The result is the kind of economics Intel did not plan for, with a price rise on the outgoing stock.

According to DigiTimes, supply chain sources claim that Intel is hiking Raptor Lake CPU prices by around 10 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2025. In some regions, particularly Japan and South Korea, individual models have already gone up by more than 20 per cent.

The problem, insiders say, is that the new AI-branded PCs are not flying off the shelves. Despite all the marketing about on-chip neural processing, buyers seem to prefer saving a couple of hundred dollars and sticking with Raptor Lake. Those chips are still powerful enough for gaming and productivity, and they do not come with the “AI tax” attached to Lunar Lake.

The situation has been made worse by rising memory and storage costs. DDR4 and DDR5 prices have climbed by between 15-25 per cent, and SSD NAND is not far behind. With component prices climbing, PC makers like Lenovo, HP, and Acer are opting for older CPUs to keep their systems affordable.

Intel has admitted that Lunar Lake sales have not met expectations, even as overall PC shipments recovered thanks to the death of Windows 10 and the forced march toward Windows 11 machines. The company’s much-hyped AI PC push has had some effect, but not enough to shift the market.

With demand for Raptor Lake outstripping supply, Intel appears to be squeezing what margin it can from its remaining inventory. Officially, the company has not confirmed the hikes, but resellers in Asia have already started charging more.

For a firm still trying to prove it can compete with AMD and keep the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street happy, raising prices on older chips because the new ones will not sell is hardly a sign of confidence.