Dell hat die PC-Preise um 20 % erhöht. Lenovo, HP, Acer, ASUS sind die nächsten.

The Hike

On December 17, 2025, Dell lifted prices across its commercial portfolio. The increases ranged from 10 to 30 percent, with the bulk landing in a 15 to 20 percent band. Lenovo had already warned its channel partners that all then-current quotations would expire on January 1, 2026. ASUS followed on January 5, 2026, with targeted adjustments across parts of its product portfolio. HP CEO Enrique Lores told analysts that “H2 2026 could be especially tough, and prices may rise if needed.” Acer and ASUS publicly acknowledged that passing on soaring memory costs had become “an industry-wide consensus.”

That was wave one. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), “Lenovo, Dell, HP, Acer and ASUS have warned clients of tougher conditions ahead, confirming 15-20% hikes and contract resets as an industry-wide response” for the second half of 2026. H2 2026 begins on July 1, less than two months from now. The second wave is being priced into channel quotations already.

The Math Is Boring and Brutal

Memory chips make up roughly 15 to 18 percent of a typical PC’s cost, per HP’s CEO Enrique Lores. Spot prices for key DRAM components, including DDR5 (the current generation of system memory), have jumped roughly 70 percent year-over-year, with some parts up as much as 170 percent.

Walk through that. A 32GB DDR5-6000 CL30 kit, the workhorse spec for mid-range gaming and workstation builds, currently averages $542 on the open market with a current minimum near $400. The 180-day price change is up roughly 349 percent. Movement over the last week and month has been within a percentage point in either direction, signaling that prices have stabilized at the elevated level rather than rolling back.

If memory is 18 percent of a PC’s cost and that input rises 70 percent year-over-year, the unbuffered pass-through is roughly a 12.6 percent retail bump. Vendors signaling 15 to 20 percent are absorbing some of the shock and protecting margin on top. The buyer covers both.

The Cause Is AI

There is no mystery about who is taking the chips. Memory manufacturers are reallocating production capacity from consumer-grade DRAM (Dynamic Random-Access Memory, the system memory in PCs) to HBM (High-Bandwidth Memory, the specialty stack that bolts onto AI accelerators in data centers). HBM commands premium margins. Consumer DDR5 does not.

Server DRAM and consumer DDR5 share the same fab capacity. When Samsung, SK Hynix, or Micron decide they would rather sell to data centers than to OEMs, OEMs run out of parts. The Trendy Tech Tribe has already documented this dynamic in The Memory Vacuum, which traced how AI’s appetite was permanently restructuring the consumer memory market. The PC price hike is the downstream invoice.

The Counterpoint Worth Naming

IDC’s own quantitative modeling produces a more conservative number than the vendor signaling. In IDC’s moderate scenario, average PC selling prices rise 4 to 6 percent in 2026; in the pessimistic scenario, 6 to 8 percent. The vendors are saying 15 to 20. The model is saying 4 to 8.

The gap is real and partly explained by shrinkflation. Computerworld reported that enterprise PC buyers in 2026 are facing “higher prices, worse configurations” simultaneously. Tom’s Hardware noted that some vendors are now shipping pre-built desktops without any RAM at all, leaving the buyer to source memory separately at retail spot prices. If the vendor downgrades a 16GB SKU to 8GB at the same price point, the headline price has not moved. The cost has.

So both are true. Some buyers will see a 20 percent sticker hike. Others will get the same sticker on a worse machine. The IDC number captures the blended outcome. The TrendForce number captures the headline.

What It Means for You

Three things follow.

First, the cheap end of the market is getting hollowed out. Sub-$600 laptops are increasingly hard to spec without compromising the user experience, and Microsoft’s Copilot+ baseline requires 16GB of RAM. The post-Windows-10 hardware refresh is landing in the worst pricing window for memory the consumer market has seen in years.

Second, RAM-less pre-builts are a tax masquerading as a discount. If a vendor is offering an unusually attractive sticker on a desktop, check the spec sheet for the memory line. Sourcing 32GB of DDR5 at retail in May 2026 costs more than the memory those vendors used to bundle for free.

Third, the second wave is the wave to watch. Wave one already cleared. The H2 2026 signal is what shifts the affordable tier upward and locks it there: TechRadar reports that the shortage is expected to “persist well into 2027.”

If you need a PC and can buy now, lock in a current quote. The next price you see will not be lower.