What a local AI rig costs this week
DRAM is up 171.8% year on year and most buying guides still quote last year's prices. We check these five every Friday.
Checked 12 September 2026 · next check Friday 19 September
Strix Halo 128GB boxSoldered memory · the shortage hedge see listing did not track DIMMs
Check today's price
Amazon affiliate links — we get a small cut if you buy, and nobody pays us to recommend anything. Ranges come from our dated articles; the listing shows today's price.
Full gear list →Why these prices matter
At about $17 per gigabyte, buying system RAM to offload model layers to the CPU stopped making sense. The same money now buys real VRAM. That one change invalidates most local-AI build advice written before this summer — including some of ours, which we have corrected.
Reading behind the prices
12 SepRAM prices for local AI, September 202611 AugBuy RAM now, or wait out the shortage?29 JulNVIDIA RTX prices rising: what to buy before it hitsEverything we have written
413 postsNewest: Can I Run Beam 1.0 501B Locally? (2026) · Can I Run Flint Locally? (2026) · Can I Run Ornith 1.5 122B Locally? (2026)
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