average user, this means that building a new PC in the coming years will be significantly more expensive and more difficult than ever before. Everything is becoming more expensive: motherboards, SSDs, DRAM, and a new wave of CPU price increases is also expected, from Intel Panther Lake to AMD Gorgon Point APUs.

Investments in AI infrastructure are, of course, important, but the concentration of demand is draining resources from the consumer market. This not only forces buyers to pay more but also leads to entire business directions, such as Crucial, being forced to shut down. All of this indicates the potential danger of the “AI bubble” for the technology industry.