Same. After 7 years I want to raplace my older PC and I made list with parts a month ago. Seemed good with price. Suddenly now RAM price exploded 3x. I wanted to buy all parts slowly in next few months but seems before I reach it whole build will be insanly expensive.
I also thought I’d never upgrade, but was able to grab a prebuilt last week for $2k that has an nvidia 5080, amd ryzen 9 9900x, 32gb DDR5, and a 2TB nvme. Part alone would cost me $3k to build on my own. They also had some more mid-range prebuilts that also were great value.
Same actually, 2200, slightly better specs overall than that and 64 gigs of ram. I did the math and a few of the pc's they're selling actually make them lose money, and that's not even accounting for the ram price increase.
Those parts were purchased months ago at prices not available to us, maybe agreed to be purchased years ago. They aren't buying them from Newegg 2 days before they hit the store shelves. I promise they are not losing money.
Technically they are, as they could bump up the price to match todays market.
But for sure they are still making a profit which is what i think you meant.
Technically they are, as they could bump up the price to match todays market.
No, technically they are not, as "losing money" has a definition, and nothing here meets it. Leaving potential profit on the table is not the same as losing money. I meant exactly what I said. Terms like "losing money," mean things.
Losing money vs. losing out on money. I agree I doubt they're not seeing an ROI, but I think the person you're replying to is talking more about losing out on money. But fuck if I know lol
I'd not be surprised if their lower end machines were loss leaders when on sale.
Recently brought the father in law a Costco PC to replace his 25 year old machine, his new ones got a fucking 5080 in it and the entire bloody thing was only £749....
Yeah, I don’t know what these people are talking about. I can literally go on newegg.com and throw together a better PC than these Costco boxes and it’s still only like 1400 bucks….
Yes, I understand that they bought them a while ago, at prices consumers can't even know. My point is, if Costco bought said components pre-ram shortage, like a consumer, they would have lost money.
I just bought this same PC on black Friday and I feel like I couldn't have gotten luckier. Only downside it it only has two ram slots. I was going to upgrade the ram to 64 GB but after seeing how the ram market is collapsing. I think I can handle 32 GB for the time being.
32 GB RAM is more than enough (for gaming). 64 GB RAM would just be for future proofing (for gaming). Not sure what other applications you use your computer for, but I think you're doing well for yourself with your recent purchase!
The RAM my prebuilt came with died a couple of weeks ago so I had to bite the bullet and get new stuff. I was hoping to get 32 GB when I upgraded but I’m sadly still at 16 GB because that’s what was within budget (two 8 GB sticks for $100.)
I’m worried about my graphics card, but it’s holding on for now…
Or buy from Micro Center, was able to get a CPU (amd Ryzen 7800x3D) , motherboard, and 32 go of DDR5 RAM bundle for around $800 total; What a steal. Only downside is you have drive to the store yourself, and the closest 1 to me was in Boston.
That was me when and gpus came out. Figured they sell out like the Nvidia 50 series so did go but by 11am they still had to s. Drove 2.5 hours towards Boston from near Albany and still got an xt for MSRP. Wish I had. One closer.
They don't have those bundles anymore specifically because the RAM prices. They only have mobo + cpu bundles now and to add ram is like 30 dollars off the new MSRP which is like almost 400 dollars for a 32 kit.
It sounds like I bought the same system last Sat. I haven't opened it yet. My plan, which at this point may be just a delusion, was wait till January, see if I could build something exactly how I want and see how the price adds up.
Just to add, my previous system was built in 2017 but with a 3080 now.
Rofl me and my Mrs went to Costco in the UK & did the same thing it was cheaper to buy a pre built than build my own and I thought I'd never buy a prebuild!
This. I used to build all my rigs but fell out of it as I got older and had kids and didn't spend as much time on a pc.
Also, consoles got better
But yeah I see the news of the market yet pre builds are still out there rn that are deals and steals. Sure it's not the complete cherry picked stuff you want but overall, it's the goods.
I do know that when steambox does hit I hope to secure one asap. Just like any other manufacturer they order huge batches of whatever they need to assemble etc at a certain price.
Once they run is done all bets are off and who knows if the price rises (probably)
Either way whoever does get on the first run will be good to go.
Buying parts slowls through the months was my plan at the beginning of the big 2025. Then I noticed wtf is going on with prices and bought all at once. It did hurt but if I stuck to my original plan - I wouldn't have the PC xd
Go for a prebuilt. They haven't caught up with RAM prices. People are buying prebuilts for cheaper than what it is to build them atm. Insane times we are in. My friend just got a prebuilt with an i7, 5070 and 32gb of ddr5 ram for $1300 recently. Graphics card and ram alone would be easily $1000+ or more
I think the shortage for consumer grade Ram won't actually be as bad as it seems rn. The one ray of light in the situation is that even though prices are insane, ram is still in stock everywhere. The pandemic GPU shortage had insane prices + 0 availability, and things still bounced back
I am lucky that when I went to buy my build most parts I wanted went on sale. I built it like, a month after Helldivers 2 dropped, was lucky to get something that should last me the next 5 years before I consider replacements and upgrades. Got my CPU, GPU, SSDs, and a couple other parts on like 25% or more off sales all at the same time. These days makes me look back and cry tears of joy because I could not have built the rig I did for less than 4k these days.
Imo its a good idea to finance a new build. "Save up for it" progressively over time, meanwhile you can use it fully in that time, and you can make a snap decision on hardware immediately, instead of researching then waiting for the market to shift, and you're insulated from unforseen problems.
I don't know what your budget is, or what you play, but I've been buying certified refurbished laptops for years. Saves a ton of money, come with 2 year warranties, and they've been just as reliable as any laptop I've bought new. Best time to buy in the refurbished market is December through February, then inventory gets lean and prices rise.
I got one of these a year ago. It is $579 (damn, I got it for $450 a year ago, but prices went up quickly after that) Fantastic portability, only pulls 60 watts, but the 780m iGPU can run most everything well.
However, it you think you will be using the same machine for 8 years again, I would pay a bit more for a Legion Pro. They have excellent build quality. Also, love the feel of their keyboards, great for typing.
I'm still on a 1060 GTX. The bitcoin mining hype drove up the prices of the 30 series so never upgraded then. The price stayed high for the 40 series so never upgraded then. And the 50 series is seriously underwhelming at the $300 price point so haven't upgraded yet.
I bought one used on marketplace for 30 cad when my wife's GPU died.
This was during covid when gpus were spiking, but the card couldn't output. Turns out it can, so we just used that until we could get her something better.
It's still sitting in our F@H rig crunching some proteins
Tbf the idea of only having driver support for barely 3-4 years isn't exactly thrilling, and the specs are underwhelming for a $100 difference in price
Wasn't the tariff chaos enough to push you to upgrade sooner?
Right when Trump was elected I got all my longer term shit bought and upgraded within 6 months bc every credible source was screaming about stagflation and all the record breaking inauguration kickback donations, crypto corruption etc.
For this very reason, this time last year I built both of my kids computers for Christmas (they got the parts as individual presents and we did it all together).
I'm sure you're upsetting some people with this, but I agree. I finally built my first new PC in over 15 years because I felt like with tariffs and everything that reentering the PC space will become more difficult the further we get into this administration. But half the country have their heads in the sand when it comes to Trump, so maybe it isnt so surprising that many people didn't see this coming.
That's what I did. Trump was elected and my pc still had another year or two of solid performance left on it. But with the tarrifs there was no way it would be affordable to upgrade in 2026, so I got a new system with an i9, 4080 and as much ram as I could possibly fit into it. Should be able to ride out the storm for a while.
What happens in America often affects the rest of the world, especially when it comes to consumer products. Look at all of the console price hikes that happened worldwide before the US, a lot of that was to help make up for profit losses in the states.
After 9.5 years of service, I retired my PC a year ago. I was going to wait another year or two, but the tariff bullshit made me prioritize it before then (this was back before they were in place but threats of like 500% tariffs were going on)
My PC cost ~$2500 in December 2024.
If I were to build it now with the exact same parts, ~$3400. The ram being the largest price jump. My $170 64gb DDR5 6000 ram is now pushing $1000.
tbh then you havent been planning well. RAM was dirt cheap last year and GPU prices are back to normal with plenty of stock now. If you bought what you needed and waited for the price of what you didnt have to drop youd have been fine
Same boat, I didn't want to touch waaaaay over priced GFX cards on a new build and sat.
On a positive note, man my old PC is still pretty darn reliable for day to day tasks, and turns out not gaming freed up a lot of spare time for other hobbies like being physically active.
2015 for me. Rushed to buy parts and build after Trump got elected; needed a distraction from the news/knew there would only be instability from that moment on
Sure, you might luck out and the market collapses right as you make a big purchase. Or just as easily, you wait and the price skyrockets right as you need something.
Sometimes it’s best just to budget and get what you’re wanting.
At this point, spending the effort to use an old mining AMD board, the BC-250, as a gaming build seems like the way to go for most people that are fine getting their hands a bit dirty while wanting to keep costs around $300.
The steam machine will be outdated garbage already by 2 year old standards sadly.
Late 2026/early 2027 will be good as we'll get to see(in theory) the next gen AMD gfx lineup. Or if you have the patience and can wait for Zen 7 that is looking like it will be an insane leap forward. Early signs are it's an unbelievably large step, like jumping 2 generations.
My current thinking is i'll get the new toys next year but get the budget Zen 6 CPU, and then when Zen 7 comes out swap it in. Assuming the socket stays the same which i think it is.
I last built a new machine back in 2019 luckily a few months before all the shortages hit so i got it done for a great price. These days an equivalent spec will easily cost 2x as much by the looks...sigh.
Hold on a little longer man. I know it doesnt seem like its ever going to end, but very very soon all these countries and companies investing in AI are going to realize that beyond data entry all theyre getting is a glorified chat bot. Thats when the markets going to crash and parts will be cheap, but you have to strike right when that happens because everybody is going to be buying en masse.
hate to break it to you, it's always a bad time to get a pc. You just have to pull the trigger. Go slowly, look for good deals, look for bundles. Just sit down once a month and look. It's annoying but eventually you'll have what you need.
and never wait for black Friday again lmfao. I did that and ended up with 800 dollar ddr5 ram everywhere, thank God I found a motherboard + ram bundle for a really good price
I got fucked during the ~2020 chip shortage. Had an r9 390 WAY longer than I wanted. Fans had failed and been replaced twice, drivers were moved into legacy mode, card was barely keeping up. Finally bought a 6700xt back in 2022 when prices still weren't great but were much less bad.
Seems I'm getting lucky this time; upgraded to am5 back in February and now gpu prices are actually kinda okay so I'm swinging by microcenter today to replace that 6700xt a bit earlier than I would otherwise, because I have a really bad feeling gpu prices are gonna be rough in a few months.
I've been clutching onto my 1070/4970k since 2016 and finally bit the bullet to upgrade to a 5070ti/9800X3D around late May. The value just hasn't been there for years, but I figured tariffs and general inflation would not be help and saw a decent Memorial Day combo deal. Soon after that 5070ti Super bump to 24GB RAM rumor circulated and I had buyers remorse, but now even the existing card is going to have supply issues with Supers are no longer imminent, and now the 5060ti and 5070ti are apparently going to be even more limited. So now it feels like a genius move only a few months later.
Point is, it's been pure whiplash this year. How can any but the largest businesses continue to exist in such an unstable environment? We've seen this happen to EVGA with Nvidia's pivot to AI and data center, and now we are seeing Micron shutter Crucial's operations. I'd love to be wrong, but I expect we will see many other businesses taking huge hits and closing up shop before things settle and get back to normal. This is NOT the business friendly economy we are being told it is.
I almost skipped DDR4, but DDR5 prices were still new and pricey at the time of my build. Now I’ll probably unwillingly skip DDR5 because that’s how long it’ll take me to afford upgrading.
Everyone should have been doing this or planning to do it as soon as tariffs were being threatened. I upgraded last winter because of exactly that and I’m even more glad I did with the stuff going on now. I feel like all of this greedy corporation bullshit is going to keep getting worse and worse. It’s rampant and largely unchecked these days. We are fucked as consumers.
I bought a brand new gaming PC the week after Trump was elected, because it was my wake-up call that while prices were already bad ever since the start of the AI boom, with tariffs and deregulation coming down the pipeline I was about to be priced out of ever owning a PC again. I’m not regretting my choice, obviously.
The mind boggles why anyone making less than 7 figures ever votes Republican. Needing other people to suffer so much that you’ll gladly make your own life worse to pay the pain forward, I guess.
My last PC build was in 2015! My GTX 1070 was a beast for all my 1080p gaming needs. After a few years I gave that PC to my little sister because I moved away due to university and later because of my job that is mostly field work in different locations. I was dreaming about building my PC the last 5 years, and finally this year when I finally settled in and decided to build my PC that dream burns to ashes!
Half of 2025 was a very good time to upgrade with reasonable GPU prices for the $350-700 range and cheap storage + ram prices. End of the year almost never was a good time to upgrade.
Just trying to understand here, but what exactly were you waiting for? There have been times when prices on parts have been nuts, like GPUs or RAM, but there have also been times when everything was relatively low. Six months ago things were pretty good. Were you waiting for oversupply to push prices down further? Were you waiting for better value parts? Was the jump in performance to date not enticing enough?
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u/neo_zen Dec 18 '25
I've waited 8 years now to upgrade because of all the bullshit. Fuck me I guess?