- China introduces new export controls on rare earth elements
- These items are used to produce a whole bunch of PC components
- This can exercise additional price presses on the manufacturers of these components, on top of already existing market forces pushing up the cost of drive and ram
If you did not want to hear more negativity about further pressure on the prices of PCs and related components like SSDs, you need to stiffen yourself – there is a new danger on the horizon.
Toms Hardware reports that China brings new export controls to rare ground elements used to make many important PC components.
This step comes into play from December 2025 and is actually an expansion of rules that are brought back in April, expanding China’s export control to elements such as Holmium, Thulium, Erbium, Ytterbium, EUROPEY, TERBIUM and more.
China says the distribution of these rare earth elements is strictly polished as a matter of national security, and exports of these materials will be denied for applications in semiconductors or the defense industry.
Not just that, but the associated technical know-how about how elements are transformed into magnets, falls under the new rules.
Magnets are crucial for storage products, as rare groundings related to building engines for hard drives, and also as cooling fans. Monitors will also be hit with LCD panels and backlights using phosphorus compounds containing these rare soil minerals.
Toms Hardware notes that even silicon chips may feel some pressure in terms of constraints around cerium oxide slurry used for polishing the large slices that are converted into processors.
Analysis: The only way is up, price wise
There can be some serious widespread effects here, especially as China is by far the largest supplier of these rare earth elements.
If it becomes more difficult to buy these, and if pricing increases for producers – or delays in getting these materials, will hit the production lines – the end result for consumers will not be good. As always, when price increases arise in the manufacturing process, these costs are transferred to the buyer of the product so that profit margins can be maintained.
There are a few thorny problems here, the first is that it is not like there are a number of alternatives other than China to get these elements (especially some of them). Although some companies have already explored different paths and as Toms Hardware notes, Western Digital fired, which manufactures a wide range of storage products, a scheme to extract and reuse rare ground minerals from old drive earlier this year.
The other big hitch for will-be PC buyers is that this comes out of the back of a whole fleet of recent bad news about the cost of SSDs and hard drives that go up, and System RAM as well. With the price of different components steadily increasing, the total bill for purchase (or building) could be a new PC start to become significantly more expensive as 2026 starts and rolls on.
This year’s sale of Black Friday could be even busy than usual on the PC front as people are trying to come in with an apartment purchase in front of these different price pressure.
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