Tax Query Limits

A Taxonomy Query in WordPress supports the following three arguments for the operator parameter: IN, NOT IN and AND. So it basically can’t do what you’re trying to do. Not even with advanced (tax_query) Queries.

Meta Query and possibilities

You’ll want to move your concept a bit and work with post meta fields/data. The WP_Query uses the WP_Meta_Query, which has some advantages over the WP_Tax_Query. The main one (for this question) is, that it supports more advanced relations through the compare arguments and you can as well sort by it: 'orderby' => 'meta_value_num' and 'orderby' => 'meta_value'.

(string) compare – Operator to test. Possible values are '=', '!=', '>', '>=', '<', '<=', 'LIKE', 'NOT LIKE', 'IN', 'NOT IN', 'BETWEEN', 'NOT BETWEEN', 'EXISTS' (only in WP >= 3.5), and 'NOT EXISTS' (also only in WP >= 3.5). Default value is '='.

^{– Quote from the Meta Query part of the WP_Query documentation @Codex wp dot org.}

So you could (should) switch your taxonomies that you want to order and filter/search by to become custom fields/meta data.

Not possible? Stepped taxonomies for the rescue.

As I already explained on top of the answer, there’s an IN operator for taxonomy queries. So what you could do is a call to get_terms() ^{Source: queryposts.com} and grab all terms that are in your range and then build an array of taxons/terms that serves as your “limiters”.

// Set "min/max"-limits:
$min = 256;
$max = 768;
// Get all terms in that taxonomy
$memory = get_terms( array( 'memory_size' ) );

// Container for our values
$mem_range = array();
// Check if we got an error
if ( ! is_wp_error( $memory ) )
{
    foreach ( $memory as $val )
    {
        // Convert to absolute integer for comparison
        $val = absint( $val );

        // Add to stack
        $val >= $min
        AND $val <= $max
            AND $mem_range[] = $val;
    }
}
// Debug
else
{
    // Output only for admin users and others that have that cap
    current_user_can( 'manage_options' )
        AND print $memory->get_error_message();
}

// Setup the basic arguments
$args = array( 'post_type' => 'hardware' );
// Check if we got some terms in range
if ( ! empty( $mem_range ) )
{

    $args['tax_query'] = array( array(
        'taxonomy' => 'memory_size',
        'field'    => 'slug',
        'terms'    => $mem_range,
        'operator' => 'IN'
    ) );
}

// Grab the results
$hardware_search = new WP_Query( $args );

Conclusion

While this might not be the best idea for high performance websites as you’re doing two queries for a single task, it may fulfill ones needs. I’d still recommend switching over to meta data for more advanced, single queries.