NVIDIA Raises All GPU Kit Prices on DRAM Surge and HBM Capacity Squeeze

NVIDIA has notified its major graphics card partners that GPU kits (GPU plus VRAM) will see price increases across the board, affecting everything from GDDR7 memory on the new architecture to the full GeForce lineup's GDDR6 memory. Prices for the RTX 5090 and RTX 5090 D V2 flagship models were already raised in May, and this round of increases extends to other series.

The fundamental cause is the surge in upstream DRAM memory prices. The global DRAM market is dominated by three players - Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron - which together control more than 90% of supply. Advanced DRAM production capacity is fixed: once a production line is used to make HBM high-bandwidth memory, it cannot produce GDDR memory. AI model training and inference have created strong demand for HBM. A single HBM3E chip costs around US$300, and an H200 graphics card requires at least six, bringing memory costs to nearly US$2,000. HBM margins far exceed those of ordinary GDDR, so memory makers allocate capacity to HBM first. Consumer-grade GDDR capacity continues to be squeezed, and shrinking supply is pushing prices higher.

Graphics card makers face rising procurement costs. Gross margins on mainstream models are only in the low teens in percentage terms, so higher memory prices directly erode profitability. Phone memory has also risen recently, making budget handsets difficult to sustain, while notebook and tablet memory and flash storage are also climbing. NVIDIA's gaming business is no longer its main revenue driver, with AI operations contributing more to the top line.