mombarak wrote on Yesterday, 19:47:

I have to admit that I do not really like the situation with all the RAM and storage price increases but somehow I am not affected by it at all. While I am playing on my P90 and a Core 2 Duo with a GTX 660, I am not even worried that it costs much if the hardware breaks. I mean sure, if my Voodoo 2 breaks, I will be sad and it will be a bit expensive but thats a fair price because its a rare piece of hardware. Socket 775 hardware however, they throw it at you for zero costs.

What is your position on the current situation?
Are you planning to build new retro projects while the modern hardware world goes crazy? My plan is to build a Thunderbird 1.3 GHz at some point with a Geforce 4 TI 4200. This was my main gaming system around the early 2000s.

Contemporary memory prices have always been (and always will be) volatile. There tends to be atricke down/knock-on effect on previous generation prices, but we are all using systems too remote for this to be an issue.

Will there be a massive buinees in desoldering DDR5 RAM chips from GPU's in about 3 years time when the AI bubble has burst and there are billions of high capcity chips lying around doing nothing? Who knows...

Socket 775 is no longer that cheap. Look at systems with DDR3 if you are looking for cheap now/collectable later...?

I'm still doing fine and started buying up high-end RAM from DDR-1 through DDR-4 a few years ago when I could find it at good prices (usually way below regular market price).

I'm kinda stuck if I want to upgrade to a platform that uses DDR5 though for the foreseeable future.

Current modern gaming rig can run what I play at generally 200+ fps at 1440p with everything maxed out so not worried about that anytime soon.

Sure, low end stuff for the different gens that use DDR3 or below are dirt-cheap, but the enthusiast level hardware is always pretty pricey.

Someone will slab their Siemens EDO sticks and get that trending eventually.

I upgraded my main gaming PC a few months before prices started going crazy. As long as nothing fails, I'll hopefully get 5+ years out of my current setup. Only thing I might need to upgrade in the mean time is my GPU.

Insofar as retro hardware, I've still got plenty to keep me busy there as well.

For some cheap but good quality gaming, grab a PlayStation 4, if you don't already have one. Games are still affordable, both digital and physical (used), and the console can be had for a reasonable price as well.

It has a huge library with some great exclusives, so you'll be set for quite a while.

I stopped buying for my homelab just before the price spike, and kinda regret not getting the head unit I need before the switches...

I stopped because I found a property I wanted to buy instead, and needed to realign finances...

Now it looks like i'll pressgang an old 7th gen i5 to be my headunit....

Not ideal.

The ideal thing would be for programmers to suddenly discover that displaying various text and images on a computer screen doesn't actually require a minimum of 16 GB of RAM. But that won't happen. Something incredibly dumb will happen instead.

I'm certainly delving deeper into retro gaming; I don't really play "new" games that much these days.

There are just so many great older games to discover and choose from.

Keeping an eye on local Facebook/Gumtree markets for cheap retro parts has also become a daily routine for me.

While I hope the modern hardware market stabilises, personally I'm set for the moment.

keenmaster486 wrote on Yesterday, 23:10:

The ideal thing would be for programmers to suddenly discover that displaying various text and images on a computer screen doesn't actually require a minimum of 16 GB of RAM. But that won't happen. Something incredibly dumb will happen instead.

There is just a bit more to it than that...