AI Greed Fuels Memory Chip Rush: Gamers Still Paying the Price

SK Hynix has accelerated its 2027 Cheongju fab (M15X) completion by three months to meet 'tremendous and humongous demand' from AI infrastructure clients. The new facility will begin producing HBM wafers for data center GPUs next month, prioritizing AI workloads over consumer markets.

Sungsoo Ryu, SK Hynix America CEO, stated:

We have to support memory consumption for AI infrastructure

While Samsung adopts a CAPEX strategy to 'maintain long-term profitability,' SK Hynix's aggressive expansion has driven its share price up 280% in the last year. Micron, another major DRAM supplier, claims no responsibility for resulting supply chain imbalances.

High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) chips are critical for AI data centers but not immediately relevant to gaming consumers. The industry's focus on AI infrastructure has indirectly contributed to sustained high prices for PC gaming hardware components.