PC Building NOW is Unaffordable.

Le sigh! I cut my nose off to spite my face.

A friend owns an small engineering company, didn't believe in leasing, and would replace his systems as soon as the warranty ran out. He bought nothing but top of the line, fully equipped workstations. For 25 years he gave the old ones to me. This was the year, but I talked him out of replacing them. No windfall for glasskuter.

I think I've posted before that I bought as much as I could on my desktop in 2023. I feel sorry for anyone wanting to build or upgrade today! It is literally INSANE how much memory and video cards are!!

Good god, I just priced the 5070 Ti that I was stupid and didn't buy last year. $1700 to $1800 CAD! It used be $1100.

I love price gouging.

Lance1 said:

My PC build is the last PC build for me. Who can you afford the costs of RAM Storage GPU PSU CPU and the list gos on. I built my PC in 2024 and the total coste for my build was $2,500.00. And I Most Likely overspent at that too. Look at my specs! Yesterday I looked up all my PC parts and to build my PC with all that I have now would coste me $4,500.00!!! OMG! Did I pick the right time to build my PC or not? So is anyone out there planning a new build??? I bet not...

Click to expand...

My son just built a new desktop this past month. His old computer was about 7 years old, so it was certainly in the timeline for needing some upgrades. He had a birthday last month and graduated from high school about a year ago. He has been holding off on pulling the trigger to buy new parts for a year in hopes that things would die down, but they haven't. So, he through some money into the build, his mom and i through some money into the build and we got it built. He just got it finished last weekend.

A few concessions were made along the way. When he first presented me with his PC part picker cart, he had only picked a 1TB Gen 4 NVMe to keep his costs as low as possible. I said that instead, we would get a 2TB Gen 5 WD Black 8100. Figured, you always run out of space and considering he was getting a new AM5 board that could handle the Gen5 speeds, it would be a shame to go with an Gen4. So, instead of the $169 drive he picked, we ended up spending $399 on the WD drive...but I felt that upgrade was worth it.

He went with an AMD video card this time around. I haven't purchased anything but Nvidia for 20+ years, and my kid was coming from an EVGA 2080 super, but said that he refused to pay the Nvidia tax for a 5070TI or a 5080. He's very happy with the 9070TX that he decided to get. He's playing at 2k resolutions, so ne knew that he didn't "need" a 5080 and could use the money he saved on the GPU to pay for the overpriced RAM. Stuff he was playing at mid quality at good frame rates, he's now able to completely max out graphics and get 2x the FPS.

On the RAM front, he's had 32GB of RAM for nearly 7 years. But with the price of RAM, he opted to just stick to 32GB of RAM in this build as well. He said that amount of RAM was perfectly adequate for the games he plays, and he wasn't RAM starved previously for the music production work that he does. So, typically as an enthusiast, I always expect the next build to upgrade on the previous build across the board, but with RAM he didn't really need 64GB or 128GB of RAM.

End of the day, his new machine is wayyyyy faster than his previous build. It has the look he wanted (he wanted an all white build), he built it 100% himself. I haven't actually laid a finger on it. He's 100% satisfied with it and happy with all of his parts choices. He moved over his previous 4TB Gen 4 NVMe and another 1TB Gen 3 NVme, along with is 8TB spinner which is just for long term game storage. So, he has 15TB of storage in his new build.

New "budget friendly" laptops and some desk tops ($600-$1000) come with 8 GB ram and maybe 250 GB SSD ... They are not expandable as far as any replacement or upgrades needed. Tough on a family's budget with school kids.

FreeBooter said:

A smart $800 to $900 budget gaming PC build delivers great 1080p and entry 1440p gaming. Focus your money on a modern CPU platform and a solid graphics card, using value parts for the case and power supply.

Recommended Parts List ($800–$950 Range)

• • CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 7600X (6 cores, great AM5 upgrade path)
  • CPU Cooler: Thermalright Phantom Spirit 120 SE
  • Motherboard: ASRock B650 Pro RS or similar budget B650 AM5 board
  • Memory (RAM): 16GB (2x8GB) or 32GB DDR5-5600/6000
  • Graphics Card (GPU): AMD Radeon RX 7600 or RX 9060 XT / Nvidia RTX 5060 depending on local pricing
  • Storage (SSD): 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD (e.g., Silicon Power UD90)
  • Case: Gamdias Aura GC2 or Montech TG3 (Mesh front with fans included)
  • Power Supply (PSU): Thermaltake Toughpower GX2 600W or 650W 80+ Gold/Bronze

Click to expand...

You're dreaming, that list is way more than your price range! Just 32GB of DDR5 will set you back at least $400, half your budget! The Nvidia RTX 5060 is at least $350...

gunrunnerjohn said:

You're dreaming, that list is way more than your price range! Just 32GB of DDR5 will set you back at least $400, half your budget! The Nvidia RTX 5060 is at least $350...

Click to expand...

LLM-generated answers may not be accurate.

gunrunnerjohn said:

You're dreaming, that list is way more than your price range! Just 32GB of DDR5 will set you back at least $400, half your budget! The Nvidia RTX 5060 is at least $350...

Click to expand...

Was gonna say same thing. Unless you find all these parts used, not going to be purchased for $900 or less.

Cpu is $160
32GB ram is at least $400
Radeon 7600 is $300

Thats pretty much the full budget

Stigg said:

I've been thinking the same thing about desktop computers. I think I'll eventually transition to laptops. That's assuming I'm still alive by then.

Click to expand...

Why won't laptops also go up in price a lot? They also use CPUs, RAM, and SSDs.

Long term, and I think that high PC components will be high priced for the long term, this will have a knock on effect on Microsoft, Adobe, and other software vendors. For a long time, the assumption was that the "target design PC" kept on getting more powerful year by year.. Faster CPUs (more cores also), more and faster RAM, more powerful GPUs, etc. If that trend stops or even reverse, that may limit vendors' ability to add new features. More features = faster CPU, more RAM, etc.

I'm expecting social security backpay, and my new build is going to cost me about $4500 as well. The RAM is just outrageous.

I bet there were a lot of good PCs tossed because people didn't know a way around installing Windowz 11on the old hardware. Someone at Microsoft should have had their behinds kicked for doing that. That was very very very climate/green unfriendly.

RazorKat83 said:

I'm expecting social security backpay, and my new build is going to cost me about $4500 as well. The RAM is just outrageous.

Click to expand...

Obviously Social Security Cost of Living Adjustment doesn't take into account the huge increases in PC component parts.

flhthemi said:

I bet there were a lot of good PCs tossed because people didn't know a way around installing Windowz 11on the old hardware. Someone at Microsoft should have had their behinds kicked for doing that. That was very very very climate/green unfriendly.

Click to expand...

Microsoft will have to find a way to make Windows 12, AI and all, run on on GB of RAM, and no or a very old/weak GPU. That is, if they wanb any decent amount of adoption.

PhilB said:

Why won't laptops also go up in price a lot? They also use CPUs, RAM, and SSDs.

Click to expand...

They probably will.

PhilB said:

Why won't laptops also go up in price a lot? They also use CPUs, RAM, and SSDs.

Click to expand...

They are going up. Even Apple with high markups already on RAM recently had to go across the board and to raise the price of everything.

We are currently remodeling our basement and we have an older TV down there, which isn't a smart TV. I was thinking about getting another AppleTV 4k to put down there. They used to be $129 for 64GB and wifi only. And $149 for 128GB with a LAN port and wifi. The $149 is now $249. While I love the Apple TV device, it's no longer a no-brainer at $249.

Cost of MacMini went up, base model was $599 and is now $799. Macbook air went from $1,099 to $1,299

PhilB said:

Why won't laptops also go up in price a lot? They also use CPUs, RAM, and SSDs.

Click to expand...

You obviously haven't looked. The trend in laptop pricing is less RAM and disk storage to compensate for the rising prices of RAM and storage.

pparks1 said:

Cost of MacMini went up, base model was $599 and is now $799. Macbook air went from $1,099 to $1,299

Click to expand...

And that's only the beginning. Five gets you ten that Apple's new products announced probably next month will have sharply higher prices. And last older models will not have their prices reduced, and possibly even raised.

gunrunnerjohn said:

You obviously haven't looked. The trend in laptop pricing is less RAM and disk storage to compensate for the rising prices of RAM and storage.

Click to expand...

True, but I still know about the new trend to "downsize" laptops with less and less.

Maybe thjs is one time when I'm pushing xx. How many more years will I be around, or around and non ALZ? I hope this build lasts me. Maybe they should bury me with my SSDs?