I’m rocking a 14 year old CPU (3570k), 16gb of DDR3 and a gtx1070 (non-ti).
I was so god damn stoked to build a new machine this year, only to watch first ddr5 then ddr4 soar our of my price range…
Now even the used stuff around me is jumping in price, with mobo cpu ram deals getting scooped up only for the ram to pop back up at twice the price the next day.
Fuck AI.
I upgraded my 8 year rig right when Trump was elected thinking tariffs would screw me. Did not forsee AI being the bigger factor
Gratz, good decision.
I live on the other side of the pond and did not build a new rig in 2024, because the tariffs were never going to affect me much… Did not foresee the bubble inflating this big though. I originally wanted to build in autumn 2025, now I have no idea when it’ll actually happen.
I started putting together a RAID, got the housing and the first drive, the plan was to buy a drive with each paycheck until I had the 4 drives I need. The first drive was like $250, arrived last week. Then I checked the price this week and the same drive is now $650.
builds a new PC.
continues to play Half Life 2.
Dodged the crypto gold rush twice by managing to buy my GPUs before they happened. The last hard drive purchase was more than a year ago, a 2TB Seagate to replace a damaged one. The PC I’m on now was built four years ago, and the most pricey upgrade was getting a 5700X3D.
Now I think I’ll have to be more careful while I use my PC, because we’re back to 1995 pricing.
I know is probably not possible, but I wish a competitor manufacturer would rise during this times and when the bubble pops we would let these worms starve.
competitor manufacturer
There’s Chinese ram that’s becoming good. But that doesn’t mean Americans will be allowed to buy it.
But really gamers are the worst about consumerism. Nvidia is the worst and gamers keep going back. Steve from Gamer’s Nexus had a funny chart in one of his videos a year or so ago. It was a flow chart about gamer spending on hardware showing all the advantages of AMD and Intel in gaming with a big arrow at the bottom that was labeled something like “And then you ignore everything and give all your money to Nvidia.”
honestly nvidia doesn’t give a hoot if we stop.
"Consumer (gaming) GPUs make up roughly 7% to 11% of Nvidia’s total revenue, and an even smaller percentage of their net profits. "
the only reason they sell to us still is the extent they can repackage commercial gpus for us.
Nvidia is the worst and gamers keep going back.
It’s still the default, unfortunately, as those gamers are usually swayed by popular opinion (see r/buildapc, fucking awful FOMO city), and AMD drivers have been hit-or-miss and they’ll usually threaten for a refund and buy another green box.
25% plan to buy this year. 40% in the next two years.
RAM prices have quadrupled since this time last year. So if only 25% as many people buy this year than last year, then the line still went up for the RAM companies.
This is a huge windfall for them, and there is absolutely zero reason for them to go back to $75/32GB DDR5 kits.
Shame that nobody is capable of restraint…
there is absolutely zero reason for them to go back to $75/32GB DDR5 kits.
There’s enough memory manufacturers that as long as the cartel was successfully busted when I forget which government took action against them last year, that they should start competing on price again as soon as demand re-normalizes
The vast majority of the market is made by only three companies who all have dramatically raised prices. Sk Hynix, Samsung and Micron.
Micron sailed off into the sunset, flipping the bird at consumers with both hands. Hynix & Samsung are equally quadruple-pricing versus a year ago. All of them are seeing insane, record profits.
Unless a government steps in and does something crazy like declaring RAM a subsidy & setting price controls… this is just the new normal.
Micron only killed their consumer memory division, they’re still making memory for b2b customers, so they can still affect and be affected by market forces when it comes to memory pricing
“60% of gamers have no plans to build a computer for the foreseeable future.” The unspoken part is, “and the hardware manufacturers don’t care”. Maybe they will after the bubble pops, or maybe not.
I just bought a mini desktop-- Ryzen 5 with 16Gb memory and 1Tb SSD. It cost me almost $500US. It probably was $100 less last year. I’m not a gamer, but I do make heavy use of 3D CAD and sometimes with large assemblies. And my old Nitro 5 and 1650 nVidia had been starting to struggle.
I do like my new little computer, with Aurora 44 installed, win11 was aborted on first boot, it’s a snappy little box despite the modest specs. The downside is, there isn’t enough time to make a cuppa tea while waiting on a model regen.
And who knows, I may live long enough to afford another stick of ram, or I may win the lottery someday-- assuming I buy a lottery ticket first.
“60% of gamers have no plans to build a computer for the foreseeable future.” The unspoken part is, “and the hardware manufacturers don’t care”. Maybe they will after the bubble pops, or maybe not.
The ones building consumer hardware probably care. There’s only 3 major DRAM manufacturers, but several companies that sell RAM sticks. Those guys aren’t gonna be having fun. AMD, nVidia and Intel are making out like bandits from the GPU sales, but the AIBs are most definitely not, since you don’t really buy a Sapphire or Gigabyte card for your data center, it’ll be direct from nVidia/AMD/Intel for hyperscalers and everyone else buys a complete server from someone like HP or Dell generally.
There are like 10 companies making out big on hardware for AI, but dozens of companies that will be hit hard.
And don’t forget all the suppliers of the other parts that don’t have any business with datacenters: motherboards makers (not sure they got anything), case makers, power supply makers, peripherals makers, etc.
All of the ecosystem could go down if the bubble lasts long enough.
Oh, the consumer companies care. But they currently don’t matter anymore that we do. And let’s be honest, the if and when this AI bubble does pop and all the data centers have closed. The prices will drop enough for consumers to eat up the sudden surplus as if a dam broke because it will “feel cheap and a bargain”. There is no lose-lose here for DRAM manufacturers because consumers ain’t that bright.
Honestly, what game is coming out that’s a killer app that isn’t live service trash that they’ll cancel in a few months? I wish I still had my old consoles to play games on, some of them were real bangers even if I had beaten them. Space Marine 2 was my last top tier purchase and I only played it for a few weeks. Wasn’t a fan of their revision of the combat system.
Outside of that, none of the big studios are making ANYTHING worth the barriers to entry now. I don’t play at 4K, and I rather play New Vegas again for things I missed and different options.
I haven’t really felt the need to upgrade since I first got a gaming PC. I’ve only ever replaced it when the last one was broken enough to not be worth trying to repair.
The funny thing is, these days maybe 85% of my time gaming is spent playing games that absolutely don’t need all the processing power I have. It is nice to be able to play the occasional AAA game, but all of them have looked fine to me. I haven’t really thought “damn this could look/run so much better if I spent another thousand dollars or so.”
I’ve actually been joking with friends about the unnecessary level of detail in some of these games. I was streaming God of War Ragnarok for them and we zoomed in on Kratos’ head and we joked about how some guy had to model the wrinkles on the back of his head/neck when it never matters and you only notice it when you’re going out of your way to zoom in on the details.
Games have reached a level of detail that is more than enough to convey any gameplay or narrative sufficiently. There’s nothing to keep pace with and I’m just hoping this one lasts long enough to avoid the price spike.
I feel like that’d be the stats even if we didn’t have a component disruption. Do all gamers build a new machine every year? They’d be broke (said the guy who buys / builds a lot of toys).
It’s cool to phrase non-news as clickbait. 50% people think $MYTEAM will win the big game. Holy crap, that’s news!
It is still a metric of whether we’re aspiring to build a pc or not. I have been meaning to build a new PC for years. Now I have entirely shelved those plans. I wish I hadn’t procrastinated :(
I generally upgrade my PC every five years. This usually means new motherboard, CPU, and RAM, and this last time a case as well. The last time I did it was in 2019, not counting the brief window where I was able to purchase an RTX 3080 at or near MSRP in around 2022. Not only am I overdue for an upgrade, my needs have changed pretty drastically since 2019.
Back then I was all about RGB, and sought to create the quintessential unicorn vomit PC. While I still like the aesthetic, I now know that maintenance of all that RGB can be a hassle. You need to manage more cables, and components on LED strips can fail, ruining the look of the case. The case is made of mostly tempered glass, but It’s now on the floor, obviously not ideal. The PC isn’t the only rig on my desk now (ham radios are also called rigs), and the PC has to share space with three or four of them, all with power, coax, grounding wire, and control cables of their own.
Glad I was able to build a new one a couple years ago. Sure wish I could afford a fucking hard drive though.
My kid is getting old enough to enjoy PC gaming and I want build a gaming machine for him. But alas. He will have to just enjoy my aging PS4 instead.
If there are economic bubbles, I am figuring on picking up some gear on the cheap after the big companies start falling apart. For now, I am just buying stuff that aren’t fairly generic and not prone to aging. In this case, a THOR NAS desktop tower. My older THOR V2 chassis isn’t quite right for modern GPU lengths, so hopefully the THOR NAS would be able to accommodate my older hardware while permitting the new stuff.
I got about 20tb of SATA SSD and a optical drive, so I needed a tower with front bays to accommodate those. Plus, I will be trying out this newfangled “M.2” stuff with my next build for the OS & Gaming drives, which takes up further case space.
