this post was submitted on 17 May 2026
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[–] CovfefeKills@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

Okay surely there is survivor bias for who ever the fuck is answering these polls but doesn't that number mean jackshit? Who spends thousands of dollars with plans to upgrade within 2-3 years? fucking less than 40% of pc gamers that is for fucking sure.

[–] Pulsar@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

An GMKtec EVO-X2 with 128GB was in my radar earlier last year, but at $3200 this is not something that I can justify buying.

[–] auzy1@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

I bought a rog ally x and it plays all the games I need.

I only play sh**ty games that don't need much CPU anyway

And steam frame I'll buy too

[–] Darkmoon_AU@lemmy.zip 19 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

This whole post seems founded on the shaky assumption that all PC gamers would be on a roughly 3 year rebuild cycle anyway...

Not in my experience.

Even my most PC enthusiast friends would only ever have been upgrading every ~5 years anyway. That makes the '40% in 3 years' an unexpectedly high number of upgraders.

My main PC rig is closer to ten years now, and no upgrade in sight. Cost of living with kids has made expensive hobbies untenable.

[–] GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk 1 points 1 day ago

Same here.
I jumped on Ryzen in 2017 when it seemed to be actually taking a step forward.
Then I've just...not needed a new CPU since then. A GPU 3 years later, but other than that, I'm trucking along nicely.

[–] arcine@jlai.lu 3 points 1 day ago

I would bite the bullet and upgrade if I thought AI wasn't a bubble, and the new prices were the new normal.

It's going to roll over and die soon. Not because it's bad ; bad technology absolutely has replaced good technology many times in the past ! Just look at streaming slowly replacing Blu-Rays.

It will fail, because it is too expensive, irremediably so.

[–] getFrog@piefed.social 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I built my first PC last November and because RAM was about 2-3 times the price that it should have been I passed on it. Now it's like 5x the price and it's not even a choice anymore, but I think I still made the right decision by not financially supporting those prices. Got 16GB of second hand SODIMM and some Sodimm to Dimm adapters and honestly the PC is fine. In my original parts list I had planned to get 128GB just to max out the board and not think about it ever again (would have been a reasonable 550€ back in September) but now I think I'll actually coast a bit longer with my 16GB. It should be fine for the next few years at least, especially since there's no overhead from Windows BS on my machine.

[–] Mistic@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Out of curiosity, is there any other reason for 128GB other than "just to max it out"?

Because if you don't actually need it, you'd get better performance with 64GB or 48GB due to being able to use higher clock speeds. (Depends on the CPU)

[–] getFrog@piefed.social 2 points 1 day ago

Nope, no other reason! I'm just getting a decent deal on PC parts when I let my employer buy them for me so I have a tendency to splurge on tech without really double-checking the specs. Can't justify that with the current RAM prices though haha

But thanks for the tip! I'll keep it in mind when I do actually decide to upgrade sometime

[–] sexy_peach@feddit.org 68 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I mean why build a pc with specs that I could have had years ago for the same price.

[–] TheBlackLounge@lemmy.zip 49 points 2 days ago (1 children)

40% of gamers: cause I didn't build it those years ago

[–] LetThereBeNick@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago

Some percentage, including me, would have built a second or third

[–] zurohki@aussie.zone 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

For a while now new hardware has been like 10% faster and also 10% more expensive, so they could have saved a lot of R&D time by continuing to manufacture everything from 2020 and added just a couple of new things to the top of the product stack.

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With an initial config on am4, I left it untouched (except from watercooling because the shit is fun) for 7 years, with a ryzen 7 5700x3d and doubling the RAM capacity (16Go to 32Go). The new ryzen died and I got a ryzen 9 5950x, I paired it with a rx 9070xt and a ventirad, and now I hope it can last for a decade. I don't even play modern demanding games (most recent on the list would be cyberpunk 2077)

[–] czl@lemmy.dbzer0.com 56 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Just 60? Everyone I know has dropped all plans for the foreseeable future. Even those building their first PC.

[–] iopq@lemmy.world 39 points 2 days ago (4 children)

The other 40% are waiting for the AI bubble to burst

[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 27 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, the hope isn't dead.

[–] BaroqueInMind@piefed.social 12 points 2 days ago

Dont worry, we gotta wait just two more decades and prices will drop.

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[–] 0ops@piefed.zip 28 points 2 days ago (2 children)

On a whim I decided to look into getting a second ssd, so I could dual boot more easily, etc. The 2 TB nvme SSD I bought over 2 years ago for $135 is now $370 🤯 Yeah nah...

[–] Dyskolos@lemmy.zip 17 points 2 days ago

Don't exaggerate that badly you piece of s...wait a second, let me check. Oh fuck. I haven't checked prices since I upgraded my main server and main gaming rig. I would now have to pay like 5000 more. After just checking some main components. But hey, the tower probably is still okay...

Fuck. This. Shit.

[–] 1984@lemmy.today 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Lol not gonna happen. Ill wait until my drives die at that price.

[–] pulsewidth@lemmy.world 44 points 2 days ago (6 children)

At this point my main PC is a 'classic car' of gaming. EVGA GTX 1070, z170 mobo, 64GB DDR4 RAM, i7 6700k.

First bitcoin made graphics cards double in price just when I was looking to upgrade my gfx, then a wider crypto wave, tarrifs, then a pandemic, then more tariffs, and then AI made everything rapidly wildly expensive.

My usual upgrade process of "waiting for prices to become reasonable around the 5-6 year mark" has proven to be a bad plan for this period..

[–] VonReposti@feddit.dk 16 points 2 days ago

I nicked myself a full PC upgrade in between pandemic and AI and couldn't have been prouder about my timing. I was rocking a GTX 670 during the crypto craze just waiting for prices to normalise. Felt like I went from the stone age to the space age when I got my 7800xt.

My primary server though... That one was due for an upgrade this spring. It was my old gaming PC, so it has seen better days.

[–] 5oap10116@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I've been waiting to update my SLI 1080s 32gb i7 from 2018 but with the new chip slots and DDR5 it only really makes sense to wholesale and build new. Now im down to a single 1080 I split the SLI off to build my wife a modest computer and because games dont really support SLI any more. Maybe i cant play new super heavy AAA games but have any of them not been shite lately?

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[–] Phantaloons@piefed.zip 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

To play all those games that aren't being made?

[–] Unboxious@ani.social 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

wdym? There are tons of awesome games being made all the time. I've really been enjoying Slay the Spire 2.

[–] Phantaloons@piefed.zip 3 points 1 day ago

I don't think anyone needs a new rig to play STS2, this decade anyway.

[–] weew@lemmy.ca 18 points 2 days ago

My 1080ti's retirement has been indefinitely postponed.

[–] EggInDisguise@lemmy.blahaj.zone 20 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I was planning on buying my wife a laptop so we can play games together. Not anymore.

I was also hoping to upgrade my RAM this year, but that's definitely not happening now.

Honestly I probably just won't be upgrading for another 5-7years.

Crazy how greed will drive off all business even after the price spike has come down.

[–] StarryPhoenix97@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

The entire tech industry has signaled its intention to abandon the consumer market for wider profit margins in AI industries, and it's really not possible to feel good about that as an informed consumer.

Nothing about this is positive. We can hope for a correction in policy, but really, it's unlikely that we will ever see lower prices again. The future envisioned by the shareholders in these companies is the death of personal computing. Even if various AI markets fail, the vision remains: a future internet that is sterilized, information that is controlled, and personal computers that are glorified cable boxes.

[–] kescusay@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Fight.

The only thing - the only thing - these fucking oligarchs care about is money. That's it. Nothing else. Not even their own lives. Money is all. So deny it to them.

Buy used computer equipment. Never new. Stop using Google. Stop using Amazon. Definitely 100% stop using ChatGPT, Claude, or any other LLM. If you feel you have to use an AI model for some reason, save up and invest in a machine capable of running small models locally.

Make the AI companies bleed. And at the same time, reward other companies that do the right thing. That want to sell something other than dumb terminals with AI wired in.

I mean, fuck, there are plenty of companies that hate this shit too, because it destroys their businesses. Not their business models, their actual fucking businesses. No game developer or PC manufacturer is any happier with these AI monsters eating all the RAM than we are. They know if it persists it'll put them out of business. It's not like Dell or HP wanted to just stop being able to sell hardware.

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[–] dan69@lemmy.world 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

When the AI shit flops and when it does bursts.. there will pc parts for everyone!! Can’t wait.

[–] Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Not really, many of the datacenters' components can't be used on PCs and many companies will go bankrupt (and won't make more). If anything, PC parts will get a modest fall.

[–] stephen01king@lemmy.zip 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

All I need and want are hard drives.

[–] entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 23 hours ago

I too hoard a great deal of data and pray for the day ServerPartDeals has actual good deals again

[–] itsworkthatwedo@sh.itjust.works 12 points 2 days ago

When I upgraded my desktop last January with all new everything I thought I was just getting ahead of tariffs...I did not foresee that memory and ssds and hdds and silicon would all explode in price. Glad I pulled the trigger when I did!

[–] 4am@lemmy.zip 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

As is by design.

Eventually you will fold and buy a tablet with cloud services because that’s it? That’s all that’s left. your pc eventually dies,but they made Linux illegal because it doesn’t do full rectal scans as federally mandated, the Google Probe uses USB-G which is a proprietary standard you can’t get without buying a new dumb terminal by the newly merged Micro-Google-Oracle-DOJ-Palantir-McDonalds, your ISP has finally banned your unauthorized device that doesn’t conform to IPv8, which is designed to make it easier to block domains at a much more fundamental address level.

Please subscribe to verification cans.

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[–] starblursd@lemmy.zip 4 points 2 days ago

On the bright side, now I can divert my small amount of extra money to more tattoos since my main expensive hobby is priced out by ai slopcenters

[–] porcoesphino@mander.xyz 11 points 2 days ago (2 children)

It's a pretty weak argument using a metric without historical numbers then claiming it means something.

It seems reasonable less people would be building a rig with the price crunch, but that survey and this article isn't making much of a case for the argument besides emotional appeal

[–] four@lemmy.zip 7 points 2 days ago

If on average a PC gamer build a PC every 5 years (which, IMO, is enough), then roughly 60% will have a PC new enough that they won't plan to build one in the next two years

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[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago (4 children)

40% seem to have disposable income to be able to afford a decent build at today’s prices. I couldn’t.

[–] Dyskolos@lemmy.zip 4 points 2 days ago (2 children)

It's not always about if one COULD. I could, but I'm also a cheapskate. And these prices are neither fair nor fun. It's just greed. So fuck them until prices go down again. If ever.

I will only upgrade if the current things catches fire or eats my food.

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I got really lucky. I bought my PC between the crypto crash, right before the AI uprising.

Buying from Costco is still relatively decent.

[–] MSids@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

Microsoft and game devs facing the reality of having to do more with the same hardware rather than speed running hardware obsolescence.

[–] akilou@sh.itjust.works 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

So 40% do? I feel like 40% of a population building a new PC every 2 years is very significant

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[–] tehn00bi@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago

Indie game devs looking around thinking, this is my chance for my potato graphics game to take over.

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