Surprising no-one, Valve’s Steam Frame VR headset is launching with higher-than-expected prices, following the Steam Machine in having its budget-friendly intentions foiled by the memory shortage misery of RAMnarök.

The lack of affordable PC parts - which as a fully standalone-capable VR kit, the Steam Frame is as vulnerable to as any laptop or desktop - continues to have wide-ranging, usually shitty impacts on hardware manufacturing and even game development. Besides simply raising prices, some kit makers are reverting to lower-RAM models to keep costs down, or going DRAMless altogether. Valve, however, have told RPS that there was never a question of cutting the Frame’s specs, even as the worldwide component crisis took hold.

Read more

In today’s Demoralising But Not Remotely Surprising Hardware News, "industry insiders" are claiming that the Big Three memory makers – Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix – have already sold not just their expected manufacturing output for 2026, but 2027 as well. The report, by Taiwanese newspaper DigiTimes and partially translated by TweakTown, effectively suggests that the large-scale supply of new RAM chips is already tapped out until 2028, likely extinguishing any lingering hopes that PC RAM, storage, and graphics cards will escape their current pricing nightmare anytime soon. Or, indeed, soonish.

Read more

The amount of memory a PC needs is a matter that's divided PC owners since before the days of DDR1. Different apps, games, and in-game settings all have different demands, so what works for one rig can be quite different to what works for another. In 2026, with component prices so stratospherically high - Nvidia and AMD are both cranking theirs up still - what truly constitutes a need is up for even further debate.

There’s no better example of this argument than around VRAM, or video RAM. While a - shall we say enthusiastic - school of thought has developed around 8GB becoming insufficient for modern demands, that's done little to change the hardware makeup of low-end and mid-range graphics cards that are going on sale. Nor has it apparently convinced many players to upgrade. Indeed, the majority of Steam users still play on GPUs with 8GB VRAM or less.

Read more

Samsung have become the latest company to declare that the ongoing memory crisis isn't going away or getting better any time soon. The chip makers think the RAM shortage will only get worse in 2027 and supply of the tech won't stop being squeezed until 2028 at the earliest.

Read more

Yep, RAMnarök ain't going away. The ongoing memory crisis isn't getting better. It's far too busy continuing to fuel hikes in the prices of memory-dependent hardware like graphics cards with AMD reportedly having joined Nvidia on the list of firms raising how much they're charging for GPUs.

Read more