‘Better than gold’: Singapore used-laptop resellers cash in on AI-driven demand

SINGAPORE - James (not his real name) has for years been reselling used laptops locally and overseas.

That was the nature of his business until late 2025, when clients asked if he could just sell them the memory chips found in the devices.

The semiconductors,

which speed up processing and allow data storage in items like PCs and mobile phones, are in short supply.

Major chipmakers, including SK Hynix and Micron, have recently directed their resources towards making top-end semiconductors used in data centres to benefit from the AI boom.

With supplies constrained, prices of PC components like random access memory (RAM) chips have surged as much as fourfold.

The situation, dubbed the “RAMpocalypse” or “RAMmageddon”, has contributed to putting purchases of electronic devices out of reach for some consumers.

For James, it is good business. Since November 2025, he has been buying used laptops and disassembling them for chips at his store at Sim Lim Square.

“This business is better than gold or the stock market. Gold prices and the stock market have dipped, but the prices of computer chips have not dipped,” he said.

“It has been very profitable,” he added, but declined to reveal his margins.

When The Straits Times visited his store on Feb 24, a worker who was dissembling used laptops pried one open in minutes.

Each laptop yielded an 8GB RAM chip, which stores data temporarily and allows for quick access to applications, and a 256GB solid state drive (SSD) that supports storage functions.

James said the lot will be shipped to a client in China, who is paying a premium for the components. He plans to sell the used laptops, without the RAM chips and SSDs, to an Indonesian business at a discount.

NUS Business School senior lecturer Alex Capri said the practice of sending used technology products to other countries to salvage parts and components shows there is a fluid secondary market for consumer electronics.

He said: “It’s not cheap to break down a laptop and extract a chip, so this would suggest that these items are in high demand and fetching good prices.

“It pays to do these strip-down operations at scale.”

Economic historian Chris Miller said what is less clear is what buyers can do with RAM chips removed from laptops, besides reselling or reinstalling them in similar devices, as they are not powerful enough to be used in data centres.

“Data centres generally require very specialised memory chips called high-bandwidth memory which would never be installed in PCs,” said Mr Miller, who authored the book Chip War: The Fight For The World’s Most Critical Technology.

‘Everyone wants to take advantage of AI’

The prevalence of artificial intelligence also appears to be driving demand for laptops enabled by the technology.

Mr Sat Singh, managing director of Guru Electronics Singapore, said he has in recent months seen an increase in orders from Asian markets, including Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka.

These are being fulfilled by a steady supply of used devices from the US.

“The US is the pioneer of AI, so they are ahead of us and jumping on to new devices,” Mr Singh said.

“Everyone wants to take advantage of AI, so PCs with AI chips are coming into Singapore and being sent to other parts of Asia,” he added.

Another laptop dealer, who declined to be named, said profit margins from dealing in new devices have shrunk because prices have increased with the crimped supply of essential components, including RAM chips.

He said there was “more volume now to turn a profit” in the market for used devices, with his main clients being in Indonesia and India.

Mr T. K. Lee, a technical manager at Bizgram Asia, which sells new PCs and other electronic devices, said he has noticed “a growing volume of imports into Singapore, particularly of used computers and refurbished laptops, which reflects changing market behaviour”.

Electronic re-exports surge

Resellers have supported the pickup in electronic non-oil re-exports (NORX).

NORX measures the nominal value of goods which were manufactured overseas, imported into Singapore, and exported in the same form without transformation.

Enterprise Singapore told ST: “Repacking, splitting into lots, sorting or grading, marking and the like are not considered as undergoing this process of transformation.”

Electronic NORX expanded 29.6 per cent in 2025 from a year earlier, helped by an outsized increase in the fourth quarter, official statistics show.

The measure continued to expand in January 2026 by 69.4 per cent year on year. This partly reflects an increase from a low base as the Chinese New Year holidays took place in January 2025.

PCs were the top driver of electronic NORX in 2025, followed closely by parts of PCs.

OCBC Bank chief economist Selena Ling said the reselling of electronic products like PCs is “a key part of the NORX as Singapore is not a major assembler”.

NUS associate professor of analytics and operations Goh Puay Guan said foreign exporters have tapped Singapore’s integration with countries in the region to move their products to more markets.

He added that regional businesses may have looked to lower tariff costs by exporting their electronic products to Singapore, before sending them to the US.

“This trend (of reselling) is likely to continue with demand and growth in AI processing and data centres in the next couple of years,” Prof Goh said.

The nominal value of PCs which were manufactured in Singapore before being exported has also increased, jumping by 65.1 per cent in 2025 from 2024.

Enterprise Singapore said: “The increase in total PC exports reflected AI-related demand, which includes enterprise-level application, such as a hardware refresh for AI-capable PCs to support AI capabilities.”

What this means for consumers

Although the supply squeeze on PC components has benefited some dealers, consumers are paying the price.

Mr Lee observed that the prices of new laptops and desktops have increased by 50 per cent to 100 per cent on average.

He expects prices to edge higher as PC manufacturers are depleting their stocks of components and looking to renew supply contracts.

He said manufacturers are likely to pass extra costs on to consumers, as prices of components like RAM chips have increased by 300 per cent to 400 per cent in recent months “largely due to upstream supply constraints”.

Mr Madhan Kumar, owner of PC retailer and services provider Zalpha, said his long-time supplier who was charging around $50 for a type of RAM chip has raised the price to $220.

“We can’t make a profit. Customers don’t want to buy because of the price hike,” he said.

“We are waiting for prices to drop. Once prices drop, customers will come in again.”

Retailers Harvey Norman and Courts, which sell PCs, did not respond to ST requests for comment.

Higher prices of PCs could deter consumers from buying devices.

Counterpoint Research’s associate director David Naranjo expects global PC shipments, comprising desktops and laptops, to decline by 5 per cent to 8 per cent this year.

He said this will be “driven primarily by anticipated memory price increases that will pressure application service providers and dampen demand”.

Global PC shipments grew by 9 per cent in 2025.