MSI plan 15-30% price hikes for their hardware, report claims, as the memory crisis' consequences continue to rumble back to your wallet

Lower end gear looks likely to bear the brunt of the hike

RAMnarök, the ongoing memory shortage which keeps fuelling price hikes and has had us watching whether Steam Decks are out of stock like hawks, continues to cause headaches. MSI are reportedly planning to hike up the prices of their hardware by 15 to 30% as a result of the shortages.

This is according to a report from Taiwanese publication United Daily News (spotted by Tom's Hardware), which cites MSI general manager Huang Jinqing as having told investors that the company are facing the most challenging year since their founding. Jinqing reportedly predicts a 10-20% contraction of the PC market as a whole in 2026, as a result of the supply squeeze.

As a result, MSI have planned these price hikes, which look set to hit the lower end of the company's hardware range hardest. MSI are reportedly planning to move focus away from this more budget friendly gear as part of their efforts to weather the RAMnarök storm, instead pushing attention to higher end hardware in the hopes of selling fewer units at a higher average price.

With lower end gear closer in price to the swankier stuff, the company look to be anticipating that folks who'd usually opt for the former will say screw it and go for a more expensive iteration or something from the very top end. The upgrading of DDR5 motherboards to also support DDR4 is another move MSI are reportedly planning in their bid to keep the cash flowing.

Finally, because irony is dead, MSI are also hoping increased investment in their own AI server business will help them stay in the green amid the rough times caused by the memory crisis - which, lest we forget, has been caused by vast swaths of memory being hoovered up for use in AI data centres.

Something to think about while you wait to see what MSI gear's prices look like once the company's enacted these reported hikes.