- China is introducing new export controls on rare-earth elements
- Those elements are used in making a whole lot of PC components
- This could exert further pricing pressures on the makers of those components, on top of already-existing market forces pushing up the cost of drives and RAM
If you didn’t want to hear more negativity about further pressures on the prices of PCs and related components like SSDs, then brace yourself – there’s a new danger on the horizon.
Tom’s Hardware reports that China is bringing in new export controls on rare-earth elements which are used in the manufacture of many important PC components.
This move comes into play from December 2025, and is actually an extension of rules brought in back in April, extending China’s export controls to elements like holmium, thulium, erbium, ytterbium, europium, terbium and more.
China says that the distribution of these rare-earth elements is being strictly policed as a matter of national security, and export of these materials will be denied for uses in semiconductors or the defense industry.
Not just that, but the associated technical know-how of how elements are turned into magnets falls under the new rules.
Magnets are vital for storage products, as are rare-earth elements related to building motors for hard drives, and also the likes of cooling fans. Monitors will also be hit, with LCD panels and backlights using phosphor compounds that contain these rare-earth minerals.
Tom’s Hardware notes that even silicon chips may feel some pressure in terms of restrictions around cerium oxide slurries, which are used in polishing the large wafers that are turned into processors.
Analysis: The only way is up, price-wise
There could be some seriously widespread effects here, then, especially as China is by far the biggest supplier of these rare-earth elements.
If it becomes more difficult to source these, and if pricing goes up for manufacturers – or delays in obtaining these materials hit production lines – the end result for consumers won’t be good. As always, whenever price rises occur in the manufacturing process, those costs are passed on to the buyer of the product, so profit margins can be maintained.
There are a couple of thorny problems here, the first being that it’s not like there’s an array of alternatives other than China for getting these elements (particularly some of them). Although some companies have already been exploring different paths, and as Tom’s Hardware notes, Western Digital, which makes a wide range of storage products, fired up a scheme to extract and recycle rare-earth minerals from old drives earlier this year.
The second major hitch for would-be PC buyers is that this comes off the back of a whole raft of recent bad news about the cost of SSDs and hard drives going up, and system RAM too. With the price of various components steadily rising, the overall bill for buying (or building) a new PC could start to become considerably more costly as 2026 kicks off and rolls onwards.
This year’s Black Friday sales could be even busier than normal on the PC front, as people try to get in with a bargain ahead of these various pricing pressures.
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