Latest Steam Hardware Survey Shows Just How Hard PC Gamers Have Been Hit by AI

The entirety of 2026 has been marked by continually rising hardware prices, and now, according to the latest Steam Hardware Survey, the average gaming PC is starting to embrace older hardware once more. The October Steam Hardware Survey went live yesterday, and it's clear that the state of PC hardware is causing gamers to be a bit more frugal with their builds. The biggest sign of this is in the RAM configuration, where systems using 16GB of RAM have now taken the top spot, rising 3.6% to cover 41.42% of the Steam user base.