From PC World: Framework is a unique company, offering modular laptops designed for easy repairs and near-infinite upgrades. But it’s also a small company, much more susceptible to market changes brought on by things like capricious tariffs. Though it’s tried to insulate itself from skyrocketing RAM prices brought on by “AI” datacenter demand, something had to give. And that “something” is laptop prices.
A few weeks ago Framework stopped selling RAM separately from laptops and the new desktop (which uses the same SO-DIMM memory), giving a public statement that it was trying to prevent scalpers from buying up supply, and saving its reserves for customers who buy pre-configured laptops. But now the prices for said laptops, when configured with memory, are rising. In a blog post from founder Nirav Patel, the company announced a 50 percent price bump for RAM (and only RAM) in the store configuration tool.
A single 8GB stick of DDR5 RAM costs $60 (and I wouldn’t even recommend going that low to run Windows 11). Two 8GB sticks for 16GB total costs $120, though you can get a single 16GB stick for the same price. 32GB is $240, with prices going up predictably all the way to $720 for 2x48GB, 96GB in total. Checking an Archive.org backup of the Framework store, these prices are indeed 50 percent higher than they were before today. Prices on other components have not changed — if you happen to have a source of reasonably-priced RAM, you can still buy the laptop without any memory at all.
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