Hardware buyers face a challenging end to the year as Acer Chairman and CEO Jason Chen warns that PC prices could surge by an additional 5% to 20% in the fourth quarter of 2026.
Speaking in a report originally carried by Taiwan's Economic Daily News, Chen revealed that despite normalizing supplies for DDR4 and DDR5 memory and CPUs, overall component costs remain elevated.
According to Chen, memory and SSD prices have failed to follow typical supply recovery trends, meaning high-spec systems with larger RAM and storage configurations will suffer the steepest price hikes.
Chen projected that average selling prices for personal computers will likely peak around mid-2027 before seeing any potential relief in the second half of that year, largely due to the months-long lag required for lower component costs to translate into cheaper retail PCs.
Market intelligence firm TrendForce supports this gloomy outlook, forecasting DRAM contract prices to rise between 13% and 18% in Q3 2026, while NAND flash prices are expected to jump 10% to 15%.
Additionally, chipmaker AMD is reportedly planning a 10% price bump on GPUs and chipsets. Industry analysts advise consumers planning upgrades or system builds to purchase hardware before the Q4 price hikes take full effect.
"Suppliers keep pushing through price increases, some of which are hard to justify... cheaper PCs are probably more than a year away." — Jason Chen, Acer Chairman & CEO
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