The RTX 5090 was already out of reach for most buyers, but its price could climb even higher in the coming days. According to information reported by WCCFtech, NVIDIA is said to be passing roughly 300 USD in additional costs on to its partner card makers as VRAM supply stays tight. When that increase stacks on top of a base price already inflated by scarcity, the RTX 5090 could come very close to 5.000 USD. For anyone planning a 4K, rendering, or personal AI rig, this is no longer a story about a luxury item. It is a cost equation that has broken down completely.
Why is a VRAM shortage driving the RTX 5090's price up so sharply?
The crux is that the RTX 5090 uses a large pool of GDDR7 memory, while supply of that memory chip is under pressure from several directions. Leaked information says NVIDIA keeps raising its GPU prices for AICs, meaning companies like ASUS, MSI, and Gigabyte, because the cost of buying VRAM has gone up. Looking back at when the RTX 5090 launched at a suggested price of 1.999 USD, it is clear the gap between list price and street price has stretched far too wide.
A 300 USD increase at the component level does not mean the retail price rises by exactly 300 USD. Partner brands also add their profit margins, distribution costs, and a buffer for the risk of stock arriving in a trickle, so the final price is usually amplified well beyond that figure. That is why WCCFtech believes the RTX 5090's selling price could soon exceed 4.500 USD and approach 5.000 USD if memory supply does not cool down.
What matters here is that the problem does not simply reflect strong demand for a flagship card. Newer VRAM now has to be split among many other product groups, from AI cards and servers to high-end consumer shipments. So even if GPUs are not in absolute short supply, the memory alone can become a bottleneck that pushes up the price of every graphics card.
What should high-end card buyers look at besides the near-5.000 USD figure?
For high-end buyers, the biggest impact is not just paying more, but that value per dollar is deteriorating very quickly. The RTX 5090 is still the strongest choice for 4K at maximum settings, heavy ray tracing, and creative workloads that need a lot of VRAM, but when the real price climbs to double the MSRP, the purchase makes less sense than it used to. In that situation, many people will have to weigh buying a discrete card on its own against buying a complete system that already includes the GPU.
| Item | Figure being cited | What it means for buyers |
|---|---|---|
| Suggested price at launch | 1.999 USD | The original reference point for the RTX 5090 |
| Added cost in the partner channel | About 300 USD | Not the final retail price, which could be marked up further |
| Short-term market price | Above 4.000 USD | The flagship card stays out of reach for most users |
| Feared threshold | 4.500 to 5.000 USD | Performance per dollar becomes noticeably less attractive |
This reality also helps explain why prebuilt systems with the RTX 5090 are suddenly easier to consider. The Alienware RTX 5090 article on Hung Phat Laptop itself once showed that buying the whole machine at times did not cost much more than hunting for a standalone card. As GPU prices keep getting pushed up by the VRAM shortage, that trend becomes even clearer for people who need performance now rather than waiting for the market to correct itself.
If the memory shortage drags on, the impact may not stop at the RTX 5090 and could spread to other RTX 50-series models that use GDDR7. For mainstream users, the message is fairly clear: this is not a good time to buy a flagship card at any cost. For those who have to spend because of work, or who want the highest performance right now, the thing to watch is not only whether GPUs are in stock, but whether VRAM costs are starting to cool.
