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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently declared that the RAM sitting inside your computer is a “terrible” allocation of scarce resources, arguing that the world’s memory belongs in data centers. If you want to know exactly how much that mindset is costing you, just look at the apocalyptic state of the PC hardware market.

On April 1st, I predicted a market correction would cause RAM prices to drop by August . Now it’s October, it’s clear that I was spectacularly wrong, and the irony of publishing that on April Fools’ Day is not lost on me.

You can see that in the gargantuan asking prices for the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display , how Nvidia’s RTX 5080 is now peaking at over $2,000 , and how a 32GB kit of DDR5 is now at $500 rather than the $400 it was when I wrote previously.

We are currently in the middle of a brutal quadruple threat: relentless AI-driven demand, historically low inventory, geopolitical tariffs and foundries shifting advanced wafer capacity away…