Asus says memory shortage should 'start to normalize' by 2027, but 'nobody wants to be the first one to lower prices'

It's set to be an exciting year for laptops, with Intel Core Ultra Series 3 chips bringing newfound performance and Nvidia DLSS 4.5 pushing gaming to new heights. But the ongoing RAM price crisis is here to spoil the fun.

With prices already skyrocketing on RAM sticks, along with manufacturers like Framework raising the cost of its PCs, it's only a matter of time before we see laptop makers charge more for their products — and that goes for phones, consoles and more.

Now, many have been questioning when we'll start to see RAM prices go back to normal. With Micron claiming the RAM crisis won't improve until 2028, it's looking like the shortage will be drawn out. That said, there is still a glimmer of hope, seeing as Intel says there's about "9 to 12 months" of stock before we see price hikes.

As for Asus, it has a different take. Speaking with Sascha Krohn, Asus' Director of Technical Marketing, he believes the memory shortage should "start to normalize" by 2027, but there may be a battle between brands on who will start to lower prices first.

If predictions ring true, it could only be a year until RAM comes back down in cost, but there are other factors at play.

How long will RAMageddon last?

"It's really hard to say," Krohn starts off. "I think, like memory vendors or like the actual memory chip manufacturers, they never run their factories at 100% capacity. They try to always run their fabs at maximum capacity because, you know, for the best price, you want to use all the resources you have, but they usually have some idle capacity that they can also use to then adjust, right?

"They can bring additional manufacturing lines online or reactivate maybe some older ones to have extra capacities. So if there's an increase in demand, they can increase their supply. But there's only so much flexibility there. And I think the demand right now for memory is so high, and we all know where it comes from."

If you're not aware, the RAM crisis kicked off due to a higher demand for High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) for AI data centers, all to power services like ChatGPT and Gemini. Consumer memory supply is dwindling, but it's all needed for all the upcoming tech.

Krohn continues: "My personal gut feeling is that it's going to be relatively long. I think prices are not going to come down very soon. I saw that some people expect prices to already drop in the middle of 2026 or towards the end of 2026. That's the most optimistic I heard. And then the most pessimistic is like 2028 or maybe even beyond 2028.

"I think it's probably going to be something in between. So my personal gut feeling is that it's probably going to be 2027 when we see memory prices start to normalize."

Of course, it's understandable that it's basically impossible to predict just when we'll finally see prices come down from their new heights, but there's also the matter of when companies themselves will start to lower prices.

A battle of dropping prices first

Even when the memory crisis starts to even out and prices start to drop, Krohn brings up an important point about what companies will do once costs plummet. If the price is right for a brand, it may be a tad longer before the cost of tech from manufacturers drops, too.

"I think as long as that demand is going to continue like this, the memory price situation will probably continue like this. And if past situations have taught us anything, it's that even once the supply constraint is no longer there, it still takes a while until prices go back to what they would naturally be," Krohn details.

We've seen costs rise well above the asking price when Nvidia's RTX 50-series GPUs launched, and even today, prices generally stick above retail price for each GPU, especially from third-party brands. Now, the same could possibly happen with RAM.

"There's a lot of hesitation in lowering prices, right? Everybody who's selling something, obviously, if you could sell it for a high price last week, why would you sell it for a lower price this week, right? And nobody wants to be the first one to lower prices. So it usually takes like a couple of months or even quarters for prices to slowly go down again."

It's a matter of who pulls the trigger first, and once one company drops its price, the rest are sure to follow. But even if the memory shortage ends by 2027, it could be a few months longer until costs start to normalize again.

Outlook

There are a ton of devices we're looking forward to from Asus and more, namely the Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo and even the new Death Stranding-inspired Asus ROG Flow Z13 we saw during CES 2026. But it appears that those after a new PC or upgrade will be paying a hefty chunk of change this year.

Fortunately, we may have a bit of wiggle room before prices start to rise on laptops, phones, gaming consoles and more, according to Asus. Once costs start to jump, though, it will be a matter of when RAMageddon starts to ease and when companies start to drop their prices again.

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