PCWorld reports that scalper bots are making it harder and more expensive to buy RAM, with bots accounting for 91% of traffic at one retailer. DDR5 RAM prices have surged 500% year-over-year, driven by AI data center demand and third-party resellers inflating prices on platforms like Amazon and Newegg. Popular kits such as the G.Skill Flare X5 are being heavily marked up, making PC building significantly more costly for everyday consumers. When an in-demand product gets scarce, the vultures of consumerism descend. Resellers insert themselves between something people want and suppliers, sucking up every possible dollar to be made. So it went with GPUs and webcams and toilet paper in the pandemic, so it goes with RAM in 2026. For at least one retailer, over 90% of the web traffic for RAM listings came from "scalper" bots.

DJI's pocketable drone pushes image quality and flight safety to dizzying new heights. All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Lidar obstacle avoidance works in darkness. I've been testing DJI's Mini drones since the company launched the series, and one thing has always been consistent: They've stayed comfortably under the crucial 250-gram weight limit.

It's been seven months since Nvidia launched its flagship RTX 5090 card to a hungry audience of PC gamers… and people building AI data centers… and a bunch of scalpers trying to bilk them all. In that time, I've yet to see one actually available to purchase at the alleged base price of two thousand dollarydoos. As of just before 11 AM Eastern US time, Newegg has one for the base price. Specifically this one, the Zotac Gaming Solid model, a basic triple-fan design which apparently has the reference PCB with no overclock. As the good Lord intended.

One task that AI can handle quite well is summarizing data, so Amazon and Microsoft are putting AI to work. Today, mobile users will begin seeing AI-generated summaries of Amazon product reviews, and Microsoft is also beginning to add AI-generated review summaries to the Microsoft Store app within Windows. If you're buying a product on Amazon, you're familiar with the collection of reviews and ratings that appears well down the product's page. Today, you'll also see a short paragraph that uses AI to sum up what those customers think. AI has become a controversial tool, as artists complain that placing AI art next to their own original works devalues the medium. As a business tool, however, it's received a warmer reception.

AI text generation is the hot ticket right now, and Newegg is ready to jump on the bandwagon. In addition to using the popular ChatGPT program for generating website text like product descriptions and customer service chat, the PC-focused web store is integrating the AI system into its PC Builder tool, which first went live last year. Predictably, the tool was already suggesting builds for gaming desktops that were kind of ridiculous. The AI version of the tool doesn't seem to be any better. As PC Gamer notes, the conversation-style text inputs make ChatGPT and Newegg spit out results that are, quote, "extortionate."

ChatGPT can be put to a lot of uses, as we've seen - such as its recent introduction to gaming chat platform Discord - and the latest one is the AI being recruited to help consumers build a PC over at major US retailer Newegg. In fact, Newegg is putting the AI's skills to use for a raft of things across the retailer's site, but primarily to beef up the PC Builder tool, which is now labeled as'Build with AI' - and a clear caveat that this is still a beta experience. As you might expect, if you want to put together a PC, ChatGPT will help provide recommendations for various components that will go together well, or fit a certain budget. You can make a broad inquiry, such as a gaming PC with an Intel processor and AMD GPU, for example, within a certain budget, and ChatGPT will hop to it and help. This does feel like an early beta - which it is, to be fair - given that in our first test query for the AI to build a gaming rig, we were told that it "couldn't make a build based on [our] prompt," but that our input would "help improve this tool that's currently in beta."

You can find some wickedly good deals on AMD's Radeon RX 500-series cards right now, and today's might just be the best one yet. We get excited when we see this card selling for $170. Newegg doesn't indicate when the sale price will end. And you don't just get the graphics card for your money. You'll also receive AMD's Raise the Game bundle that tosses in codes for Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, Star Control: Origins, and Strange Brigade for free.

It's a great time to upgrade if you're looking to score a new graphics card for cheap. With Nvidia's high-end GeForce RTX 2070 and GeForce RTX 2080 and 2080 Ti now available, we're starting to see some seriously enticing discounts on graphics cards for lower budgets too--a merciful situation after a year of cryptocurrency-induced price inflation. If you're looking to level up to no-compromises 1080p gaming or push a 1440p monitor screaming past 60fps, we've found deals worth checking out. The most enticing deals come in around the $200 price range, where you'll find graphics cards that deliver superb 1080p gaming experiences. First up: The PowerColor Red Dragon Radeon RX 570, which is on sale for just $160 at NeweggRemove non-product link. This card should deliver a strong 60 frames per second with all or most in-game graphics settings cranked, though as always, that varies game by game.

Consider this your weekly reminder that we are still in the end throes of the graphics card crisis. That means sometimes the sales drop down to the original MSRP, and sometimes they get closer than before--like today's deal. Right now, Newegg's got the EVGA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti SC Gaming for $180 with code EMCPWPV24. While that's still $40 more than its $139 MSRP, it's about $30 cheaper than the next lowest price you'll find right now and the same price Amazon offered during the retailer's PC hardware sale back in April. Newegg says its sale ends on Thursday, July 12.

The graphics card sale pricing keeps on getting better. Today only you can pick up an MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Duke 8G for $420 with the checkout code EMCSPVRW2 and a $20 mail-in rebate. That makes the up-front cost $445, which is still $45 cheaper than what you'll see for this same graphics card on Amazon right now. As our GPU expert Brad Chacos wrote in our roundup of the best graphics cards, a GTX 1070 Ti is a good card to get for 1440p gaming on fast 144Hz displays. That's why we were so excited in early June when we found the EVGA GTX 1070 Ti SC Black for $470, which was that particular card's MSRP.