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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 3 months ago by to c/games@lemmy.world
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[–] 12 points 3 months ago (1 child)

"60% of gamers have no plans to build a computer for the foreseeable future." The unspoken part is, "and the hardware manufacturers don't care". Maybe they will after the bubble pops, or maybe not.

I just bought a mini desktop-- Ryzen 5 with 16Gb memory and 1Tb SSD. It cost me almost $500US. It probably was $100 less last year. I'm not a gamer, but I do make heavy use of 3D CAD and sometimes with large assemblies. And my old Nitro 5 and 1650 nVidia had been starting to struggle.

I do like my new little computer, with Aurora 44 installed, win11 was aborted on first boot, it's a snappy little box despite the modest specs. The downside is, there isn't enough time to make a cuppa tea while waiting on a model regen.

And who knows, I may live long enough to afford another stick of ram, or I may win the lottery someday-- assuming I buy a lottery ticket first.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    “60% of gamers have no plans to build a computer for the foreseeable future.” The unspoken part is, “and the hardware manufacturers don’t care”. Maybe they will after the bubble pops, or maybe not.

    The ones building consumer hardware probably care. There's only 3 major DRAM manufacturers, but several companies that sell RAM sticks. Those guys aren't gonna be having fun. AMD, nVidia and Intel are making out like bandits from the GPU sales, but the AIBs are most definitely not, since you don't really buy a Sapphire or Gigabyte card for your data center, it'll be direct from nVidia/AMD/Intel for hyperscalers and everyone else buys a complete server from someone like HP or Dell generally.

    There are like 10 companies making out big on hardware for AI, but dozens of companies that will be hit hard.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    And don't forget all the suppliers of the other parts that don't have any business with datacenters: motherboards makers (not sure they got anything), case makers, power supply makers, peripherals makers, etc.

    All of the ecosystem could go down if the bubble lasts long enough.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    Oh, the consumer companies care. But they currently don't matter anymore that we do. And let's be honest, the if and when this AI bubble does pop and all the data centers have closed. The prices will drop enough for consumers to eat up the sudden surplus as if a dam broke because it will "feel cheap and a bargain". There is no lose-lose here for DRAM manufacturers because consumers ain't that bright.

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