The ongoing memory crisis in the PC hardware industry is becoming increasingly serious. While we still don’t know the full extent of its impact on component prices, new reports suggest that the situation could be worse than expected. According to recent findings, the NVIDIA RTX 5090 GPU could reach a price of up to $5,000 by 2026.
The consumer PC hardware market is already struggling. Prices have risen significantly, and due to a shortage of available memory, NVIDIA has told its manufacturing partners to source their own VRAM instead of relying on centralized distribution. This shortage may lead to major changes in production and availability, including rumors that the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB might be completely removed from the market.
Rising Prices in 2026
GPUs that are already considered expensive could soon become even less affordable. Among them, the RTX 5090 may turn into a luxury product, far beyond the reach of most regular users. Reports indicate that the production cost of NVIDIA’s flagship 5000 series model is set to rise dramatically.
Initially priced around $1,999 in early 2025, the RTX 5090’s cost could more than double by 2026, reaching approximately $5,000. Such an increase would make the GPU practically unaffordable for a large portion of consumers.
NVIDIA isn’t the only company affected by this situation. AMD is also expected to face similar cost increases, especially for its RX 9000 series GPUs. These prices could continue to climb throughout 2026, with monthly adjustments reflecting ongoing supply challenges.
The memory shortage is also expected to affect the console market. The rising costs of memory components may lead to delays in the release of next-generation consoles like the PlayStation 6 and the new Xbox, which could arrive later than originally planned.
