Everyone wants to get the best performance for their PC that they can afford, and NVMe SSDs are a temptingβand easyβway to improve how quickly your PC responds. Unfortunately, the real world isn't a benchmark, and the actual performance gains you get aren't as simple as the speeds advertised on the drives suggest.
On Wednesday, Micron Technology announced it will exit the consumer RAM business in 2026, ending 29 years of selling RAM and SSDs to PC builders and enthusiasts under the Crucial brand. The company cited heavy demand from AI data centers as the reason for abandoning its consumer brand, a move that will remove one of the most recognizable names in the do-it-yourself PC upgrade market.
βThe AI-driven growth in the data center has led to a surge in demand for memory and storage,β Sumit Sadana, EVP and chief business officer at Micron Technology, said in a statement. βMicron has made the difficult decision to exit the Crucial consumer business in order to improve supply and support for our larger, strategic customers in faster-growing segments.β
Micron said it will continue shipping Crucial consumer products through the end of its fiscal second quarter in February 2026 and will honor warranties on existing products. The company will continue selling Micron-branded enterprise products to commercial customers and plans to redeploy affected employees to other positions within the company.
PC builders love installing the latest and shiniest CPUs in their systems. This is generally a good thing, as current-generation chips typically deliver excellent performance at a reasonable cost. And they wonβt bottleneck your graphics card in gamesβunlike some older chips that have aged like fine milk.