“I didn’t expect these swings”: Steam’s March survey reveals PC hardware trends that caught me off guard

Steam's monthly hardware survey has just been updated for March 2026, and there's a lot of movement to make note of in more than one area.

Net Windows usership actually fell by 4.28%, with end-of-life Windows 10 abandonment dragging the score down by 14.89%. Windows 11 rose by a healthy 10.57%, and Windows 7 also rose by 0.03%. At least a few people out there are keeping the 2009 OS's dream alive.

At the same time, net Linux users rose by 3.10% overall, and MacOS also rose by a narrower 1.19% margin. For the former stat, I imagine it has more to do with gaming handheld adoption than Windows abandonment.

Two of the biggest swings in hardware involve RAM and storage. That's not exactly a surprise, considering the surging prices caused by AI firms buying years of supply in advance for data centers.

Steam users with 32GB of RAM dropped 20.31% to hit 36.62% overall. That's still a fair share, but 16GB of RAM climbed by 13.5% to be the new leader at 40.97% overall. Gaming PCs with 1TB or more of hard drive space likewise dropped by a significant 19.98% to land at 50.11%.

It's clear that rising hardware prices are deeply affecting PC gamers

It's not exactly shocking to see RAM and storage amounts falling in the average gaming PC. A quick look at Newegg this morning shows that 32GB of DDR5 is going to cost you somewhere from $300 to $600+. DDR4 RAM isn't much better, with 32GB kits costing anywhere from $200 to $300+.

It's largely the same story for modern storage. I covered a few SSD deals this week, and it was exciting to see discounted prices anywhere near what they used to be just a year ago.

Other notable stats include Intel's Arc Graphics finally making it onto the GPU usage board with a 0.32% share. I expect this number to continue to rise as Panther Lake laptops saturate the market.

NVIDIA's RTX 4060, which has been at the top of the GPU board in recent months, fell by a significant 3.54% to land at 3.92% overall. The trusty RTX 3060 pulled back into the top spot despite a 0.50% decline.

PC gamers using a monitor with a QHD (2560x1440) resolution fell by 17.94% to land at 20.7% overall, while FHD (1920x1080) monitors rose by 6.89% to take the lead with an overall 51.93% share.

It's clear that the regular order of things — newer hardware slowly taking over the userbase — has been seriously disrupted by obscene hardware prices, and it's unfortunate that there's not really an end in sight to the trend.

Has your gaming PC changed recently?

Have soaring hardware costs forced you to make some changes to your gaming PC that you'd have otherwise avoided? Have you made any general changes recently, simply out of your own accord? Let me know in the comments section!

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