Acer just put a hard number on a problem PC buyers have been feeling all year. Chairman and CEO Jason Chen told Taiwan’s Economic Daily News this week that average PC prices will climb another 5% to 20% in the fourth quarter of 2026, with systems carrying larger RAM and SSD configurations taking the biggest hit. The remarks, first reported on September 20-21, 2026 and confirmed by outlets including Tom’s Hardware, TechRadar and PC Guide, mark the most specific price guidance any major PC vendor has given since memory costs began spiraling earlier this year.
Chen’s comments landed with a twist. In the same breath as his price warning, he dismissed memory makers’ talk of a shortage lasting until 2030 as “impossible,” arguing DDR4 and DDR5 supply is “quite large” and that new Chinese production capacity will start easing prices in late 2027. That puts Acer at odds with some of the more dire forecasts coming out of research houses this year, even as its own numbers confirm the pain is real and not close to over. For anyone shopping for a laptop, building a desktop, or running procurement for an engineering team, the next twelve months just got a lot more expensive to plan around.
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What Acer’s CEO Actually Said About PC Price Increases
Jason Chen, also referred to in some outlets as Chen Chun-shen, framed the coming price increase as a lagging effect rather than a sudden shock. According to his comments, component-price increases that memory suppliers locked in earlier in 2026 are only now working their way through to finished-product pricing, since Acer and rival vendors typically negotiate supply contracts and build inventory months ahead of retail sales. That lag means the DRAM and NAND cost spikes from the second and third quarters of 2026 are still filtering into shelf prices for laptops and desktops shipping in Q4.
Chen’s 5% to 20% range is a company-wide average rather than a category-specific breakdown, and Acer has not published separate figures for laptops, desktops or monitors. What he did specify is that machines with larger RAM and SSD configurations will see above-average increases, because memory and storage represent a disproportionate share of the bill of materials on higher-spec systems. A base configuration with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD absorbs a much smaller memory-cost shock than a 32GB, 2TB workstation aimed at gamers, creators or AI developers.
On timing, Chen’s outlook diverges slightly across the outlets that reported it: some cite a plateau in the first half of 2027, others describe average selling prices peaking around mid-2027, before declining later that year as new memory capacity comes online. Either way, the consistent thread is that PC buyers should not expect relief before 2027 at the earliest, and Acer’s own guidance suggests price increases will still be accumulating for at least two more quarters after this one.
Why DRAM and NAND Prices Are Driving This PC Price Increase
The mechanics behind Acer’s warning trace back to memory contract pricing, which has moved sharply higher through 2026. TrendForce’s research previously flagged conventional DRAM contract prices revised upward to a 90% to 95% quarter-over-quarter increase heading into the first quarter of 2026, alongside a 55% to 60% jump projected for NAND flash contract prices in the same window, according to TrendForce. PC-specific DRAM pricing moved even further, with TrendForce reporting that PC DRAM prices in the first quarter of 2026 were projected to increase by more than 100% quarter-over-quarter.
By September, TrendForce’s weekly spot-market tracking painted a more mixed near-term picture: its September 2 update described DRAM spot trading as sluggish, with weaker demand for branded DDR4 and DDR5 chips even as supplier quotes stayed firm and elevated. Mainstream DDR4 spot prices ticked up 2.08% week-over-week to $44.54, while 512Gb TLC NAND wafer prices slipped 0.90% to $20.708 — a sign that contract-level pricing pressure and spot-market softness are pulling in different directions at the same time. TrendForce separately said on September 22 that it had sharply raised its 2027 HBM price outlook because of tight supply and a richer HBM4 mix, with 8-Hi products leading shipments, underlining that the crunch is not confined to consumer PC memory.
The underlying driver is competition for fab capacity between AI data-center buyers and everyone else. Memory manufacturers are prioritizing high-bandwidth memory for AI accelerators and server DRAM for hyperscale data centers, both of which command far higher margins than commodity PC memory. That reallocation of wafer capacity squeezes the supply available for laptops, desktops and consumer SSDs, and it is the same dynamic already documented on this site in the HBM4 memory shortage that pushed DRAM inventory below 10 days industry-wide, and in the 486% DDR5 price spike that forced AMD to extend support for its older AM4 platform.
| Memory metric | Reported change | Period | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conventional DRAM contract price | +90% to +95% QoQ | Into Q1 2026 | TrendForce |
| NAND flash contract price | +55% to +60% QoQ | Into Q1 2026 | TrendForce |
| PC DRAM contract price | +100%+ QoQ | Q1 2026 | TrendForce |
| Combined DRAM + SSD cost surge | ~130% by year-end | Full-year 2026 | Gartner (via Tech Times) |
| Average PC price lift from memory costs | ~17% | Full-year 2026 | Gartner (via Tech Times) |
| DDR4 spot price (mainstream) | +2.08% WoW to $44.54 | Week of Sept 2, 2026 | TrendForce |
| 512Gb TLC NAND wafer price | -0.90% WoW to $20.708 | Week of Sept 2, 2026 | TrendForce |
| Acer average PC price increase | +5% to +20% | Q4 2026 | Acer CEO Jason Chen |
The AI Boom Is Eating Consumer Memory Supply
It’s tempting to treat this as an isolated PC-industry story, but the root cause sits squarely inside the AI infrastructure buildout that has dominated tech spending through 2026. High-bandwidth memory, the stacked DRAM used in AI accelerators, requires the same fabs, the same advanced packaging lines and often the same raw wafer starts as conventional DDR4 and DDR5. When memory makers shift capacity toward HBM4 for next-generation AI chips, every gigabyte redirected away from PC-grade DRAM tightens consumer supply further.
This is the same dynamic that has kept Nvidia’s RTX 5090 hovering near $4,329 in some markets even as the company pushes ahead with next-generation Rubin silicon, and it’s why RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell cards have been trading for as much as $16,000 in Tokyo’s Akihabara district according to earlier reporting on this site. GPU pricing and PC pricing are downstream of the same memory bottleneck; a GPU maker paying more for GDDR7 or HBM4 passes that cost to board partners, while a PC OEM paying more for DDR5 modules and NAND passes it to consumers buying a laptop with no GPU in sight at all. Neither market can find relief independently, because both are fighting the same hyperscalers and AI labs for fab time.
IDC’s research has been blunt about the outlook. According to IDC, “there was no meaningful relief to the memory shortage situation before the end of 2027, meaning prices would continue to rise and PC manufacturers would struggle to maintain full product portfolios,” a warning documented in IDC’s PC market analysis. That timeline runs longer than Acer’s own late-2027 relief estimate, illustrating how far apart even well-resourced forecasters are on when this cycle actually breaks.
Timeline: From Contract Price Shock to Store-Shelf Reality
Understanding why Q4 2026 is the inflection point requires walking through how memory pricing moves from supplier contracts to retail tags. Memory makers negotiate contract prices with PC OEMs on a quarterly or multi-quarter basis, well ahead of when finished systems reach shelves. The sharp contract increases that TrendForce documented heading into Q1 2026 took months to show up in retail pricing, partly because OEMs had existing inventory bought at older prices and partly because of competitive pressure to hold prices steady as long as possible.
| Period | What happens | Source of guidance |
|---|---|---|
| Q1 2026 | DRAM contract prices jump 90-100%+ QoQ; NAND contract prices rise 55-60% | TrendForce |
| Through mid-2026 | Cost pressure builds in OEM supply chains; early retail increases appear on RAM kits and SSDs | Multiple retail trackers |
| Q3 2026 | DRAM contract prices rise a further 13-18% QoQ; NAND rises 10-15% | Industry summaries cited by Acer’s remarks |
| Q4 2026 | Average PC prices rise 5-20% as component costs finally reach finished systems | Acer CEO Jason Chen |
| H1 2027 | PC prices expected to plateau near their peak | Acer, various outlets |
| Late 2027 | Prices begin easing as Chinese DRAM/NAND capacity (CXMT, YMTC) ramps | Acer CEO Jason Chen |
| End of 2027 | IDC sees no meaningful relief materializing even by this point | IDC |
That gap between IDC’s more pessimistic end-of-2027 timeline and Acer’s late-2027 relief estimate is worth sitting with. Acer has a commercial incentive to project confidence that this cycle will break on a specific, near-term date, since prolonged pessimism is bad for enterprise refresh cycles and consumer demand alike. IDC, as an independent research firm, has less reason to soften its call. Buyers making purchasing decisions this quarter should treat the “late 2027” relief date as the optimistic case, not the consensus one.
Which PC Categories Get Hit Hardest
Not every PC buyer will feel this equally. Chen’s own comments flagged that systems with larger RAM and SSD configurations see disproportionately larger price increases, which tracks with basic bill-of-materials math: a machine with 64GB of RAM and a 4TB SSD has vastly more exposure to memory-cost inflation than an entry-level Chromebook with 8GB and 128GB of storage. That means the categories most likely to see double-digit price jumps are gaming laptops, content-creation workstations, and any AI-capable PC marketed around running local large language models, since all three categories lean on higher RAM and storage specs as a selling point.
Budget and education-focused PCs, by contrast, are more insulated simply because they carry less memory to begin with, though they are not immune. Gartner’s research, cited by Tech Times, put the combined DRAM and SSD cost surge at roughly 130% for the full year, lifting average PC prices by about 17% — a figure that lines up closely with the upper half of Acer’s own 5-to-20% range and suggests Acer’s guidance is more conservative than some independent forecasts, not more alarmist.
The knock-on effect for shipment volumes could be significant. Gartner was reported to expect global PC shipments to fall 10.4% in 2026 because of the memory shortage, a contraction that would mark one of the sharpest annual declines the PC industry has seen outside of a pandemic-driven demand collapse. If that forecast holds, 2026 would go down as a year where PC vendors sold meaningfully fewer machines at meaningfully higher prices — a combination that squeezes unit economics for OEMs and retailers alike, even if average revenue per unit rises.
How Other PC Makers Are Responding
Acer’s Jason Chen is, so far, the most specific major OEM executive to put hard percentages on the coming price increase publicly. Dell, HP, Lenovo, ASUS and MSI have not issued comparably detailed guidance as of this writing, though all five face the identical DRAM and NAND cost pressure documented by TrendForce, Gartner and IDC. That silence does not mean those vendors are immune — it more likely reflects a preference to avoid getting ahead of quarterly earnings calls with specific pricing commitments that could be used against them competitively or by investors if conditions shift.
What is observable in the market is that price increases are already showing up piecemeal across the industry: RAM kit prices, SSD prices and prebuilt desktop pricing have all trended upward through 2026, consistent with the component-cost data even where individual OEMs haven’t attached a specific quarterly percentage to it. Acer’s decision to go on record with a number is notable less because the direction is surprising and more because it gives buyers, IT procurement teams and competitors alike a concrete benchmark to measure against as Q4 pricing rolls out.
The Memory Makers: Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron and China’s CXMT
On the supply side, the three dominant DRAM producers — Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron — have collectively steered capacity toward higher-margin HBM and server-grade DRAM throughout 2026, a shift that sits at the center of Chen’s argument that current pricing reflects allocation choices as much as physical scarcity. Chen’s characterization, reported across multiple outlets, was that memory makers are effectively using a “shortage lasting until 2030” narrative to protect margins, rather than describing a supply constraint that is truly that severe or that long-lived.
China’s domestic memory industry is the wildcard in Acer’s more optimistic timeline. Chen’s late-2027 relief forecast leans on new capacity from Chinese DRAM producer CXMT and NAND producer YMTC coming online and diluting the pricing power that Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron currently hold. If Chinese capacity ramps as fast as Acer expects, it would mark a meaningful shift in the global memory supply chain, reducing the “big three” model that has defined DRAM and NAND production for over a decade. If it ramps more slowly — which is the scenario IDC’s end-of-2027 pessimism implicitly assumes — PC buyers should expect the current price environment to persist well into 2028.
Historical Context: This Isn’t the 2021 Chip Shortage
It’s worth being precise about how the current memory squeeze differs from the 2021 semiconductor shortage that PC buyers still remember. That earlier crisis was broad-based: it constrained CPUs, GPUs, power-management chips, networking silicon and logistics capacity simultaneously, driven by a mix of pandemic demand shifts, factory shutdowns and a scramble for foundry capacity across nearly every chip category at once. Component substitution was difficult because almost nothing was in surplus.
The 2026 episode is narrower and more structural. It is centered specifically on DRAM, NAND and the advanced packaging capacity tied to HBM production, driven less by a sudden demand shock than by a sustained, multi-year reallocation of fab capacity toward AI accelerators and data-center memory. CPUs, GPU compute dies, and most other PC components are not facing comparable supply constraints in 2026 — it’s memory specifically, which is why DDR4, an older and less capacity-intensive standard, has held up meaningfully cheaper than DDR5 through this cycle. That distinction matters for buyers: unlike 2021, where almost every upgrade path was constrained, 2026 buyers who are willing to step down to older memory standards or lower capacities have more room to dodge the worst of the price increase than they did four years ago.
Market Impact: Shipments, Spending and the AI PC Squeeze
The financial stakes here extend well past what individual consumers pay for a new laptop. If Gartner’s 10.4% shipment decline forecast for 2026 proves accurate, PC vendors, retailers and the broader component supply chain — from motherboard makers to power supply manufacturers — all absorb lower unit volumes at the same time input costs are rising. That combination pressures margins across the entire PC ecosystem, not just at the OEM level, and it complicates the AI PC narrative that vendors including Acer, Dell, HP and Lenovo have leaned on heavily throughout 2026 to justify premium pricing on Copilot+ and other AI-capable machines.
There’s a real tension embedded in that narrative. AI PCs are typically marketed around higher RAM configurations to support on-device inference — exactly the category of machine Chen singled out as facing the steepest price increases. If AI-capable PCs get proportionally more expensive at the same time OEMs are trying to drive adoption of on-device AI features, the price increase could slow the very upgrade cycle the industry is counting on to reverse 2026’s shipment decline. Enterprise IT buyers planning refresh cycles into 2027 should factor in that AI PC premiums and memory-driven price increases are now compounding rather than independent variables.
Competitive Comparison: How the Major Memory-Linked Price Stories Stack Up
Acer’s PC-price warning is the latest in a string of memory-driven price stories that have hit different corners of the hardware market through 2026, each shaped by the same underlying DRAM and NAND shortage but landing differently depending on how memory-intensive the product category is.
| Product category | Reported price impact | Primary driver |
|---|---|---|
| General PCs (Acer) | +5% to +20% in Q4 2026 | DDR5/NAND contract cost pass-through |
| Gaming GPUs (RTX 5090-class) | Street prices near $4,300-$9,000 depending on market | GDDR7/AI demand competition |
| Steam Deck | Up to 46% price hike reported | DRAM crisis raising handheld BOM cost |
| AM4-era desktop PCs | DDR5 prices up as much as 486% vs. pre-shortage levels | DDR5 scarcity pushing buyers back to older DDR4 platforms |
| Combined DRAM+SSD cost (Gartner) | ~130% surge, ~17% average PC price lift | Full-year 2026 memory cost compounding |
What stands out across this comparison is that the price impact scales almost directly with how much memory and storage a given product category typically ships with. A gaming handheld or a high-end GPU card, both of which lean on dense, high-speed memory to function at all, is seeing far steeper percentage increases than the blended average across Acer’s full PC lineup, which spans everything from entry-level Chromebooks to workstation-class desktops.
What This Means for Buyers Right Now
For anyone in the market for a new PC before the end of 2026, the practical takeaway from Chen’s comments is straightforward: prices are more likely to rise from here than fall, and the increases coming in Q4 will land hardest on higher-memory configurations. Buyers who can commit to a purchase now, rather than waiting for a hoped-for price drop, are likely better off given that even Acer’s own optimistic scenario doesn’t put meaningful relief before late 2027 — more than a year away.
For buyers who can be flexible on specs, there is a genuine cost-avoidance strategy available: choosing a lower base RAM or SSD configuration and upgrading later, once memory prices normalize, can meaningfully soften the impact of a system purchased during this window. For IT procurement teams managing fleet refreshes, locking in current-generation pricing on planned Q4 or Q1 2027 purchases — rather than delaying in hopes of a near-term price break — appears to be the more defensible position given the consistency of the forecasts from Acer, Gartner and IDC alike, even where they diverge on exactly when relief arrives.
What Comes Next: 5 Predictions for the PC Memory Crisis
1. More OEMs will follow Acer with specific price guidance. Now that Acer has set a public benchmark, competitors facing the same cost pressure have less to lose by confirming similar ranges, particularly around Q4 earnings calls and CES 2027 announcements.
2. Entry-level and DDR4-based systems will see a resurgence. As buyers look for ways to dodge DDR5 pricing, expect PC makers to market budget DDR4-based systems more aggressively through early 2027, mirroring the dynamic already playing out with AMD’s extended AM4 platform support.
3. AI PC marketing will shift toward efficiency over raw memory capacity. With high-RAM configurations facing the steepest price increases, expect vendors to emphasize on-device AI efficiency and smaller local models rather than leading with 32GB-plus RAM as a baseline AI PC spec.
4. Chinese memory capacity becomes a closely watched swing factor. CXMT and YMTC production ramps will increasingly be treated as a market-moving data point for the broader PC and component industry, similar to how OPEC output decisions are watched in energy markets.
5. The gap between optimistic and pessimistic forecasts will narrow by mid-2027. As actual Q1 and Q2 2027 pricing data comes in, expect the spread between Acer’s late-2027 relief timeline and IDC’s more cautious outlook to converge, giving buyers a clearer signal than the current range of forecasts allows.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much will PC prices increase in Q4 2026?
Acer CEO Jason Chen said average PC prices are expected to rise between 5% and 20% during the fourth quarter of 2026, with systems carrying larger RAM and SSD configurations seeing increases toward the higher end of that range.
Why are PC prices rising in 2026?
The increase is driven by sharp DRAM and NAND contract price hikes, as memory manufacturers reallocate fab capacity toward higher-margin HBM and server DRAM for AI data centers, tightening the supply available for consumer PC memory and storage.
When will PC prices go back down?
Acer’s own outlook points to prices plateauing in the first half of 2027 and beginning to ease later in 2027 as new Chinese memory capacity from CXMT and YMTC comes online. IDC’s research is more cautious, suggesting no meaningful relief before the end of 2027.
Is it worth buying a PC now or waiting?
Given that even the more optimistic forecasts don’t project relief before late 2027, buyers who need a system are generally better off purchasing sooner rather than waiting, particularly for configurations with heavier RAM or SSD specs that face the steepest projected increases.
Which PC categories will see the biggest price jumps?
Gaming laptops, content-creation workstations and AI-capable PCs marketed around higher RAM configurations are expected to see above-average increases, since memory and storage make up a larger share of their total component cost.
Is this the same as the 2021 chip shortage?
No. The 2021 shortage was broad-based across CPUs, GPUs and other components. The 2026 price increase is more narrowly concentrated in DRAM, NAND and HBM-related memory production, driven primarily by AI data-center demand rather than a general semiconductor capacity crunch.
Are Dell, HP, Lenovo and other PC makers raising prices too?
Those vendors have not issued comparably specific public price guidance as of this writing, but they face the same DRAM and NAND cost pressure documented by TrendForce, Gartner and IDC, and retail pricing across the industry has already trended upward through 2026.
How does this affect PC shipment volumes?
Gartner was reported to expect global PC shipments to fall 10.4% in 2026 due to the memory shortage, which would represent one of the steepest annual declines the industry has faced outside a pandemic-driven demand shock.
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