Honestly feel terrible for anyone building a PC right now. I got lucky by just a few months
this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2026
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Same. I managed to build mine between the crypto mining craze and the COVID shortage. At this point I regret not going AM5 but how the fuck was I supposed to know what was going to happen 😅
Yeah… my last serious rebuild was in mid/late 2020, and I definitely overdid it with a 5950x. But the good news is that I feel relatively future proofed. And I found a deal (read: found being sold at MSRP) a 9070XT several months ago that I replaced my 3080FE with (mainly because I’m shifting to Linux gaming and AMD makes that easier with the drivers). I’m gonna ride this out for a few more years. And I’m gonna pray that none of my RAM decides to shit the bed 😬
I've got a 2060 and i5 10400. I'm boned.
Sorry friend, I will pray for you to find some cash in the couch cushions 🙏
Yeah, I upgraded to a 5700x3D a year ago, but if I'd known RAM was going to be overpriced for half a decade I would've gone 9800x3D instead.
I probably would have too, but back when I did it AM5 stuff was pretty steep and the value/dollar was still a bit hazy. I'm still not really quite sure what the real AM5 advantage over AM4 for the common person is, especially at the prices today. I mean obviously it's better and newer and whatever, but is it really that necessary?
Ya same, decided to stay on AM4 instead of swapping to AM5 (it'll be cheaper next year, I naively thought) so I grabbed the best AM4 processor and upgraded my RAM to 64GB, tossed in a few more TB of SSDs and planned on a motherboard upgrade next year.
Now I'll probably buy a side-grade (Steam Frame or maybe Deck) instead of trying to buy into the current generation hardware.
Luckily my job involves local AI (primarily training techs, I'm not a social media propagandist) so the business may find a business need for a graphics card soon. It won't be mine, but we can hang out off-duty.
I did a 5800x3d/4070ti/128gb AM4 refresh three years ago, and honestly the thing still absolutely cooks. I'm not even sure why you would ever need more. Maybe if you game in 4k, or bragging rights or something. I'm more than content with the 1440p plebes though.
Yeah and about a 400% increase in weight loss to my wallet.
I'm good with the 20% reduction, if that's the cost.
You said "I'm not sure why you would ever need more", that's what I was addressing. At the time I built my PC it would have been pennies on the dollar.
Pennies on today's dollar. When I was looking at doing it in 2023, it was still pretty expensive. The ram was about twice the price, plus you'd need a motherboard upgrade. Juice just wasn't worth the squeeze. I get that stuff like this can be 10 or 20% more efficient or whatever, but then you consider on the other hand that quite a lot of games get released in a trash alpha state where it's ~~CPU~~ (edit meant to say GPU) bound, or your NVME hard drive isn't operating at peak state, or something stupid like that. Stuff you never really think about.
If I could rewind, I'd maybe would have done it just to stay ahead of the need to upgrade down the road. I'm hoping to skip the AM5 generation, if I ever build another PC, big if (I'm getting kinda old, don't game as much anymore).
If I could rewind, I'd maybe would have done it just to stay ahead of the need to upgrade down the road
Yes that's what I was saying.
Yup. I upgraded my PC in Jan of 2025. The writing was on the wall back then.
I pulled the trigger on redoing my whole gaming rig like a week after Trump got elected again. We didn't know how long it was gonna take, but I think we all knew it was gonna be bad... honestly I'm pretty sure we're still in early stages, it's a miracle any tech at all is still affordable
Man, I was hoping to save for a PC but it's not looking likely any tie soon. At least I have my steamdeck.
My PC had been randomly crashing for a year. I finally decided to replace all the guts in my tower. It was definitely not cheap but I can't imagine trying to buy the same parts now.
Won't they have to adjust the price hourly to account for RAM?
This build uses older DDR4, which is still ridiculously overpriced, but isn't fluctuating quite as much as DDR5.
Is a little crazy it's come to this but if you have to, ddr3 is still cheap.
Now is a terrible time for building a PC, but you should absolutely be looking for good deals on used, non-Windows 11 compatible PCs if you're even remotely technical.
I've found 2 different pre-build systems with a chunk of DDR4 and 3080s on the various local marketplaces for cheap (given current RAM/GPU prices).
Windows 11 may not run on them, but with a USB stick, a Bazzite ISO and a little bit of your time you can have a great mid-range PC who's interface is exactly the same as the upcoming Steam Machine (i.e. it boots up and launches Steam in Big Picture Mode, you never see anything that looks like Linux)
Amen. An Intel 7000 or 1st gen Ryzen CPU will play any modern title surprisingly well.
Its windows 11 thats is the problem.
I find it ironic that they keep talking shit about nvidia and AI companies ruining everything
yet theres so many links to amazon in that article..
A few years ago, Amazon's Jeff Bezos predicted that you'll ditch your local PC hardware for rented "compute" from Amazon and other cloud companies. https://www.windowscentral.com/artificial-intelligence/jeff-bezos-says-the-quiet-part-out-loud-bezos-envisions-that-youll-give-up-your-pc-for-an-ai-cloud-version
They're also assholes towards their workers. i dont understand why you'd complain about some companies shady ways of doing business, but not all.
And Google as well. The sad reality is it's nearly impossible to exist without these companies, much less run a business.