This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I got a 30$ cooler years ago. I've managed to OC the cpu to 3.6, pretty impressive actually. It was useful for video editing, etc. not sure if many games benefits from it tho. Anyway I think it's worth it, you probably can find cheap ones, this CPU is built to last.
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.
AmzRamBar24
Which is the same thing as the GOODKINDSTICK that everyone says is really good, but only if you get the V3.65 from 2025, the new stuff is garbage.
And you have to be careful because their versioning is broken. Version 5 is older than 3.
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.
I've been putting 12tb used SAS drives in my Plex server. The used market went up about 30% from last year for the same drives. I think I paid $115 each before, now they're $150.
I don't doubt you found a deal somewhere, but here's what I'm seeing:
That's admittedly better than $26/TB, but I also had been looking at 20-24TB drives. That's the other change - the lowest-$/TB (highest value) TB size is has decreased substantially (from around 20-24 in late 2025, to 10-12 now).
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!
Idiot me bought a 4k laptop and be fucked if I'm not gonna use every single pixel on that screen (even if I can't tell a difference between 1440 and 4k)
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.
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
That is a worst case horror story that everyone should think about, and I'm not usually an optimist, but I don't think it's likely.
Ultimately AI is a hype wildfire, and it will eventually run out of fuel - signs are already showing that happening as AI hyperscalers and vendors are ending investments, restricting access and raising prices to recoup unsustainable losses.
At that point, I hope we stay sane and not jump at the first discounts, and just sit tight while prices return to normal. Prices need to fall heavily before we start supporting these AI-first companies again, or else we are going to lock ourselves into that AI-inflated price dystopia.
Upgraded my homelab with 256GB right before the prices went nuts. Lucky me.
But before I bought the best GPU at the time for absolute peak-price, adamant it would rise further and never going back.
So...universe equalized for me. For now.
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.
Really outside of indie games, all I use my PC for is emulating. Why care about new pc games when I can play every game ever made from 2600 to ps3 on my PC?
Emulation is about the only new tech to be excited about nowadays.
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.
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.
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
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.
Purchased May 6, 2024
I paid $158.99 in November of 2024, building my TrueNAS server. Wish I'd doubled up back then.
Basically we will be buying computer parts in specific decades, like this decade is bad for anything memory, last was bad for anything GPU. Next will be bad for, I don't know, screens or mobos. And so on.
I just had to buy a m.2 drive. It cost more than double the same item I bought in 2022. It also cost more than the entire computer it's being installed into! FML.
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.
Nah. Fuck AI companies causing the shortage. They should stop delaying the inevitable bubble crash and suffer real consequences.
I mean sure, fuck all those AI business. But the idea that we always need more powerful hardware is a consumerism illusion.
I guess I'll just stay on am4 until the bubble pops then. DDR4 has also gone up, but at least the prices are reasonable
I bought 96 gigs of DDR3 for my server in December 2022. It cost $118.76; less than $1.24 per gig.
I just don't think people are buying RAM/other PC parts period. new or used.
I've have a listing selling a couple year old sticks of 16gb (32gb total) of DDR4 ram for $120 for like 4 weeks now and not a peep from anyone. I've seen other listings for ram at similar price points that have also been up for weeks.
So i'm not sure if there's an actual shortage or people just simply aren't buying.
My CostCo is selling a gaming PC for $1,300, with 64gb of DDR5 and a RTX 5060. If that is a decent deal, go pick one up before the oil shocks start to really hit.
