{"slug": "the-ram-shortage-made-local-ai-expensive-heres-what-you-can-still-afford-to-run", "title": "The RAM Shortage Made Local AI Expensive. Here’s What You Can Still Afford to Run.", "summary": "A RAM shortage has doubled memory prices in six months and forced Apple to discontinue the 64GB Mac Mini and 128GB Mac Studio, making local AI hardware significantly more expensive. A 32GB memory kit that cost $100 last summer is now $400, and the RTX 5090, launched at $1,999, now sells for $3,500 to $5,000. The article provides updated budget-by-budget hardware recommendations for running AI models locally, noting that AI datacenters consume about 70% of global memory supply.", "body_md": "Member-only story\n\n# The RAM Shortage Made Local AI Expensive. Here’s What You Can Still Afford to Run.\n\n## Prices doubled in six months and Apple killed off the 128GB Mac. What to buy at each budget, and what it can actually run.\n\nRead the article for free\n\n[.]here\n\nA year ago the standard advice for running AI at home was a used RTX 3090 for around a 1000 dollars, or a 64GB Mac Mini. Half of that is dead now. Apple cut the 64GB Mac Mini and discontinued the 128GB Mac Studio. A 32GB memory kit that ran about $100 last summer is closer to $400 today. And the RTX 5090, $1,999 at launch, now sells for $3,500 to $5,000 because of the memory it ships with.\n\nIf you were about to buy something to run models locally, the ground moved under you. Most guides you will find were written before the market shifted.\n\nThe shortage flipped the hardware rankings. The most expensive consumer card is now a poor deal, and a five-year-old GPU is the best. Here is the map that still works, budget by budget, with what each one runs, and every price checked this month.\n\n## The datacenter tax on consumer hardware\n\nAI datacenters take around 70 percent of global memory supply. The high-bandwidth memory they need for…", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-ram-shortage-made-local-ai-expensive-heres-what-you-can-still-afford-to-run", "canonical_source": "https://pub.towardsai.net/the-ram-shortage-made-local-ai-expensive-heres-what-you-can-still-afford-to-run-02cfa72cdae8?source=rss----98111c9905da---4", "published_at": "2026-07-31 00:01:03+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-31 00:07:34.114610+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-infrastructure"], "entities": ["Apple", "Mac Mini", "Mac Studio", "RTX 3090", "RTX 5090"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-ram-shortage-made-local-ai-expensive-heres-what-you-can-still-afford-to-run", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-ram-shortage-made-local-ai-expensive-heres-what-you-can-still-afford-to-run.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-ram-shortage-made-local-ai-expensive-heres-what-you-can-still-afford-to-run.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-ram-shortage-made-local-ai-expensive-heres-what-you-can-still-afford-to-run.jsonld"}}