Disappearing hard drives. Rising RAM prices. Rising CPU prices. Another tariff typhoon. Hardware: Stormy Seas for 2026.

Hardware: Stormy Seas for 2026

Looking to buy new hardware for your small business this year? Here’s what you need to know about prices and availability.

Rising RAM prices

RAM prices continue to go up. What is RAM? Random Access Memory. These chips provide short term memory for computer processes. For example, you’re working on a Word document. Before you hit save, all those changes/words/important ideas are stored in the computer RAM.

Computer makers frequently make it difficult to upgrade RAM after you purchase. Example: you purchase a laptop with only 8GB of RAM. I’m sure it was a great deal at the time. However within a year you need 16GB of RAM or even 32 GB of RAM for you to run all your programs at a reasonable speed. And because you can’t just open a slot on the bottom of your laptop and insert another stick of RAM you end up buying a new computer.

FYI I recommend 32GB of RAM for most office computers now so you get a good 4 to 5 years out of them.

TrendForce just revised their 2026 estimates of DRAM to increase by up to 90 to 95 percent.

If you need to buy new laptop this year, buy now and get lots of RAM in them before prices go up.

Hard Drives sold out for 2026

The old fashioned kind of hard drive used in servers to be precise. AI Hyperscalers bought up all the supply for 2026 from the major suppliers.

What does this mean for your business? If you’re looking to install new servers, you may have a problem getting hard drives or large enough hard drives. If you’re using a cloud service this shortage could affect your cloud service provider’s ability to grow.

Server CPU rising prices

In addition to the server hard drive shortage, analyst firm Omdia expects the server CPU shortage to cause prices to rise up to 15 per cent more.

Again this means you may have a problem if you want to replace existing aging servers or purchase new servers to run your own AI. More companies are looking at getting their own AI servers instead of using SaaS (Software as a Service, or increasingly SaaES, Software as an Extortion Service) to protect their data.

Latest Tariff Tantrum Typhoon

On Friday February 20th, the US Supreme Court struck down Trump’s over-reaching tariffs. Trump responded by immediately slapping on a 10% tariff that will last 150 days until US Congress and Senate ratify (unlikely given US mid term elections in November). Then on Saturday Trump changed that to 15%.

Further Trump made it clear companies trying to get a refund for his previous unlawful tariffs will have to litigate to get their money back. Another perfect storm for tech prices as all those devices uses chips from countries other than the US.

If you need to buy computers or servers this year I recommend you purchase as soon as possible to avoid hard drive shortages and rising CPU and RAM prices.