How we are keeping our prices low

November 2026 — Part prices have risen faster this year than at any time since we started Computle. This is what we are doing to keep prices low for our customers.

Where we are

In December 2025, we locked our prices for a full year. At the time, we expected rising memory costs to add about 13%, and we chose to absorb that ourselves. In January, we sourced memory 37% below UK wholesale to help keep that promise.

It turned out to be far more than 13%. Passing on today's part costs would take an RTX 5070 seat from £158 to £202 a month, a 28% rise, and an RTX 5090 seat with 128GB of memory from £332 to £555, a 67% rise. We have carried that difference ourselves.

Memory, storage and the top graphics card now cost about three times what they did when we set our prices. So for future orders, we are proposing a new way to pay.

What has happened to part prices

Every part now costs more. Memory has risen the most, with a typical 64GB kit going from £110 to £390. A 128GB DDR5 kit, which our RTX 5080 and 5090 workstations use, has gone from £648 to £2,125. Storage and the RTX 5090 have both roughly tripled, and processors and the other graphics cards are up 11–22%.

The wider market

TrendForce, which tracks memory makers' contract prices, reported them up 45–50% in the last quarter of 2025 and 93–98% in the first quarter of 2026. Storage chips followed the same path.

AI servers are taking a growing share of the world's memory and storage, and TrendForce expects server memory prices to keep rising into the second half of 2027.

Almost all memory comes from three companies: Samsung, SK hynix and Micron. They are profiting from the shortage, and on 28 October, SK hynix reported a more than sevenfold rise in quarterly profit (Reuters).

Our suppliers have felt it too. When I visited them in China over Christmas and New Year, memory and storage prices were changing twice a day, and every one of them raised memory prices.

Graphics cards have followed. 3DCenter, which tracks the lowest German retail prices each month, shows the RTX 5090 at almost three times its price in the third quarter of 2025, and the rest of the RTX 50 range up by around half. In the UK, a typical RTX 5090 now costs three times what it did when we set our prices in December, and the RTX PRO 4000 workstation card has doubled.

What it means for one workstation

Processors and graphics cards are still climbing. Intel raised processor prices about 10% in the first quarter of 2026, its Arrow Lake Plus desktop chips rose 15–17% in July, and a further 10% rise was reported in October. TrendForce reports that memory now makes up over 80% of the parts cost of some high-end graphics cards, which is why the RTX 5090 has risen so far.

What a straight price rise would look like

Passing on current part costs at today's monthly prices would raise the price of a new workstation by 12% to 55%, and by 35% on average.

What we have done to bring our own costs down

We could not stop part prices rising, so we have spent this year cutting our other costs. On our most common build, these changes take about £590 off a 3-year term. Electricity is now priced on what workstations actually draw, from over 500 million power readings across our fleet.

Our proposal for future orders

For future orders, we propose 3 or 5-year terms paid upfront.

How our monthly prices worked

Until now, we have bought every workstation ourselves and charged a fixed monthly price over a 3-year term. That price covered the hardware, the electricity, the data centre space and the software, so the cost of spreading payments applied to all of it. Spreading that cost across many practices is what kept each monthly price low.

What spreading payments would cost now

When hardware costs double or triple, the same money covers far fewer workstations, so each one carries more of the cost and risk. Charging market interest rates of 8–10% on the hardware alone would add 13–16% over a 3-year term. We also carry the risk of rising energy and data centre costs, because every contract fixes its price for 3 or 5 years. With the same money covering fewer workstations, that risk is pooled across fewer seats, so each one carries a larger share of it. Allowing for these risks, and for hardware prices rising by half or even tripling during a term, a flat rate across every order would need to add around 20–30% to the hardware price, on top of the rise in part prices.

We also looked at offering monthly payments on the hardware alone through vendor finance brokers. The brokers we spoke to add the same 20–30% to the hardware price. They hold the hardware as security, and with graphics card and memory prices this volatile, its value could fall sharply within a year if prices drop back. That ends up costing about the same as a straight price rise.

Why upfront

Paying upfront avoids those costs, so practices adding workstations or renewing do not face a sudden jump from what they pay now. It is our way of meeting them in the middle while part prices are this high. Our monthly model assumed practices would prefer no upfront contribution, so every price carried the cost of borrowing, including for practices with cash to spare. Under this model, those practices borrow nothing, and others can borrow only what they need through their own bank, often for less than a finance broker would charge.

On the 64GB builds, the RTX 5080 costs less than today under this model, and the RTX 5070 costs about the same over 5 years. The RTX 5050 rises because memory is now a large share of its cost, and the RTX 5090 because its graphics card has tripled.

The RTX 5090 with 128GB rises the most, because both its graphics card and its memory have more than tripled. Over 5 years, the RTX 5080 with 128GB costs the same as today.

What new data centre workstations include

New data centre workstations now include a redundant power supply and a redundant network connection as standard, protecting against switch and power failures. This adds about £430 over a 3-year term. It is not part of the rise in part prices; we have made it standard so our data centre workstations match what practices expect from a data centre. They run on our 100G core network, built for low latency, with direct handoff to most ISPs through the London Internet Exchange.

Our non-datacentre option

For practices that do not need a data centre, we now offer a non-datacentre option. These workstation runs at a basic UK site with regular business internet lines, in a standard environment with reduced climate control, and a single power supply and a single network connection.

Software costs are lower, as the advanced management plane is removed. Instead, users can perform basic power actions and connect to their machines. On the RTX 5070, a 3-year term costs £4,740 paid upfront, £1,318 less than the same workstation in a data centre.

That is about the same as buying a comparable desktop from a major manufacturer and running it for 3 years, and our workstation can be reached from anywhere.

For that price, practices get a workstation their staff can reach from the office, from home or from site, which we repair or replace if it fails. There are no machines under desks, no noise or heat in the office, and project files stay on the workstation instead of on laptops.

It suits practices that want their staff to work from anywhere at the lowest cost. Practices that need the most resilience and the lowest latency should choose a data centre workstation.

Our new budget workstation

We have also added a lower-cost workstation for lighter work, such as 2D CAD, smaller BIM models and everyday office use. It has a 6-core AMD Ryzen 5 5600, an RTX 5050 8GB, 16GB of memory and 512GB of storage.

Outside a data centre, it costs £2,535 for a 3-year term or £3,440 for 5 years, paid upfront. In a data centre, it costs £3,919 for 3 years or £5,575 for 5 years. Every part can be changed in our calculator, which now shows the price of each option.

If you prefer to pay monthly

Practices that want to spread the cost can pay monthly through their own bank or a finance provider.

We will keep this under review

We now track UK prices every day, with over a million price points recorded so far. That keeps our prices competitive and shows us as soon as the market moves.

Some shops are still selling stock bought before prices rose, so a few parts and pre-built PCs can look cheaper for a while. Once that stock runs out, their prices follow the market. Computle has exhausted its inventory and now has only a handful of ex-demo machines.

We will review this model as the market changes. Once part prices recover, we would like to offer monthly payments ourselves again.

What this means for current subscribers

Nothing changes for practices already subscribed. Your price stays as agreed for the rest of your term. The new model applies only to new orders and to new workstations added after it takes effect.

Jake Elsley
Founder, Computle

Sources

• TrendForce, NAND flash 4Q25 forecast, 3 Dec 2025 (reported by uAnalyze)
• TrendForce, 4Q25 DRAM revenue and contract prices, 26 Feb 2026
• TrendForce, 1Q26 memory price outlook, 2 Feb 2026
• TrendForce, 2Q26 memory contract prices, 31 Mar 2026
• TrendForce, 1Q26 reported and 2Q26 DRAM prices, 1 Jun 2026
• TrendForce, 3Q26 memory price forecast, 3 Jul 2026
• TrendForce, server DRAM 3Q26 and outlook to 2027, 9 Jul 2026
• TrendForce, 4Q26 memory contract prices, 30 Sep 2026
• Astute Group, GPU pricing and memory costs, 2 Feb 2026 (citing TrendForce)
• Tech Times, Intel CPU price rises in 2026, 6 Oct 2026
• 3DCenter, graphics card market overviews: 23 Nov 2025, 14 Mar 2026, 10 May 2026, 4 Oct 2026; best prices in Germany: 29 Jul 2026, 31 Aug 2026
• shattered.io, RTX 5090 price check, Oct 2026 (lowest German RTX 5090 price on 15 Oct 2026)
• Computle’s own part costs and UK price tracking of in-stock retail listings, 27 Oct 2026