this post was submitted on 16 May 2026
247 points (99.6% liked)

Games

48443 readers
1453 users here now

Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.

Rules

1. Submissions have to be related to games

Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.

This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.

2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil

No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.

We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.

3. No excessive self-promotion

Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.

This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.

4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts

This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you're submitting before posting to see if it's already been posted.

We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.

5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW

Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.

No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.

6. No linking to piracy

Don't share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.

We don't want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.

Authorized Regular Threads

Related communities

PM a mod to add your own

Video games

Generic

Help and suggestions

By platform

By type

By games

Language specific

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Dremor@lemmy.world
JonsJava@lemmy.world
Dremor@jlai.lu
PerfectDark@lemmy.world
247
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 (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 6 hours ago by mintiefresh@piefed.ca to c/games@lemmy.world
74 comments fedilink hide all child comments
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] yggstyle@lemmy.world 7 points 59 minutes ago

The other 39% are optimistically hoping the bubble will pop within that 2 years and there will still be a market to buy from.

I have no such illusions - but a bit of me wonders if, possibly, this may drive the pc market back in the direction of its origins:

Devs were incentivised to write more efficient, leaner code because resources were expensive.

PC users focused on squeezing every. goddamn. drop. of performance out of their existing gear. Overclocking wasnt about making your 200 fps into 300 - it was about making that aging beast play something it had no right to even run.

I dont look forward to the coming days with any optimism... but maybe this whole scene needed a purging fire to foster new growth and diversity.

Or maybe we'll just purge the source of these issues. Or both. Both would be nice. I can dream.

[–] excral@feddit.org 1 points 4 minutes ago

My desktop PC is already significantly more powerful than my Steam Deck, yet I game on my Steam Deck significantly more. I don't see any point in upgrading my PC when indy games that run on a potato are more fun than poorly optimized AAA slop that somehow manages the lag the fuck out of the best hardware money can buy.

[–] lorty@lemmy.ml 1 points 7 minutes ago

Yeah, I wanted to upgrade this year or the next, but unfortunately, well.

[–] ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace@piefed.ca 12 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

It's not like we didn't have a near infinite amount of games available from retro 8bit games all the way to the latest and greatest. Honestly, there's enough games or there that don't require high end PCs to play.

Heck, I got a long ass list of games I bought nearly 10 years ago that I haven't ended played yet because I bought so many. On PC and Switch!

I'm good.

[–] meowcar420@lemmy.ml 1 points 54 minutes ago (1 children)

that's especially true since games just kinda stopped looking better imo. i think 2014-2019 was the peak of game graphics, i just can't stand that smeary ai upscaled temporal anti-aliasing look, i prefer msaa or just plain ssaa, it looks so much crisper

[–] Dindonmasker@sh.itjust.works 2 points 23 minutes ago

For me that's not true for VR games. There's still a lot to do in terms of graphics and they are harder and harder to run with VR headsets that always need more resolutions to make the games look how they should look without so many visible pixels. The new 4K per eye panels are pretty much perfect but that's really hard to run.

[–] Omegamanthethird@lemmy.world 3 points 50 minutes ago (2 children)

40% of PC gamers plan on building an entirely new PC in the next 2 years? That seems like a lot. I thought gamers just upgraded for like 10-15 years.

[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 3 points 34 minutes ago

I used to upgrade every two years. In the last decade though, it's been 3-4 years, because hardware can keep up with new games and tech as they come.

I am glad I bought two PC's in late 2024, though, before billionaires decided they were going to force people to rent PC's for life. I should be set for a while, maybe even as long as we end up waiting for a crash.

[–] kahjtheundedicated@lemmy.world 1 points 11 minutes ago

3-5 was pretty normal for a long time, in general and for myself. But I’m sitting at 7 years now, and idk if I’ll build a new one until there’s some kind of crash in prices. Might upgrade the cpu to a 5700x3d though if AMD does actually make more of those

[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 3 points 1 hour ago

Sure, but I built my previous rig in 2012 and kept it in service up until I put together my latest one just at the end of last year. Even with the best will in the world I had absolutely no intention of building yet another new gaming computer any time in the next two years regardless of geopolitical fuckery.

[–] JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 2 points 58 minutes ago

I had plans. Those plans have been taken out back and shot.

[–] reksas@sopuli.xyz 18 points 2 hours ago

hopefully this wont end with pc component market drying completely so companies can force us to use their stupid remote pc crap.

[–] Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works 54 points 4 hours ago (3 children)

First it was crypto, now it's AI.

Two stupid fucking things we never wanted.

Fuck every crypto bro and every AI enthusiast.

[–] A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 8 points 1 hour ago

Right wing lunatics are big in both.

Crypto because the hurrdurr keep gubmint outta my lyfe shit, and AI because they hate liberal reality, so AI lets them generate all the videos they could hope to have to validate their fake victimhoods.

[–] Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.com 26 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

There's a lot of overlap in those two groups

[–] criss_cross@lemmy.world 17 points 3 hours ago

The Crypto bros needed something to offload all the gpus they bought and found a word salad maker that relies on them.

[–] polle@feddit.org 1 points 2 hours ago

Imagine when the crypto train was full on, somebody said that something other will come along where the crypto train will be small joke in comparison.

[–] 64bithero@lemmy.world 3 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I last built a pc In 2018 I have no plans for at least 2 more years. My I7 9700 and 2080 TI keep trucking …

[–] A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Yep, I built my PC in 2018 as well.

Thanks to the incredible life of the AM4 socket, I managed to upgrade CPUs 3 years ago, and upgraded my GPU 2 years ago.

Between AAA gaming becoming garbage, and the AInflation of components and artificial scarcity, I probably wont upgrade/build new again for at least 5-7 years short of catastrophic failure. . . assuming I am even allowed to by that point, with how they are seemingly trying to push consumers out of the market.

[–] jtrek@startrek.website 8 points 3 hours ago

Glad I upgraded mine before all this shit started. Barring disaster it should play games for years. I don't need all the bells and whistles.

[–] CosmoNova@lemmy.world 34 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I feel bad for people working in manufacturing for parts like cases or cooling systems. When nobody builds PCs anymore, nobody buys their products either and they go out of business for good.

This whole AI mess is killing gaming as we know it.

[–] BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 23 points 5 hours ago

AI is killing people and civilization.

[–] a_wild_mimic_appears@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 3 hours ago

I upgraded my PC just in time last year before pricing went bonkers. Stayed on my AM4 board, upgraded to 64GB DDR4, swapped my ageing 2600x to an 5950x with 32 cores, snatched a 5070 to expand my smallish VRam, upgraded storage to a total of 43TB.

I'm still in the market for 4 8-16TB HDDs, since I have a very nice NAS standing in a corner. But I will probably opt for used drives with the current prices.

Next PC upgrade is the first time in a long while I have to actually replace the whole PC, but I'll ride out this Madness first.

[–] rounding_error@lemmy.today 5 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

It's hard to believe that my PC build in 2023 was $1000 and now it is upwards of $2100 (some parts have no price available).

[–] missingno@fedia.io 5 points 3 hours ago

My rig still runs all of my favorite 2D indie games, so I'm good.

[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 hours ago

I didn't update my last pc in 15 years. And I just bought a new rig in 2025.

So I'm good until 2040 when, idk, the cryptospider inteligence will drive sound card prizes to the roof or whatever.

[–] CaptainBasculin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 hours ago

I don't see myself upgrading my 3080Ti ever.

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 31 points 6 hours ago (13 children)

I'm surprised that so many (40%) have plans to build a new PC in next two years. Especially because we are talking about PC Gamers, who are already PC Gamers. I would assume that most either do not, or upgrade instead build a new PC. From those 40% of 1.5k tomshardware readers who participated in the survey, I wonder in what state their PC are and if they HAVE to build a new PC or they just have a lot of money around and can afford it. Do they sell the old system or parts of it? Unfortunately these are unanswered at the moment.

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 hour ago

I replaced my old PC only because I went from an i5 6600 to a ryzen 7800x3d and thus needed to replace the RAM as well.
Combone that with an old 4GB 960 and an older 2TB HDD and wanting another case the math was quite easy.

It's alao a quesrion how you interpret that? At what point is it a new PC vs upgrading? If you have replaced all parts from the original starting build?
Might explain the higher percentage

[–] KindnessIsPunk@lemmy.ca 5 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah I found that strange too most of my gaming PCs have lasted me somewhere between 7 and 10 years. Would seem completely unnecessary for most people

[–] mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 hours ago

I just upgrade one or two parts every 2-4 years. seems to have worked fine for over a decade. dreading when I need to do a mobo update which will include ram

[–] cRazi_man@europe.pub 18 points 6 hours ago

In online communities at least, people seem to be keen to stay on the cutting edge and always have the best and shiniest. Toms Hardware is going to attract this very audience.

I accept that I'm probably too far the other way on the spectrum of patient gamers......but people don't seem to think of the utility of the item and rather stay obsessed with "10% performance gains". For the vast majority of people, phones, laptops and computers can easily last over 5 years (sometimes 10 years depending on use case).

Although these frequent upgraders do give a good stock of items for people like me to pick up and stay in the sweetspot of positioning behind the frontline of cutting edge products on the secondhand market.

[–] mushroommunk@lemmy.today 6 points 6 hours ago (4 children)

Anecdotally but several of my friends build a new PC and then slide their old one to siblings who game but don't need high end

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 4 points 5 hours ago

It's way easier to get rid of an entire computer second hand than it is bespoke parts that you've replaced, so this is what I do too. I used to be on a 4-year cadence with new PCs, but then I kept getting more and more mileage out of my machines, since graphics don't leap forward so quickly like they used to. My current machine is 5 years old and still runs the latest games on high settings.

[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 4 points 5 hours ago

Heeeey, it's me! Your sibling! You got any of that sweet sweet ddr5 ram??? Don't hold out on me, boy!

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (9 replies)
[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

I wanted to build a brew PC this year. But I guess it'll have to wait until the bubble bursts.

[–] flandish@lemmy.world 4 points 4 hours ago

i’m a sw eng, doing most of my work on a macbook. unless i need to use vendor sw for servos, vfds, cameras.

i used to build pcs. stepped away. now all i have to game with is a legion go. i would love a gaming pc for even just 1080p. but shit’s so expensive. :(

back to factorio i go.

[–] nerv@fedinsfw.app 7 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

I really want to see if the requirements for new games will go down or continue rising.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] roserose56@lemmy.zip 2 points 4 hours ago

I would really want to see the company when even more people don't buy computer parts., it's not gonna be good for them.

[–] Omega_Jimes@lemmy.ca 3 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (2 children)

This was supposed to be my upgrade cycle. I built our PC's in 2021, and i tend to upgrade every 5 years. Between the pricing and industry collapse, and just plain having more fun with low spec games, i don't know how long it's going until i upgrade again.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 6 points 6 hours ago (3 children)

Fractal North is still the prettiest PC case I've ever seen. I'm very happy with mine.

[–] Photonic@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

Same! I have the black one though

[–] atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works 4 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

The case in the picture looks cool, but it doesn’t have an optical drive. I have a a Fractal case too though, but it was one of the only ones I could find that had an optical drive slot.

[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 1 points 2 hours ago

That's fair. I have personally not bought a physical PC game in like two decades so I could just go for aesthetics. And luckily the airflow is great too.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›