Acer Warns PC Prices to Rise 5-20% in Q4 as DDR5 Memory Costs Surge Sixfold and Peak in Mid-2027

On September 19, 2026, Acer Chairman and CEO Jason Chen announced that retail PC prices will increase between 5% and 20% in the fourth quarter of the year. The price hike is driven by persistently high costs for memory and solid-state drives (SSDs), which have surged in recent months. For consumers and businesses planning hardware upgrades, the actionable takeaway is clear: buy before the holiday quarter pricing takes effect.[1][2]

The impending price adjustments mark a new chapter in an ongoing hardware cost crisis. For months, the PC industry has grappled with component-level pressures as memory costs surged. Now, one of the world's largest PC makers is confirming that those upstream supply chain issues are hitting the mainstream retail market, ending a period where manufacturers absorbed the costs.[1][3]

Speaking at the O-Bank 50 forum in Taipei, Chen pushed back against industry forecasts that the memory crunch would last a decade, calling it "impossible" for the shortage to persist until 2030. He noted that while DDR4 and standard DDR5 supplies are currently ample, and CPU availability is largely normal, the costs for memory and SSDs remain elevated.[1][4]

The transmission path from component cost to retail price involves a built-in delay. End products adjust their pricing only after component costs have already risen. Because of this lag, Acer expects the 5% to 20% increases to hit consumer wallets from Q4 2026 through the first quarter of 2027. Systems configured with higher RAM and storage capacities will likely see the steepest hikes.[1][2]

The broader memory market continues to face upward pressure. TrendForce projects that conventional DRAM contract prices will rise 13% to 18% quarter-over-quarter in Q3 2026, while NAND Flash prices are expected to increase by 10% to 15%. This sustained inflation is largely attributed to the artificial intelligence boom, which has diverted significant manufacturing capacity toward high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for data center servers.[2][3]

Despite the immediate price hikes, Chen offered a timeline for relief. He projects that average selling prices for PCs will reach their absolute peak around mid-2027. After that point, new semiconductor manufacturing capacity is scheduled to come online, which should ease component pricing pressure.[1][2]

A significant factor in that anticipated relief is the expansion of Chinese memory production. Companies like CXMT are preparing to enter the NAND flash market with new research and development lines, while YMTC is expanding its fabrication plants. As this new capacity hits the market, the increased supply is expected to force prices down.[2]

However, because of the same time lag that is currently driving prices up, consumers will not see immediate savings when component costs drop. Acer anticipates that even if memory prices stabilize by mid-2027, the retail cost of finished PCs will not begin to decline until the second half of that year.[1][2]

For shoppers, the math is straightforward. A standard $1,000 laptop could cost between $1,050 and $1,200 by the end of the year. Industry executives are already urging buyers not to wait; Nothing CEO Carl Pei recently advised consumers that the best time to buy new electronics was "yesterday." With the market not expected to return to current pricing levels until late 2027 at the earliest, purchasing hardware before the fourth quarter of 2026 is the most cost-effective strategy.[2]