Applied Group, a Japanese PC retailer, has told customers that GPU price hikes are not finished, warning that some graphics cards face further increases in the coming weeks or months. The retailer posted the warning on X, and the machine-translated message urges anyone planning an upgrade to act now rather than wait.
What Applied Group said about GPU price hikes
Applied’s post reads: “There’s talk about graphics card price hikes, but some graphics cards are slated for even further price increases. For those considering an upgrade, I recommend doing so sooner rather than later.” The retailer did not name which models are affected, did not give a percentage, and set no firm date beyond “coming months or weeks.” That vagueness is the substance of the warning: a retailer close to Japanese pricing and allocation is flagging movement it can already see but cannot yet put a number on publicly.
Why more GPU price hikes look likely
The warning lands weeks after NVIDIA’s RTX 50-series prices had already jumped sharply. RTX 50-series pricing rose by a median 41% between July and August 2026, pushing the RTX 5090 above $4,700, a rise reported by TechPowerUp and tied to a wider DRAM and GPU component crisis rather than a single vendor’s decision. Memory and GPU die shortages feed directly into the bill of materials for every card on the shelf, which is why a retailer watching that supply chain would expect the trend to continue rather than assume August’s jump was a one-off correction.
What our own numbers add
Applied gave no percentage for the next increase, so there is nothing to project forward directly from its warning alone. But the shape of the August jump is worth stating plainly: by our arithmetic, a 41% rise repeated once a year for three years compounds to a 180.3% increase, not 123%, because each successive rise is applied to an already-raised price rather than to the original one.
That is the mechanical reason retailers describe price hikes as compounding rather than additive, and it is why “sooner rather than later” carries more weight coming from a retailer than it would as a marketing line: waiting through a second hike does not just add another percentage on top, it adds that percentage to a base that is already higher.
NVIDIA has tried to push back against the idea that its GPUs are now permanently priced above MSRP, selling RTX 50-series cards at MSRP at PAX West. Whether that holds through the next restock depends on component costs the vendor does not fully control, and a Japanese retailer warning of fresh increases within weeks of that PAX West pricing push suggests the underlying DRAM and GPU shortage has not eased in the meantime.
What to watch
Two things would confirm or undercut Applied’s warning: whether the retailer or others in Japan name specific GPU models and figures in the coming weeks, and whether NVIDIA’s MSRP pricing at retail holds through the next restock cycle. If prices move again before either happens, “sooner rather than later” will have been the accurate read.
