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Me 8 years ago building my PC, “I’ll go used this time so I can get the best PC possible for my budget, and I’ll slowly upgrade to new as I need to.”
Me today,
I built my PC in 2021, and while it didn’t have top of the line components or anything, it was probably upper low-range to low mid-range back then (minus the GPU because I only bought that after the pandemic, when prices went down a bit). If it lasts me 10 years, I’ll be happy tbh. Building a PC right now, or having to replace broken parts, sounds like an absolute pain in the butt q-q
I might not have the fastest processor (Ryzen 5 3600) and my graphics card is long in the tooth (5600 XT), but damn am I smug for buying 64GB of DDR5 years ago.
Just wish 2 years ago I’d talked my boss into upgrading my work laptop from 8GB. No chance now.
I got crazy lucky and built my pc right before the prices skyrocketed. I accidentally did a ship of theseus because every time I bought a part it was incompatible with another part until I had a brand new pc except for the hardrive.
I got lucky and my mobo died right before the ram spike, so I upgraded from ddr3 to ddr5 for cheap compared to current prices.
I share the same feeling in my bones.
This is pretty much my situation with my gaming PC.
I did do a small upgrade on the Graphics Card after a few years, in between the mining price peak and the AI price peak so it wasn’t too expensive, and also bought second hand for €14 a CPU that fits that CPU slot (which is twice as powerful as the original one I had and which, had I bought it new, would have cost about €200), so that extended that PC’s life a bit.
Another thing that helped a lot was replacing Windows with Linux - 16 GB memory is absolutely fine with Linux.
I starting to think about a replacement - which would have to be a full one as that motherboard can’t really support any further significant improvements (PCI isn’t really fast enough to really fully use better and more recent Graphics Cards, memory is maxed and the for that CPU slot there’s just 1 better CPU and it’s a tiny performance improvement over what I have) - but then the AI bubble came and that was that.
Mind you, similarly to that cartoon, I totally think “just keep going a little bit more, please, please, please” when I look at this PC.
All that said, my gaming needs are still served just fine with this machine since I don’t tend to go for glitzy recent AAA titles since I generally find them too linear and intellectually unchallenging for my taste.
I used to advocate saving one’s money and building a fresh system when DDR6 is released - the transition means that many people will be selling off their older hardware, thus a glut of cheapness.
Unfortunately, I suspect that most folks, especially Americans, won’t have much money by the time DDR6 is a thing. So I pulled the trigger and built a fresh DDR5 machine. Partially due to PBO issues with my DDR4 beast’s CPU, but also a desire for local AI roleplay and projects. It is best to build now, before Weimer hyperinflation takes America by storm.
In any case, my 128gb DDR4 machine will hopefully find its way into the hands of a happy owner. I got the new 5950x CPU, it just needs to be installed, and my future machine in good order.
glad I splurged and bought a 4070 when cross shopping with a 3060
glad I bought 16GB more ram on a whim bc I knew I wasn’t going to pay for a new mobo any time soon
glad I bought a couple 2TB SSDs when streaming services could not longer provide me an experience worth paying for
glad I don’t care to play the newest AAA games or watch shows/movies as soon as they come out
I’ve got several computers in pieces and two other old af ones now running Linux perfectly fine
the problem is not the hardware. the problem is the inefficient software that requires you to get better hardware.
Nothing concrete yet, but there is hope. The fact that mainstream media aired this may actually cause investors to start pulling out. The bubble is kept inflated by investor confidence, after all.
I love this comic!! Thanks for sharing, I wouldn’t have discovered it otherwise.
Think I’ll go toss them a Patreon sub.
I expect prices of components to remain high to around 2030. Even then I don’t think companies will lower prices when they see how much people allows to be priced for certain components. The prices will slowly be “drip fed” and slowly be lowered. But it’ll take a long time.
2030:”The AI bubble’s gonna pop any week now, I’m sure of it.”
Thankfully its looking like it won’t last much longer. There just isn’t enough money in the system to grow the bubble much further. Nobody has another trillion dollars to throw on the fire.
Elon?
He’s in the looking for someone else to leave holding the bag phase, that’s why he merged his AI business with SpaceX, took it public and had the rules changed to force index funds to buy in.
In a normal world I probably would have replaced my 5800X / 32GB DDR4 / 3070ti build by now, but I don’t really feel myself needing to. I’m expecting it to last me several more years the way things are going.
really glad my wonderful partner got me a refurb’d mobo/CPU combo for christmas last year
and also that one of his online friends was generous enough to just ship him a 4080 for free earlier this year when they upgraded their own card and he offered me his 3060, which has been working better than i expected under linux (i wanted to go all AMD but i’ll take what i can get atp)
My build is from 2019, it wasn’t blistering hot but was pretty speedy. It’s keeping up well enough, though I don’t play new enough games to really matter.
