Costco Display PCs Stripped Of RAM And GPUs As Theft Concerns Rise

Forget rotisserie chicken and oversized barrels of mayo, Costco's hottest commodity right now just might be RAM and GPUs. With prices of computer memory, storage, and graphics cards going for two to three times more than normal, shoplifters have been hitting big box stores like Costco and Walmart, and those business are now taking action.

Proving that even a membership card can't stop a determined hardware heister, Costco has reportedly begun gutting in-store display PCs, removing components like RAM and graphics cards before the units ever hit the floor. This comes from a string of reports on Reddit where thieves, including one alleged Instacart shopper (who isn't required to have a member's card to enter the store), decided that the "demo" in demo unit actually meant 'let me demonstrate how fast I can open a tempered glass side panel'. It seems like our current memory shortage ...