These 6 PC upgrades won’t be hit by the RAM shortage crisis

CPUs

This one’s surprising, but it’s true. CPUs are one of the more expensive PC parts and often tied to memory for performance, but CPU pricing hasn’t moved much. Some CPUs—like the Ryzen 5800X3D—have jumped up in price because they let you build capable gaming PCs with more-affordable DDR4 memory. But for the most part, CPU prices are stable.

In fact, some CPUs have even fallen in recent months. Intel continues to slash the pricing on its somewhat-maligned Arrow Lake CPUs, and though they aren’t the best for gaming, they aren’t far behind AMD’s alternatives and they absolutely dominate for productivity workloads. Even the venerable Ryzen 9800X3D—the best gaming CPU in the world by most accounts—is close to its lowest price ever.

Adam Patrick Murray / Foundry

Sure, you’re unlikely to double your gaming performance with a faster CPU as you might with a new graphics card. And sure, you’ll be limited by your motherboard compatibility and the socket it’s built around. But you can make your PC much faster with a new CPU.

Upgrading to the best CPU of your socket’s generation, or even leaping a generation or two with a cheeky BIOS update, could give you much better gaming performance and a PC that feels snappier overall. It’s one of the best bang-for-your-buck PC upgrades.

Cooling

Cooling is about as far from memory as you can get. After all, it’s often just a big hunk of metal fins with some heatpipes running off it. But whether you’re upgrading to a fancy AIO watercooler, a custom loop of your own design, or a classic air cooler, memory price hikes aren’t going to affect it directly. Like, at all.

Mark Hachman / Foundry

That’s not to say that shortages of copper won’t lead to price rises at some point, but most large air coolers and AIO watercoolers are made mostly with aluminum, so that’s likely not a major concern.

There’s also not much of a link between NAND flash and cooling fans, so switching out your system fans for some newer, more capable, quieter fans should be more than doable without paying a premium.

PC cases

While some PC cases might have fancy controllers for managing fans, displays, and water flow rates, most of them are no more than dumb hunks of metal, glass, and plastic with some cable ties and cut-outs. Memory being in short supply is not going to affect them.

Michael Crider / Foundry

Admittedly, a new PC case won’t do anything for your frames per second, but it’s the most impactful upgrade you can make to improve the look and feel of your battlestation. You see it every day. It’s right there on your desk (probably). It’s the physical embodiment of your system.

Upgrading your case is a great way to give your PC a fresh coat of paint, and it’ll have a very real—if not tangible—effect.

Power supplies

PSUs contain important electronics that are vital for powering your PC and protecting it from surges, but they don’t contain NAND flash. This means their prices have remained gloriously stable all while storage and DDR have been going bananas.

Michael Crider/Foundry

A PSU upgrade isn’t a super exciting one, but it’s important—and it’s a great way to future-proof your system. A capable PSU can last many years and can easily be moved between systems. If you level up your PSU now, then your new PSU could be the one that powers your next GPU upgrade (whenever that is possible again).

By the way, a PSU is one of those PC parts you should never skimp on!

Monitors

I recently replaced my ailing 27-inch IPS display with a fancy new OLED monitor and I regret not doing it sooner. Your monitor is your visual interface to everything you do on your PC. It shouldn’t be a surprise that a step up in display—one that’s bigger, prettier, faster, or clearer—can make a massive difference to your everyday PC experience.

Jon Martindale / Foundry

Fortunately, monitors are heavily insulated from the memory shortages. Sure, they’re still vulnerable to some supply shocks. Sure, they’re often expensive and susceptible to trade tariffs and other barriers. But at least when it comes to memory, they’re okay. No matter how expensive DDR5 RAM and NVMe SSDs get, monitors should be relatively unaffected.

Peripherals

Gaming mice and keyboards have a little bit of memory for storing key binding layouts and DPI preferences, but not enough to be hit very hard by memory prices. Same goes for headphones, webcams, USB adapters, gaming controllers, and Stream Deck-like programmable keypads.

Corsair

Upgrading any of these can make your PC feel fresh, increase your comfort, boost productivity, and make your PC more enjoyable to use overall. Their prices should remain relevatively normal in this crisis.

Don’t know where to start? Check out some of our favorite next-level PC accessories and peripherals worth getting.

Maybe it’s not memory, but it’s something

If you have an old PC that’s limping along, you probably don’t have a choice but to upgrade its memory and/or storage. You might need to get those DDR5 sticks or that new SSD, even if it means paying more than you’d like. Those prices aren’t coming down anytime soon—waiting could be disastrous. (Meanwhile, here are ways to boost your old PC’s performance for free or cheap.)

But if you can hold out for a few years, you may want to turn your attention to other PC parts for now. Even with a blind eye towards RAM and storage drives, you can enjoy PC improvements that are still very much worth making. Get creative about it!

Further reading: Ways to repurpose an old SSD that’s collecting dust