The recent announcement of the increase in the price of silicon wafers means that the problem of the price of RAM and SSDs will increase next year and we will not see a reduction in prices, as anticipated.

Yesterday we echoed the rise in the price of silicon wafers, which caused an increase in the price of processors and graphics cards. The problem is that RAM and SSDs are also on the rise due to the shortage of NAND Flash memories. RAM and SSD, in addition to graphics cards, have suffered notable price increases due to this problem and things are going to get worse and the forecast is that after a year and a half of constant rise, next year they will even go up more.

The initial excuse for the high price of RAM memories, pointed to the strong demand from manufacturers of NAND Flash memories, due to the increase in RAM and ROM in mobile terminals, causing a generalized shortage and of course, if the demand is high and it continues to increase and production is not enough for the entire market, prices are raised and there are only two options, go through the hoop or not.

This situation is so bad that a 20% increase is expected from today until the end of the year and an increase should also occur in 2018 and 2019, according to the new forecasts. Although an increase in production is expected for next year that should mitigate high prices, the problem is that the manufacture of chips is based on silicon and of course, if silicon rises in price, memories go up in price .

Basically the basic components of the computer that will not go up in price will be the heatsinks, motherboards, power supplies, mechanical hard drives and the chassis. The rest of the internal components will suffer a strong price increase over the next year, something really negative and that will make the systems much more expensive, so a mid-range equipment can be unaffordable for many users, due to the increase in the price of silicon. A rise in the price of copper is not expected, at least for now, because if it rises, we can already be screwed.

Source: TPU