The Cryptoplinko editorial team watches digital entertainment markets closely, and the numbers coming out of the memory sector have been hard to ignore. A 16GB RAM chip that once sold for as little as $4.76 has climbed to nearly $60 as of June 2026, according to the WA Data Science Innovation Hub (WADSIH), and Valve’s Steam Machine now carries a price tag of US$1,049 — roughly A$1,511 — hundreds of dollars above what industry outlets had projected before the shortage took hold. That kind of jump reshapes how players allocate discretionary money. From that vantage point,crypto plinko with bitcoin and 25+ coinssits on the same budget line as hardware spending, and it is one category players would be wise to ring-fence with a firm cap so that it does not quietly crowd out the hardware fund as PC and console costs keep climbing.
How AI’s Appetite for High-Bandwidth Memory Starved the Consumer Chip Market
The supply crunch traces back to a straightforward economic decision by a very small group of companies. “There’s only three companies in the world that really make DRAM, they control over 90 per cent of the market,” said Alex Jenkins, director of the WA Data Science Innovation Hub, referring to Micron, SK Hynix and Samsung. With that level of concentration, the choices those three companies make about what to manufacture ripple across every device that uses memory.
What they chose was high-bandwidth memory. HBM commands significantly better margins than standard consumer DRAM, which manufacturers had been selling at near-cost. Jenkins put the logic plainly: “Essentially all these memory manufacturers decided, ‘Well, why am I even bothering making DRAM, which I’m selling at near cost price, when I can make HBM RAM, and make a very healthy margin and make lots of money that way’.”
The demand driving that decision is enormous. “When we train an AI, we don’t use one AI server. We might use 10,000 AI servers,” Jenkins noted — each of those servers requiring HBM chips to function. That scale of consumption pulled manufacturing capacity away from the consumer DRAM market with force, and the resulting scarcity has been working its way through every device category that relies on standard memory.
Gaming Hardware Takes a Direct Hit, from Valve to Ayaneo
For the gaming market, the consequences have been concrete and named.ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)reported that Valve announced in February 2026 it was pushing back the launch of its newest hardware due to uncertainty about memory supply. When the Steam Machine price was confirmed at US$1,049 — approximately A$1,511 — the figure landed several hundred dollars above pre-shortage estimates circulating among industry observers. Gaming console brand Ayaneo went further, suspending pre-orders for an upcoming release and citing rising memory costs as the reason.
The spread of price increases extends well beyond dedicated gaming devices. Samsung has hiked prices across its phone and tablet line, with devices carrying higher storage now costing up to $115 more. Microsoft, Google and Apple have all raised prices on phones, computers and tablets over the past several months. The memory crunch, in other words, is not a niche problem affecting a single product category — it is running through the full spectrum of consumer electronics that Australian players rely on.
Industry Forecasts Diverge, but None Point to a Quick Resolution
How long this lasts depends on whom one asks, and the range of answers is itself unsettling. Some industry think tanks have put the memory crunch at roughly two years, contingent on new fabrication plants coming online. Jenkins aligns broadly with that floor, stating that at least two more years of shortages and price increases lie ahead before meaningful new capacity arrives.
SK Hynix chairman Chey Tae-won offered a starker view. Speaking to reporters in California in March, he predicted the shortage could persist into 2030. His explanation was structural rather than speculative: “HBM requires a large number of wafers … it is physically impossible to suddenly increase wafers in the short term. Securing more wafers takes at least four to five years.” The chairman’s timeline and the think-tank consensus are not necessarily in conflict — they may simply be describing different stages of the same prolonged adjustment — but neither points toward relief arriving soon.
Budget and Entry-Level Electronics Feel the Structural Squeeze
The pressure is not landing evenly across the market. According to Omdia, a global technology research firm, low-end electronic products are already “becoming unprofitable,” and many companies have responded by reverting to cheaper, older screens and cameras to absorb the rising cost of RAM. The budget tier of consumer electronics — the category that gives players an affordable entry point into gaming or general computing — is quietly shrinking.
At the same time, a 16GB RAM chip that cost as little as $4.76 not long ago now fetches close to $60, per WADSIH figures. For shoppers who relied on affordable entry-level options to build or refresh a gaming setup without a large outlay, the market is offering fewer places to stand. The combination of disappearing budget products and rising prices at every tier is compressing the accessible range of hardware available to Australian players.
The Wait for New Capacity
Jenkins’s assessment leaves little room for optimism in the near term. At least two more years of shortages and price hikes lie ahead, he has said, before new fabrication capacity arrives in sufficient volume to ease pressure on the consumer memory market. The plants being planned now take years to build and commission, and the demand from AI workloads shows no sign of retreating. For Australian players weighing a hardware upgrade, the shortage is not a temporary blip to wait out over a few months. It is the present condition of the market, and it is one that industry figures with direct knowledge of wafer supply say will remain so well into the latter part of the decade.
