mombarak wrote on 2026-02-09, 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 2026-02-09, 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...

cyclone3d wrote on Yesterday, 02:36:

keenmaster486 wrote on 2026-02-09, 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...

I like this debate about the efficient use of system resources when creating games. There a lot of games out there which are amazing and do not have absurd performance or system requirements.

In the past, from my perspective, innovative companies like Origin or Crytech were restricted by technological limitations and they tried to find creative ways around them. It was always stunning to see what they came up with and it drove every normal PC into a 110% system load state. But the games itself also worked. They were good.

Nowadays, you still have some of these very talented teams but you also have teams which just use an existing engine and try to squeeze their gaming idea into it without optimizing it in a way that it can handle it good enough. But this becomes acceptable because we almost have no system limitations anymore. I am still stunned by what a 12 core X3D AMD CPU and a RTX 5090 can create but on the other side, I do not want to attach the other side of my outlet to a nuclear power plant to make sure the system has enough power.

My preference is the first one. Limit your resources and see what you can do. It boosts creativity.

I was recently pondering how great the much maligned RTX 4060/5060 and even like a Radeon RX 6500 is compared to classic low end stuff like GF4MX or GFFX 5200. Even a current IGP can run some recent sophisticated games very well and absolutely chew up some once system killers.

If we're talking about gaming, that's one of the few realms in which high system requirements actually do make sense. I was being a little obtuse earlier about the point of this thread, sorry.

Legitimately high system requirements computing tasks that I can think of off the top of my head:

-Cutting edge gaming
-Video editing
-Software development (compile time)

There are others, I am sure. But for the vast majority of what ordinary people use computers for, the hard performance floor (given ideal software conditions) is something like a Core 2 Duo.

In my case, I want to build a filer head for use in a homelab.

The old hardware I have on hand is vulnerable to SGX vulnerabilities, Heartbleed, RowHammer, and Speculative Execution exploits. It's not an ideal choice for use on a filer head, since I kinda need to not kneecap it, because scheduled block level deduplication and compression are compute heavy tasks. (To say *NOTHING* of software defined RAID operations!)

I could care less about GPU here; the need for 'something newer', and thus the need for 'RAM that's now 500% more expensive for idiotic reasons' is where it hurts.

mombarak wrote on 2026-02-09, 19:47:

What is your position on the current situation?

I was about to replace my "modern" desktop that's still stuck in 2012 and LGA1155, which means it's not an upgrade but a complete replacement of everything, but hell no I'm not doing it now.

Thankfully I don't work using personal equipment and everything needed is provided so I have the luxury to wait and not pay ridiculous prices to browse vogons and pay bills. But yeah, I hope prices will settle somewhere reasonable sometime soon so I can get just an average PC I can justify.

keenmaster486 wrote on Yesterday, 17:20:

If we're talking about gaming, that's one of the few realms in which high system requirements actually do make sense. I was bein […]
Show full quote

If we're talking about gaming, that's one of the few realms in which high system requirements actually do make sense. I was being a little obtuse earlier about the point of this thread, sorry.

Legitimately high system requirements computing tasks that I can think of off the top of my head:

-Cutting edge gaming
-Video editing
-Software development (compile time)

There are others, I am sure. But for the vast majority of what ordinary people use computers for, the hard performance floor (given ideal software conditions) is something like a Core 2 Duo.

I like the comment. Theoretically a Windows XP or Windows 7 with the Core 2 Duo hardware would still be good, SSD is a must though, for all the everyday browsing and office stuff. If only there were no software barriers that make newer software incompatible. I use supermium on my XP C2D 3GHz system and it is great.

For most office productivity tasks, I'd agree that a core2 duo would be adequate.

The major problem today is 'RESOURCES ARE MEANT TO BE USED!' (As Nwabudike Morgan put it.) Especially as it relates to 'SALES! SALES! SALES!' Vis a vis, 'the eternal desire and promise of advertising'.

That hardware would choke and die displaying the garbage advert industry drek that is on the modern internet, and internet use is a major component of modern productivity operations.

Unless you know of a miraculous way to get that industry to accept the word 'NO' writ large with a hot branding iron across their backsides, then this problem will persist.

It's not at all unexpected that 'THE PROMISE OF MOAR MONEYZ!' (AI will REPLACE all those EXPENSIVE humans, ushering in a GOLDEN AGE of LIMITLESS PROFIT! BUILD DATACENTERS *NOW!*), is the driving force of the current debacle.

I find something like a Core 2 at 3GHz fine still as long as it also has a GPU that works with browser hardware rendering, SSD and at least 4GB RAM. I know people still chugging away on machines like this. The main problem is EOL Win10.

I put Linux Mint 22 on a notebook with a slow AMD A8-3500M and it is much snappier than with Windows. This cpu is much slower than a high end Core 2. The user seems very pleased with it.

The list of games that, despite graphics, are super entertaining is looooong.
From Dos up to Win 7 it's even hard to list them all.

C2D is enough for most, a good card like your 660 is enough.
Guides are abundantly available and you can find acceptable prices to build.

I haven't played many "newer" games, I mostly like old stuff.

If need a PC for work, with special needs, you are out of luck.
Normal stuff is fine with a C2D (I use a C2D machine with tailored browser).

swaaye wrote on Yesterday, 18:49:

I find something like a Core 2 at 3GHz fine still as long as it also has a GPU that works with browser hardware rendering, SSD and at least 4GB RAM. I know people still chugging away on machines like this. The main problem is EOL Win10.

I put Linux Mint 22 on a notebook with a slow AMD A8-3500M and it is much snappier than with Windows. This cpu is much slower than a high end Core 2. The user seems very pleased with it.

SSD + Linux distro helped many machines get back to daily use.
Pesonally I don't use internet on those old machines.

Nexxen wrote on Yesterday, 18:52:

The list of games that, despite graphics, are super entertaining is looooong. From Dos up to Win 7 it's even hard to list them a […]
Show full quote

The list of games that, despite graphics, are super entertaining is looooong.
From Dos up to Win 7 it's even hard to list them all.

C2D is enough for most, a good card like your 660 is enough.
Guides are abundantly available and you can find acceptable prices to build.

I haven't played many "newer" games, I mostly like old stuff.

If need a PC for work, with special needs, you are out of luck.
Normal stuff is fine with a C2D (I use a C2D machine with tailored browser).

swaaye wrote on Yesterday, 18:49:

I find something like a Core 2 at 3GHz fine still as long as it also has a GPU that works with browser hardware rendering, SSD and at least 4GB RAM. I know people still chugging away on machines like this. The main problem is EOL Win10.

I put Linux Mint 22 on a notebook with a slow AMD A8-3500M and it is much snappier than with Windows. This cpu is much slower than a high end Core 2. The user seems very pleased with it.

SSD + Linux distro helped many machines get back to daily use.
Pesonally I don't use internet on those old machines.

Clever / creative use of zram swap, and tmpfs for certain write-heavy things, can significantly re-energize older boxes.

But, the 'but our browser needs to be able to simultaneously transact 500 intersite cookie sessions so that advertisers can get .0001 cents of additional value, and that's real hard to do without modern feature %FOO%, so we wont support things without it anymore!'problem still reigns.