One of PC gaming's key RAM manufacturers aren't selling to regular humans anymore, so they can peddle more kit to AI companies

Source: Rock Paper Shotgun
Category: Games
Originally Published: 2025-12-04
Curated: 2025-12-04 16:22

The ongoing chaos in RAM production, with mass shortages jacking up street prices to are-you-joking levels, now has a major manufacturer casualty. Micron have announced the end of Crucial, their consumer brand for PC memory and SSDs – and likely a familiar name to gaming PC builders who’ve been hooking up their storage drives and slotting in their RAM sticks for decades.

"Micron has made the difficult decision to exit the Crucial consumer business in order to improve supply and support for our larger, strategic customers in faster-growing segments," wrote Micron’s Executive VP and Chief Business Officer Sumit Sadana.

In other words, there’s a whole bunch of AI data centres cropping up, and Crucial are rudely hogging memory hardware that could be put to more profitable use than merely supplying grassroots interests in computing and games. Important uses! Like generating a thumbnail image of Mr Beast pretending to swim away from a shark, or unilaterally rewriting article headlines in Google Discover so they’re full of incoherent lies. God, you PC people are so selfish.

Crucial RAM and SSD shipments will continue until 2026, though expect the former, especially, to remain at silly-high prices while that data centre demand keeps shortages short and costs in the clouds. Probably worse so than before, now that there’ll be one less company trying to keep stock flowing.

After February, they’re gone for good, which is a huge shame. Crucial had been making quality, relatively affordable components and storage right up until Micron’s act of filicide, with the likes of the T500 and X9 Pro currently holding pride of place in our best SSDs list. I’ve even had a few more recent models – the T710 NVMe drive and the external X10 – in my cupboard, waiting for me to find the time to test them. The PC I’m writing this on, and have played games for years with, has a Crucial P5 as its main SSD, and I somehow remember choosing a 2x4GB Crucial Ballistix RAM set for my first DIY build after reading an agreeable review of it in PC Gamer’s then-tiny hardware section.

Even if you don’t have a pile of to-be-benchmarked components in your house, that’s a lot of hobbyist history to just... end. And for what?

This article was curated from Rock Paper Shotgun. All rights belong to the original publisher.