If you’ve been looking to build or buy a gaming PC recently, 2026 hasn’t been a kind year. AI server farms have continued to buy up hardware at staggering rates. As such, memory makers have shifted much of their production capacity towards high bandwidth memory destined for AI accelerators, rather than for consumer products. That supply squeeze has had the effect of pushing prices of consumer PC components like graphics cards and memory well above their original retail prices.
However, Acer Chairman Jason Chen has claimed that the second half of 2027 could finally see the prices of some PCs begin to drop. As originally reported by United Daily News and spotted by VideoCardz, Chen suggests we’re not out of the woods just yet, predicting that average PC prices will keep rising until they peak in mid-2027. In the second half of the year, he expects them to finally start falling, although for ‘higher-end’ PCs this drop is less certain and could come later down the line. Of course, Chen is referring to standard prebuilt PCs here, but it’s still an indication that for gaming PCs, both prebuilt and those built at home, there could finally be some light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to pricing.
Chen also points to the forecasted increase in memory production capacity, claiming it would be ‘impossible’ for the memory shortage to continue past 2030.
It’ll likely be lower-end and mid-tier PCs that see prices drop first. This fits with AI farms being hungriest for higher-end components, as even consumer-grade components are being put to use in AI servers now. Nvidia’s flagship RTX 5090 gaming GPU is a prime example, seeing much more drastic price rises than the rest of the RTX 50 series, as its high-capacity 32GB GDDR7 configuration has made it increasingly popular in AI farm applications rather than its original gaming purpose.
We wouldn’t get our hopes up just yet though. Key gaming PC components such as SSDs, graphics cards, and DDR5 memory remain super expensive, and even with Chen’s optimistic outlook for later in 2027, he still believes prices haven’t peaked yet. Additionally, any drops in pricing are likely to take months to filter through to reduced prices for consumers. It’s still possible to buy or build a more affordable gaming PC right now though, as long as you’re happy to stick with hardware a few CPU and GPU generations behind.
