The interesting thing about this is that people are now stuck with whatever PC they had when the prices suddenly shot up. In the past there was always a hardware adoption curve, where some people had the newest stuff, other people waited for it to get cheaper before they bought it.

In the past, if a game company was developing a game that was scheduled to be released in 2 years, they could look at what hardware people were using now, and estimate what people would be using in 2 years. Graphics and gameplay that was possible on game studio machines running the latest hardware would be too much for home PCs when development at the studio started. But, by the time the game was ready, home machines would have caught up and people could experience these amazing graphics at home. Now, I assume game studios are going to have to re-think things and assume that most people at home will still be playing on the old gaming PC they built before the AI price apocalypse.

Next you won’t be able to own computers yourself. It’s all going to be rented through sky high subscription fees. Technofeudalism intensifies.

My decision to buy a top end card for my 2019 base build PC in Q4 2025, Quickly spiraled into a panic buy of a full stack of new computer parts.

I calculated it last night. I spent about $4000 CAD in 2019 on my build then, which was high end for the time (tack on another 3000 or so in upgrades through its life, 16>32 RAM then switching it out for 64gb, 2070 > 3080 > 5080, and at least one SSD addition)

I havent even built it yet and I've spent like 6800 CAD on my next PC, I didnt plan on making the switch until Q4 2026 when my ESU Windows 10 expired but the rampocalypse and everything-pocalypse has forced my hand into buying now at bad prices, instead of buying later at worse.

I wouldnt have even lifted a finger if It wasn't for the fact that my machine is so old, its stable but for how long?

Did the GPU shortages ever really end, though? We just have more shortages on top of it.

Maybe not PSU shortages, but definitely power supply shortages.

https://cardinalnews.org/2025/04/11/energy-demand-will-outstrip-supply-in-virginia-as-data-centers-proliferate/

Sorry for the German. :D

This stuff reminds me of all those capo dogs who would constantly talk about how hard it was to acquire a car in the USSR

I spent months trying to get my GPU, I finally got it and settled on my ram figuring “I’ll just wait a year or so then upgrade when there are better options.” Whelp, there goes that plan.

Built my computer in 2019. It may be the last one I build.

I just needed some fucking m.2s and I was done, I thought I made it. I was wrong.

There was a huge PSU price hike in the early 2020s… They’ve since come down, but I did snag a Corsair 1KW Platinum for like 130USD on a sick sale back then JUST IN CASE.

I'm still recovering from the crypto mining caused GPU shortages during covid.

I built my PC shortly before the GPU shortage and plan on not updating till the RAM shortage is over (not that I could update earlier since money is currently an issue)

I got really lucky. bought my pc parts end of november and paid ~1800 euro for a full pc build with a 9800x3d, 9070xt and 64gb ram.

I hope this can help make open source RISC-V and ARM systems more common.

I keep saying that I'm going to upgrade my 5600x and 3070ti. Lol.

I built right as the nVidia 3000 series came out, and when I wasn't able to get one in the first month or two after release I said fuck it and bought one of the last new 2070 Supers I could find. Hooray for availability alerts.

I've been wanting to upgrade parts for like a year now, because it's just starting to have issues with higher graphics settings on 1440p (had 1080p monitors when I bought it). Glad I went with 64GB RAM (DDR4, as was the standard of the time) and a little above mid range on the CPU. It's absolutely fucking absurd to me that the parts that are still available (mobo, PSU, and GPU aren't anymore) have effectively held their price point.

https://gaming.news/codex/dram-supercycle-2017-how-previous-memory-crisis-unfolded/

PSU had shortage or really high prices a few years ago because the new GPU gen needed beefier PSU.