Budget PCs (under $500) may go extinct due to AI-driven RAM shortage

Buying a cheap PC may soon become significantly more difficult. According to research firm Gartner, sharply rising memory prices are expected to make computers more expensive in the short term and could cause the entry-level PC market to “disappear” by 2028.

The market chaos is largely driven by the growth of AI, with newly planned AI infrastructure gobbling up all the RAM it can get its hands on, leaving little-to-none for the consumer market. Prices for DRAM memory and SSD storage...