TECH NEWS – CPU sales on Amazon USA have dropped 47% year over year, while soaring memory prices and more expensive PC builds are pushing buyers back toward cheaper, older hardware.

PC gaming has become a far more expensive hobby lately, and the warning signs are no longer limited to rising component prices or harsher system requirements. Fresh sales numbers from Amazon USA show that processor sales in early 2026, more specifically in February, fell by 47% compared to the same period a year earlier. That is no minor fluctuation. It is the kind of drop that starts to paint a fairly ugly picture of where the PC market currently stands.

There is more than one factor driving this slump. One of the biggest is the brutal rise in memory prices, with DDR5 RAM now costing several times more than it did not long ago. A 32 GB kit that used to sell for under 100 euros is now sitting around 300 to 400 euros, and that is not even top-tier enthusiast memory, but fairly standard 5600-6000 MHz CL40 kits. The AI industry is soaking up so much of the available memory supply that ordinary PC buyers are now the ones paying the price.

Older, Cheaper CPUs Are Starting to Climb Back Up

The raw numbers show that Amazon sold around 25,700 processors in the U.S. during February. AMD accounted for 23,000 of those units, which translates to an 86.1% share at an average selling price of 281 dollars. Intel, meanwhile, sold 2,700 units at an average price of 313 dollars. So the balance of power did not really change, but the overall picture is still rough because total sales volume dropped sharply even compared to recent months. January still managed 26,100 units, December hit 44,400, and both October and November were sitting closer to 60,000 to 70,000 units. The comparison becomes even harsher next to last June’s peak, when weekly sales reached 118,929 units.

The shift is not just visible in volume, but also in what people are buying. The AM4 platform now represents 39% of sales, while AM5 sits at 47.2%, which means older CPUs are clearly catching back up with the newer generations. That helps explain why one of the best-selling chips right now is the Ryzen 5 5500, a very clear entry-level to mid-range part. Too many buyers are now focused on cutting costs, and with memory shortages and general price inflation making full platform upgrades much more painful, a lot of people simply do not want to pay for the jump to newer hardware.

That does not mean the higher end is dead. The Ryzen 7 9800X3D remains a strong performer with 4,000 units sold, while the Ryzen 7 7800X3D and Ryzen 7 5800XT both reached 2,000 units. The 1,000-unit range includes the Ryzen 5 5600, Ryzen 5 9600X, Ryzen 5 7600X, and Ryzen 9 9950X3D. Intel only appears in the next tier, where the Intel Core Ultra 7 265K and Intel Core Ultra 9 285K each sold 500 units.

Overall, this does not suggest that demand for PC gaming is disappearing. It suggests that the market is sliding hard toward price sensitivity. Buyers are becoming less interested in the newest hardware and more concerned with what is still worth buying without triggering the full cost of a platform overhaul. That is not a comforting signal for the PC industry, especially when memory shortages and the inflation tied to them could remain a problem throughout 2026 and 2027.

Source: Tech4Gamers