Purchased May 6, 2024
I paid $158.99 in November of 2024, building my TrueNAS server. Wish I'd doubled up back then.
I quite like the idea of people just not engaging with this.
Can't play the latest AAA because I can't afford the equipment for it? No worries, there's literally thousands of other games out there.
More realistically though, people will end up subbing to a streaming service, which is almost certainly what the companies would prefer.
If you've got a PC built in the last few years you can play them anyway.
Mostly this affects people whose PCs are pretty old already :/ but like if you've got an AM4 build you can just upgrade your GPU and maybe CPU if necessary and keep your good ol' DDR4. AM4 truly the GOAT of CPU sockets in terms of longevity.
or maybe, just maybe... You could, are you ready for this idea...?
Play on medium settings !!!GASP!!! Or worse, play it at 1080!
This is so true.
My PC I built has parts from as far as 12 yrs ago and day to day tasks go very smoothly especially since I switched to Linux. I haven't bought a newly released game from a big publisher since Borderlands 3 and that ran fine. Most recent indie games still run well too.
I'm currently planning on upgrading with used parts from 2020 ish not because I need to, but because I'd like to play some games from 2010-2020 in medium-to-high graphic settings and hopefully make it last another decade.
Chasing AAA highest setting has always been an expensive hobby, but not it's straight up luxury that only those with a lot of disposable income or make a living off gaming can afford. And honestly that's fine because there are just so many good games out there that don't require the specs.
I'm mostly just concerned on what I'll do if a piece of hardware dies or corrupts at this point.
The people that are hyping AI are real quiet in this thread.
I bought 96 gigs of DDR3 for my server in December 2022. It cost $118.76; less than $1.24 per gig.
HDDs have doubled in price recently too. Not a good time to try building a computer.
Building a computer like 5 years from now will be a weird experience because you will buy most parts from brands that you have never heard of. Very few of the manufacturers we know today will still be around by that time.
They will have Chinese RAM by then, so yeah, its going to be the random made up Amazon/Temu Chinese brands.
Much more than doubled. Most high-TB drives are not in stock anywhere, and even if you find a drive, the best deals are around $26-28/TB for used drives, whereas before new deals would be $10/TB. If you're looking for a specific new capacity, you may be paying $36-40/TB.
Don't worry, China is about to flood the market. Don't buy RAM yet, wait for the prices to normalize first.
Don't be too hopeful. China will first fill their demand
Which will impact the demand world-wide, because China's demand also takes from that either way.
Definitely, but they also won't miss the opportunity to become a major actor in the industry globally. Contrary to the US, they have in the past decade made a lot of moves to establish their influence globally.
Any day now ™
One thing we ~~can~~ do is hope that some apps (e.g. Discord, Spotify and Bitwarden) stop using Electron and starting up a fucking browser for each window
Wish granted. Those apps are now all rewritten as Swing Java applets.
RAM has always gone through huge price cycles as long as I can remember. You buy when it is good value then don't when it goes up. The industry always responded to high prices by building too much capacity so after a few years the prices all crashed.
This time it feels different. We don't have the huge diversity of producers we once did. The 3 big remaining players clearly operate as something like a cartel. I doubt they are responding to current shortages with huge new fab investments.
Lots of PC part manufacturers and retailers aren't going to make it through to the over side of this. I think it could lead to massive long term changes for the DIY market.
At least China is pushing to expand production capacity.
Aug 2024, I purchased 32gb of RAM for $109. That same kit today would cost me $509. Sept 2025 I got a 250gb nvme for $33 that is now around $85. The inflation is real.
Not inflation, just artificial shortage
oh you kids...let me tell ya how much RAM was in the late 90s....
I appreciate the fact that this is a still gif (good compression!), but it has several frames with differing compression artifacts for no good reason.
still gifs have good compression? I recall that motion gifs are notorious for large file sizes, but are still gifs the opposite?
The inflation is real.
109 USD in August 2024 is equivalent in buying power to $115.31 today. $33 from September 2025, adjusted for inflation, would be about $33.84 today.
This has absolutely nothing to do with inflation
As you can imagine, this is enormous pricing pressure for enthusiasts trying to build gaming PCs or upgrade their rigs in 2026.
Waiting until 2028 for anything involving RAM would be a good idea, if possible. You're likely to get more for your money.
If you've got money burning a hole in your pocket and are determined to spend on gaming computer hardware in 2026/2027, it might be a good idea to consider things like game controllers, displays, or something like that, since those don't have prices driven by memory price.
I’m really focusing on saving up for some stickers with flames on them, that’ll speed it up as much as I can afford for a while
Gaming is just going to become a hobby for the rich at this rate. There is no way we can keep up with this.
Gaming is just going to become a hobby for the rich at this rate.
Well in global terms, PC gaming pretty much has been that since forever.
There is no way we can keep up with this.
Reject the AAA slop and you'll be good. It's not like anything good comes from them anyway and all their "innovation" is just fancier graphics and physics without any real gameplay, content or story, mainly to justify the overpriced next gen Nvidia card.
So happy I decided to go "overkill" and max out my old AM4 board with 64GB of DDR4. It was a whopping $130!
Devs just need to optimize their software. My i5 750 still works just fine with a 1060 and 16gb ram. Their's thousand of great games to play, fuck the aaa.
This comment got me to stop lurking and create an account! I finally found my people!
I'm also still using an i5 750 for gaming. Just this year I upgraded to a whopping 12 GB of RAM, because a friend wanted to throw their old PC in the trash. I upgraded the GPU to an RX570 at some point. And the main reason I still use this PC instead of a low-power laptop is that many badly optimized games try to burn a hole in the integrated GPU for no reason (looking at you, unity).
I love that someone else is still out there running an i5 750 :) There are dozens of us! The i5 750 was just too good for its time
Well welcome among us!
The i5 750 is probably the best CPU I've had. And I've had many computers (I need work machines for video edition, etc). I OCs it to 3.6 and it's still a perfectly capable computer. Even the 16gb ram is overkill for the games I play, and I basically can play any games I'm interested in.
Whenever the topic of hardware comes up, I proudly mention this i5. Make sure to spread the gospel, we are legions!
Thanks!
I often run mine with the boost deactivated at 2.6 GHz. Still plenty for most games. At least the good ones :D I probably should repaste it before seriously overclocking, though. Do you have a specific cooler? Mine is still trapped beneath the stock cooler, it never seemed worth it to spend money on that. And for the RAM, I would still be using 8 GB if it wasn't for Beyond All Reason, which complains if your system has less than 12 GB.
Don't worry, I mention it on every possible occasion :D
Nah. Fuck AI companies causing the shortage. They should stop delaying the inevitable bubble crash and suffer real consequences.
Going back to the 90s when a few megabytes was hundreds of dollars.
That'd be great if software still had the same small footprint it had back then.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
