Looking to build a new gaming PC in 2026? Component prices are already at record highs, with memory production capacity for 2027 already sold out and the prices of the latest graphics cards rising well above their original retail price. But even with these sky high prices, you might want to move fast on picking up your components, as it doesn’t look like prices are leveling off anytime soon.
It looks like those price rises are coming to processors too, with a new report from Taiwan’s Digitimes claiming that Intel is planning to hike its PC CPU prices by another 10% in October. It comes after prices of desktop chips from both AMD and Intel have steadily creeped upwards throughout 2026 so far.
The report doesn’t specify whether such price rises would apply to Intel’s consumer CPUs, server CPUs, or both, but if it proves true, it would mark yet another official price rise on Intel’s chips in 2026. Back in the summer, it hiked the recommended retail price of its Arrow Lake-S desktop CPUs by as much as 16%. It’s not hard to see why though, as AI data center demand is placing pressure on all computer components – not just the GPUs and RAM that have borne the brunt of price rises so far. Back at the start of the year, Intel itself warned that it would prioritise in-house production of Xeon server chips over standard consumer processors.
Early next year, we expect to see Intel’s new Nova Lake-S CPU lineup come to market, with leaked benchmarks suggesting strong performance gains over the current Arrow Lake-S generation. Intel has yet to confirm official pricing for these chips, with details limited to the numerous leaks already out there, but with this new claim from Digitimes, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see prices climb for this upcoming generation also.
