60% of PC gamers have no plans to build a new PC in the next two years — AI pricing crunch on RAM and other components paralyze enthusiast market
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/60-percent-of-pc-gamers-have-no-plans-to-build-a-new-pc-in-the-next-two-years-ai-pricing-crunch-on-ram-and-other-components-paralyze-enthusiast-market
32 Comments
It sucks because I am getting due for an upgrade. I’m still on AM4 and 64 GB DDR4 memory, but at these prices I am just gonna run my PC into the ground till I have to build a new one.
Man, I got *really* lucky. I started budgeting for a gaming PC 5 years ago. In February 2024, my wife and I were finally in a spot where I felt comfortable pulling the trigger, and I realized that I had overshot the cost of a high-end PC by quite a bit. So, I splurged and stuffed it with 128gb of RAM.
I suppose all I can do now is take it down to the Winchester and wait for all of this to blow over.
I built a brand new one last April because of the tariff threats.
Turns out it was actually going to be due to RAM shortage.
So many people told me it was a bad idea and that I should hold out for prices to drop.
Good luck to those still waiting.
Try like 5-10 years
Enthusiast market?
Lol have ya seen the price of SD cards even?
It’s affecting the entire consumer market. I’m riding the same hardware till the cows come home.
2 years? I’m retiring from building PC’s, F this industry.
I’m just really glad I upgraded in August last year just before the insanity, as I got 64GB for £160, the same kit today would be £700.
All because the billionaire class is building these server farms because they have so much play-money they don’t know what else to do with it – so they’re buying up all of your components and fucking up rural environments on an idiotic pipe dream that the world needs (and will pay for) their fucking AI, rather than just enjoy the piles of money they’re already sitting on.
I built my new PC right before everything went to shit, and I’m going to try to hold onto it for as long as I can.
I was gifted the components for a new rig last year for my birthday (he’ll probably see this, thanks again man). I am eternally grateful for that, because it was shortly after that point that the crunch came in and prices started jumping.
I had to build a new PC back in 2023 because my old i5 4690k & gtx 1080 wasn’t good enough for what I was playing. I am so glad I snagged 32gb of DDR4 for $120 when I did.
I don’t expect to build anything new or even upgrade things until I absolutely have to
im on 9800x3d x870 asrock. Going strong since 2023 and I’m set barring some catastrophic fai
Yeah the Trump Economy hit at the worst time for my PC upgrade cycle. Was supposed to be this year.
Might need to pick up a new hobby at these prices.
I was planning on building one, maybe two, in March or April but I can’t justify it now.
Nothing is affordable now.
It just ain’t worth it when a used version of the GPU I got 6 years ago is going for nearly what MSRP was back then. I’d spend more money to build what I have now than what I originally spent.
In other news, my M4 MacBook Pro would be a total replacement for it if it could natively run half the games I want to play.
Im screwed. I’m pretty sure at this point I have some hardware issue, just haven’t been able to pinpoint exactly where the issue is.
I did not plan to build a new pc and if I’m able to find the issue I’ll probably have to fork out an expensive replacement.
That is the point
Graphic cards are relevant for longer, X3D chips paired with a higher resolution make a CPU upgrade harder to justify as well.
And of course, everything is just so expensive right now. Do I want to build a new pc? Sure. Does it make economical sense? Absolutely not.
Bruh I’m on a 2070
People are struggling to afford groceries and gasoline.. Economy is in the dump of course im not buying PC parts
Do PC gamers broadly upgrade that often? Like my quickest upgrade has been 5 years and only because I found a good deal. If that were the average then 40% wanting an upgrade in the next to years would be approximately correct.
It has been 5 years with my current gaming laptop and I have no desire or intent to upgrade yet.
It hurts my soul cause my PC is about to turn 8 and I need a new but with these prices what’s the point?
Hot take: The surge in memory prices is engineered so that people can’t keep physical media archives and have to stream everything.
I built a retro PC that will max any DX9 era game. All of the components were affordable and I can find any game second hand. The only expensive part was the SSD that replaced the old disk drive. I’m priced out of building anything modern, but I find retro PC gaming is more enjoyable now that cost is not a barrier.
I just brought old laptops back from my parents. One had an old core 2 duo processor but the other had a 4700hq in it and I thought about keeping it.
Ended up recycling it but still. Don’t plan to buy anything new other than maybe a barebones mini PC to use some extra ddr5 ram and NVMe drive with in the near future.
The billionaires have ruined the planet and have nothing but plans to make it worse.
I’m not a builder but retail prices for computers have also increased because of the RAM shortage. I expected tariffs to increase prices. Bought my new gear April ’25, as soon as the tariffs were announced.
My rig is 11. I’m going to see it into it’s teenage years.
Yeeaaaahhh I was getting to the point of “hmm my PC is almost 8 years old I should look at parts to build a new one” and nooooope, guess I’m a console gamer until I get priced out of that market too.
And yes I know you can build a cheapish gaming rig, the dollars to performance is at a point where that cheap gaming rig would be marginally better performing than my 8 year old rig.
Good thing I mostly play indies so I don’t even need the upgrade
I spent less than 10 minutes adding up the cost of going to the AM5 platform before just upgrading my AM4 rig with Marketplace parts.
Realistically my upgraded AM4 is plenty for my gaming needs and probably will be for a few more years yet.
Built my current one 4 years ago. It will last until this silliness is over. Most of the time I play Paradox games or indy anyways. Im not looking for the next crysis
Yeah I’m pretty done, I’m stuck on AM4 for the foreseeable future unless DDR5 prices massively drop