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PayPalComponent shortages are increasing thanks to the AI boom, and if you were thinking you could fall back on traditional HDDs - you would be wrong.
I know it's basically bad news after bad news right now, but that is the unfortunate reality. SSD prices are skyrocketing, RAM prices have become completely ridiculous, we've seen multiple hardware delays due to it all, and stock shortages, and it's just all thoroughly rubbish right now for consumers.
Adding to the troubles we're going to face - Western Digital had a recent Earnings Call where it was mentioned by CEO & Director Tiang Yew Tan that they're "pretty much sold out for calendar year '26" and they additionally have some long-term agreements for 2027 and 2028 already in place.
On top of that there was also the recent Earnings Call from Seagate where CEO & Chairman William Mosley mentioned their "nearline capacity is fully allocated through calendar year 2026, and we expect to begin accepting orders for the first half of calendar year 2027 in the coming months".
Naturally, these companies and others will be looking to service the big AI companies and data centres first, before they free up anything for consumers because that's where the big bucks come from. So we're in for a few rough years of shortages and high prices everywhere for consumers.
Looks like I'll be holding onto my PC, Steam Deck and Legion Go for years to come.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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hardpenguin 10 hours ago
fenglengshun 10 hours ago
I don't even have the energy to care anymore.
Last edited by libgradev on 18 Feb 2026 at 2:34 pm UTC
Quoting: fenglengshunSigh.Energy is in short supply and increasing in price as well.
I don't even have the energy to care anymore.
Arehandoro 9 hours ago
Quoting: rcritAWS, Google and Microsoft, once there is no supply of CPUs, RAM, GPUs, and SSDs/HDDs for the rest, consumer or business, will increase the cost on their offerings too.Quoting: fenglengshunSigh.Energy is in short supply and increasing in price as well.
I don't even have the energy to care anymore.
Last edited by Arehandoro on 18 Feb 2026 at 1:35 pm UTC
Mohandevir 9 hours ago
Quoting: ArehandoroFilled with ads! Enshitification at its best!Quoting: rcritAWS, Google and Microsoft, once there is no supply of CPUs, RAM, GPUs, and SSDs/HDDs for the rest, consumer or business, will increase the cost on their offerings too.Quoting: fenglengshunSigh.Energy is in short supply and increasing in price as well.
I don't even have the energy to care anymore.
Quoting: JarmerBURST BURST BURST!!!This is a religious cult now, with strong ties to the US administration.
There's a good chance this bubble will last for many years.
I'm afraid we should prepare for a long winter.
its much easier to take down an company like they did with the mega upload or force then to remove some content, and much easier to force then to comply to scam their machines for infringing content then take it down, then do that in billions of end users machines.
not to mention they are using ai to scan the internet for piracy websites, to take then down, and arresting some of the biggest distributors.
hell, laws like the UK that force people to identify thenselves before they go to any social media website have even convinced some piracy websites to take down some types of content to "obey the law" ... yeah piracy websites following the laws...
purchase as many hdd/ssd as you can, hell even blurays/dvds if they are cheaper , backup as much thing as possible, split efforts with friends to backup as many different things as possible, companies like netflix will love to see us not being able to download and store stuff anymore, not to mention services like geforce now with the rest of the components.
Last edited by elmapul on 18 Feb 2026 at 4:09 pm UTC
Johnologue 3 hours ago
chickenb00 2 hours ago
I thought about panic-buying HDDs too, but they're expensive now, and anyways I have nothing to store.
Mountain Man 2 hours ago
Quoting: LinasWe will have to go back to tape drives and floppy disks soon.At least until those sell out in the next few weeks.
Caldathras 17 minutes ago
Of course, if I'm wrong about their flexibility, the upside is that we might see more efficient coding, less bloat and lower system requirements. That would be a very positive outcome of this situation!
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