November 4, 2025
Silicon sticker shock
CPUs and GPUs to Become More Expensive After TSMC Price Hike in 2026
Wallets on alert: your next graphics card may cost more, and commenters are salty
TLDR: TSMC will raise prices 3–5% a year on its newest chip tech starting in 2026, likely making CPUs and GPUs cost more. Commenters split between sarcasm and thrift—saying most people don’t need bleeding-edge power, urging older tech, and scrambling to build PCs before RAM and parts climb.
TSMC, the Taiwanese chip titan behind most top CPUs and GPUs, just told partners it’ll hike prices 3–5% a year from 2026, and the internet lost it. Gamers clutched wallets, builders yelled “Thanks, TSMC,” and AI fans got the side-eye as commenters blamed data-center demand for gobbling supply. The company says higher bills pay for new factories in Taiwan, Japan, and the U.S., plus research into even smaller tech. Translation: your next graphics card and desktop processor could cost more.
The spiciest split? Need vs want. One camp insists regular folks don’t need monster chips—“Most consumers would do fine with like .25 Apple M1’s,” quipped one user—so why chase the newest stuff. Others argue we should keep budget gear like Raspberry Pi on older, cheaper “nodes” (manufacturing recipes), and wring more life out of them. A techie even framed it as a long war between fancy EUV laser factories and everything else, with room for smart design on mature tech.
Meanwhile, survival mode activated. “Have you checked RAM prices lately…” sighed one, while another vowed to build a home server now, before the hikes hit. With TSMC shifting engineers away from older lines and rivals Intel and Samsung racing to catch up, the crowd sees a “silicon tax” stretching toward 2030. Source: DigiTimes.
Key Points
- •TSMC will raise prices 3%–5% annually on advanced nodes under 5 nm starting in 2026 for at least four years.
- •The hikes affect 2 nm, 3 nm, and 4 nm processes used by AMD, NVIDIA, Apple, Qualcomm, and others.
- •Price increases aim to offset rising costs and fund global expansion and R&D, including future 1.4 nm technology.
- •Advanced nodes currently generate ~74% of TSMC revenue (5 nm: 37%, 3 nm: 23%); share will exceed 75% as 2 nm ramps in 2026.
- •TSMC is reallocating resources from 6 nm/7 nm, potentially impacting automotive and industrial customers, with consumer hardware prices likely rising post-2026.