Urgh. Have you seen memory prices lately? If you somehow haven’t, make sure to look through your fingers, as they are truly terrifying. DDR5 RAM sticks are ungodly expensive, older DDR4’s not much better, high VRAM graphics cards are ridiculous, and any PC hardware that includes at least one of these (which is a lot) is suffering ludicrous price hikes in turn. That includes the new Steam Machine, while handheld PCs are being stripped of affordable options, and next-gen, standalone VR headsets are unlikely to do much better.
But we’re been here before, right? We made it through the crypto-mining-induced GPU price spikes of 2018, the 2011 hard drive shortages caused by flooding in Thailand, and the pandemic-driven PC surge. Remember the Discord stock alerts? The retailer lotteries? The waiting lines for websites?
We can do this. We can weather the storm of new memory price hikes. But we don’t have to do it in silence. We don’t need to damn our enthusiasm for the PCs that play our PC games. There are ways to still upgrade and improve your rig, and its gaming prowess, even with memory prices as ridiculous as they are.
Let’s get the hard medicine out of the way first: it’s going to be a while until memory prices adjust downwards. High memory prices are absolutely not going to improve this year, at all. In fact, they’re quite likely to get worse, as new AI-focused technologies (like Nvidia’s Vera Rubin graphics platform) hit mass production and further constrain memory supplies. That’s almost certain to continue being an anchor in 2027, with Samsung claiming they expect the supply gap to worsen before it gets better.
Microsoft made similar signals in their recent “Next 100 days of Xbox” statement. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma set out how even Microsoft are facing problems from the “component crisis,” obviously with zero mention of the AI-flogging company’s role in causing it. She claims Xbox storage costs will be five times higher than they were before the AI boom by the 2027 holiday season, and the same would be true of memory.
Unless the AI bubble pops, and/or there’s an absolute cratering of demand for data centre hardware, the only relief in memory pricing is likely to come from increased fabrication capacity. There’s lots of that going on, but Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has said that even with SK Hynix set to double their wafer capacity by 2030, that may still not be enough to satiate AI demand.
Fortunately, SK Hynix aren’t the only ones building new fabrication capacity. Samsung have a new P5 fabrication facility set to begin mass production in 2028, while Micron have their new Idaho fab coming online in mid-2027 – and construction has already begun on a second facility there. Micron will also begin shipping from a newly acquired Tongluou, Taiwan facility in 2028, with plans to expand it beginning in 2026. There’s a new Singapore fab that’s expected to begin initial wafer output in the back half of 2028, too.
While Chinese memory manufacturers might be able to offer some nearer-term relief, this all suggests that we may not see much meaningful change in DRAM pricing until 2028 at the earliest, and the biggest moves towards normalcy might take until 2029.
That sucks, but it doesn’t have to mean you’re stuck until then. If RAM and storage are going to stay expensive, we need to look elsewhere for performance gains, including ways to wring every last drop of performance and utility out of our current setups – and bonafide hardware upgrades that won’t require shattering the piggy bank.
Making the most of what you have
If you’ve already got a gaming PC that currently plays the games you want, that’s great. We can work with that. Let’s see if we can make a few key changes to make it faster, both to more capably run what’s out right now and to futureproof it against the more demanding games of the future.
Use upscaling (and, maybe, frame generation)
Something that all three of the main GPU manufacturers have pushed heavily is upscaling. While we can make all the jokes we like about it making developers lazier at optimisation, DLSS, FSR, and XeSS can make games run much more smoothly. Sometimes better-looking as well, especially compared to some of the blurrier TAA implementations out there.
If the games you’re playing support it, enable it. Quality and Balanced modes look the sharpest but don’t be too afraid to try out the heavier-handed Performance modes, too. At higher resolutions, newer versions like DLSS 4.5 and FSR 4 are making it increasingly difficult to tell the difference.
Frame generation is more hit and miss, not least because it only really simulates the visual effect of higher performance; it doesn’t actually make your GPU run quicker. Its tendency to add input lag and makes it inadvisable to use when your FPS is low. Still, if you can pump out 60fps or so of ‘real’ frames, adding frame gen can improve visual smoothness without a drastic jump in control latency.
Don’t have a GPU or game that supports upscaling and frame gen? Oh yes you do. Lossless Scaling is a few bucks on Steam and can grant your PC upscaling and frame generation, in almost any game, on almost any hardware. It even works with the Steam Deck.
Just don’t forget to enable Nvidia Reflex, AMD Anti-Lag, or Intel Xe Low latency where available, to further help ward off that input lag.
Stay updated
I know it’s a pain, but seriously, run your updates. Windows Updates often improve stability and add new features, and in some cases can tune up performance. The recent Low Latency Profile update boosts app launch speed in a very noticeable way, to name one example.
New graphics drivers can also add features and smooth out performance hiccups, especially in newer games. BIOS firmware updates, meanwhile, might give you access to new hardware support and overclocking options, and chipset drivers can improve stability. It’s all worth doing.
Enable all the free performance
You can’t download more RAM (unfortunately), but there are some free performance improvements you can get off the Internet, as well as freebie upgrades potentially lying dormant on your PC right now.
You could, for instance, enable an XMP/EXPO profile in the BIOS to improve memory performance. Make sure Resizable BAR (or Smart Access Memory on AMD) is enabled to boost GPU performance too, especially if you’re one of the happy few with an Intel Arc graphics card. Intel CPU owners can also download and run Application Optimization and the Binary Optimizer Tool.
Set Windows Power mode to Balanced or High Performance as well, and only use low-power and more efficient modes when on battery, if you’re gaming on a laptop.
Consider a factory reset
A bit dramatic, but something worth considering every few years anyway. A factory reset takes your system back to how it was when you first got it. Make sure you backup your important files before proceeding, but a factory reset can give you that new PC feel without much effort.
Try your hand at overclocking
Overclocking can be in-depth and time consuming, and is one of the few performance tweaks here that carries a risk of physical damage to your components if you get it wrong. Get it right, though, and it’s yet more free performance, and inexperienced overclockers can minimise the danger by just using the automatic/one-click CPU overclock tools built by the chipmakers themselves. Check out Intel’s Extreme Tuning Utility or AMD’s Ryzen Master Utility if that’s of interest.
Truthfully, the performance uptick of these tools is going to be small, and doing it the old fashioned way – trial-and-error tweaking of clock speeds and voltages in an advanced BIOS/UEFI menu – might still only produce modest gains and some extra cooling fan noise for your trouble. But, if you’re going to stretch a graphics card or CPU for every frame it’s got, overclocking remains a viable option.
Be realistic with in-game settings
I know it’s tempting to crank up every new game up to its highest settings to make it look the best, but if you’re smart with settings, you can make games play far better and still look good. Texture quality, ray tracing, shadows, and anti-aliasing can all weigh heavy on your hardware. Adjust them and see if it makes a difference, and check if James has already produced a settings guide for the game in question.
Upgrading what you can
Upgrading memory smarts right now, but there isn’t a PC game in existence that strictly needs a brand new 64GB kit of high-speed DDR5. There are other ways to upgrade, and other parts of your PC you can look to for boosting performance – or just how games feel to play – that won’t be quite so egregiously expensive.
Stay in your generation
So you can’t buy a whole new motherboard, memory, and CPU; You can always buy a better CPU within the generation you’re in right now. Adding a couple of extra cores, or a few hundred extra megahertz might not transform your PC, but it will help it limp along for a bit longer. If you get lucky on the second-hand market, too, you can find some sizeable savings.
Fallen GPU heroes
You know what’s much faster than a brand new RTX 5050 but costs the same? An RTX 3080. It ‘only’ has 10GB of VRAM, and it’s over five years old, but get a good second-hand one and it should easily outperform RTX 5060 Tis for around $350. Not in every game, and you miss out on some upscaling features, but for the most part, high-end older cards still hold their own well. The same goes for a number of cards from that era. Even the venerable 2080 Ti might be worth considering for the right price.
Watch for scams, try go get more than 8GB of VRAM if you can, but second-hand, old-king GPUs can still be a great way to upgrade in 2026.
Peripherals make everything feel nice
A nice gaming mouse isn’t going to make your games play better, but it might make you play better. A new monitor won’t let you increase the detail settings, but if you’ve never played on OLED, or have been limiting your own framerates with a drab 60Hz office monitor, you’re potentially in for a treat.
Quality peripherals can improve how a PC feels to use, be it through tactile response or ergonomic comfort, and ultimately, isn’t making games feel nicer half the point of higher performance too? Audio, displays, and input devices can all make a tangible difference to your PC playing enjoyment, and the upgrades don’t even need to be that expensive, either; one of the best wireless mice around is £23.
Delete before buying
Running low on storage space? Just delete something. I guarantee there’s an app, a game, a folder of old junk that you just don’t need. There are PC cleanup tools that can help, and files you could move over to an external drive or cloud storage instead (though keep local backups of anything important).
If you still need more storage space, buying a cheaper hard drive or SATA SSD and offloading files you don’t need might be better than buying an expensive new NVMe SSD.
Look for RAM upgrade alternatives
What if you think you really do need more RAM? Make sure you actually do, first. If your games need more free memory than you have to run adequately, then yes, there’s an argument for gritting your teeth and upgrading, but if you’re just running tight, try shutting down background applications to lighten the load. Restarting your system before launching a game might help too, and if it’s a consistent shortage, consider that factory reset we talked about.
If you absolute must have more capacity, and your system supports it, try to stick with DDR4 RAM instead of upgrading to a newer DDR5 system; DDR4 is cheaper per gigabyte. Those who do need DDR5 can look at slower models to save some cash, as games won’t really benefit from the latest 8,000 MT/s CUDIMM kit. A 5,200 MT/s kit with looser timings is absolutely fine. Assuming you can find them in stock, buying weirder capacites, like 24GB instead of 32GB, might help too.
So does using mismatched RAM sticks, or going to four sticks instead of two to get the capacity you need. I’d even say go to three sticks if you need to, which is advice I absolutely not have given this time last year. The old rules are dead, though, so do what you need to do for the games you want to play. Hey, if it’s stupid but it works…
With hardware prices through the roof, and most of the major hardware CEOs talking up data centre sales over all else, it can be easy to feel forgotten by the PC hardware industry – something that especially stings those of us who’ve been happily playing with its toys for years. That doesn’t mean the hobby goes away, but it does mean the next couple of years might be a little difficult.
Fortunately, scrappy, do-it-yourself upgrades, tuning, tweaking, and modification is what has always made the PC hardware space so much fun. Wonky RAM kits, if-it-works-it-works cooling solutions, and the fun challenge of finding a good deal on second-hand markets are all part of it.
There are more free and readily-available augmentation techniques and technologies today than ever before, too. Upscaling, frame gen, overclocking, optimised firmwares, and tweakable tools make it easier than ever to make the most of what you have.
For now, that might be the best we can do. But nature (and business) abhors a vacuum. I can’t help but feel if the traditional players can’t (or don’t want to) sell us affordable new hardware before long, someone else will come along to do it instead.