ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing.

When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or service, we may earn affiliate commissions. This helps support our work, but does not affect what we cover or how, and it does not affect the price you pay. Neither ZDNET nor the author are compensated for these independent reviews. Indeed, we follow strict guidelines that ensure our editorial content is never influenced by advertisers.

ZDNET's editorial team writes on behalf of you, our reader. Our goal is to deliver the most accurate information and the most knowledgeable advice possible in order to help you make smarter buying decisions on tech gear and a wide array of products and services. Our editors thoroughly review and fact-check every article to ensure that our content meets the highest standards. If we have made an error or published misleading information, we will correct or clarify the article. If you see inaccuracies in our content, please report the mistake via this form.

You think groceries are expensive? Wait till you hear what's happening to the cost of the memory and storage chips inside that PC you were thinking of buying later this year.

According to a recent Gartner report, the combined cost of DRAM and SSDs will increase by 130% by the end of 2026. The culprit, of course, is the insatiable demand for memory and storage from cloud providers building AI-related applications, and chip makers won't be able to catch up with demand for another year or two at least.

Those soaring prices are already having an effect on the PC market, and the effect on Microsoft is especially severe.