Amazon just raised the price of its own gadgets by as much as 60 percent, and it blamed the cost of memory. For Malaysians, that headline is old news. Walk into a computer shop in the Klang Valley and the same shock is waiting at the counter: a 16GB stick of laptop RAM that cost RM200 to RM400 a year ago now starts at around RM800.
Amazon confirmed the increase to TechCrunch, saying the consumer electronics industry is facing significant increases in memory and storage component costs and that it had adjusted pricing after absorbing them for as long as it could. It is not the first company to do this, and it will not be the last. The squeeze starts at the factory and ends at the checkout, including here.
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Why memory suddenly costs so much
The cause is the same force behind almost every big tech story this year: artificial intelligence. The handful of companies that make most of the world's memory, led by Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron, have shifted production toward the high-bandwidth chips that AI data centres pay a premium for. A representative of the National Tech Association of Malaysia, Pikom, told The Star the increases are largely driven by strong global demand from AI infrastructure and hyperscale data centres, with a significant share of supply now directed to those sectors. Every wafer that becomes a server chip is one that does not become an ordinary laptop module.
Storage is caught in the same net, with the flash memory inside SSDs climbing alongside RAM. This is the flip side of Malaysia's own bet on becoming an AI hub: the same demand that fills the data centres going up in Johor is thinning the supply of chips that ordinary buyers depend on.
What Malaysians are paying now
Pikom has called it a "RAM crunch", and retailers describe prices that move from week to week. The Star spoke to computer shop staff who said a 16GB DDR4 laptop upgrade now costs at least RM800, up from RM200 to RM400 a year earlier, while a 32GB DDR5 desktop kit that sold for about RM700 last year now runs past RM2,000. One seller compared memory to gold, with the rate changing every week. Another said nobody is upgrading at all.
The Malaysia Cyber Consumer Association has fielded complaints about rising gadget prices, noting that computers and smartphones are no longer luxuries but tools for work, study and daily life. That is the real sting. The people most exposed are students and workers who simply need a machine that works, not enthusiasts chasing the fastest kit.
Should you buy now or wait?
There is no comfortable answer. Forecasts cited by Pikom suggest the pressure could last into 2027 before supply catches up, so waiting is not a guaranteed win. If you genuinely need a laptop for work or a new semester, paying the premium now is defensible, and it is often smarter to buy a machine with the memory and storage you need already built in than to plan a cheaper upgrade later that may cost more by the time you make it. If the upgrade is a want rather than a need, this is a reasonable year to sit it out.
None of this is Malaysia's doing, and none of it is easily fixed at home. It is a reminder that the AI boom has a bill, and part of it is being quietly passed to anyone buying a phone, a laptop or a stick of RAM. The country's push to climb the chip supply chain, from advanced packaging in Penang to its first home-designed processor, will not lower the price of memory tomorrow. For now, the smart move is to buy only what you need, and to check the price on the day, because it may not be the same next week.
Image(s) courtesy of Harrison Broadbent and Samsung Memory on Unsplash.
