PC manufacturers are reportedly turning to Chinese memory as global shortage bites

The PC memory industry's landscape is shifting as industry titans like Asus, Acer, Dell, and HP explore unconventional supply chains to keep their production lines moving. According to recent reports, these manufacturers are looking toward the Chinese memory maker ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) as an alternative to the traditional trio of Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron.

According to Nikkei Asia (via Wccftech), this decision is being taken as a direct result of the ongoing global memory crunch, in which the dominant suppliers are prioritising high-margin High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) for AI infrastructure, leaving the consumer PC market with a significant supply deficit.

Late last year, CXMT demonstrated its advancements by unveiling homegrown DDR5-8000 and LPDDR5X-10667 modules. These modules are said to offer competitive speeds that meet or even exceed official JEDEC specifications, potentially making them a viable drop-in replacement for standard OEM laptops and desktops. CXMT manufactures these chips on a 16 nm node, which is roughly 3 years behind the cutting-edge processes used by the “Big Three”.

Assuming these qualification phases are successful, many PC makers might start integrating CXMT memory into products for non-U.S. markets to avoid rising costs and shipping delays. While some analysts cite potential national security concerns or the possibility of future trade restrictions, for the average consumer, the source of the DRAM in their system is likely less important than whether the machine is actually available and affordable. With CXMT already shipping its 12 Gb and 16 Gb LPDDR5X modules, the company could become a “lifesaver” for the consumer electronics sector, which the AI boom has increasingly marginalised. However, Digitimes report suggests pricing might not be that much lower than what we've seen from the competition.

KitGuru says: It is fascinating to see how the AI gold rush is forcing even the most established Western PC brands to rethink how they operate. If Samsung and Micron continue to divert their wafer output toward HBM and enterprise contracts, we might soon find that Chinese memory becomes the standard for mainstream laptops and gaming rigs alike.

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