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Modern hardware prices ?

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Reply 20 of 26, by Intel486dx33

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buckeye wrote on 2020-06-19, 14:52:

It really does suck right now as far as building a new system or upgrading the one I have. Even looked at a i7 3770k to replace
my i3 but the prices for those are about what you'd pay for a new Ryzen chip. Making a trip to Ohio shortly and the Microcenter
there has some x570 boards in stock, so keeping my fingers crossed.

In California we use to have Fry’s electronics stores for computer stuff but now they closed allot of stores and other are empty.
The only computer stores left in California are the Apple stores and Best Buy.

Reply 22 of 26, by Stiletto

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imi wrote on 2020-06-19, 15:18:

I'm from europe and I found at least one microcenter in california :p
and a quick google search leads me to many others.

Microcenter is amazing. I call stores like that "the promised land" - packed with computer gear and the size of a Walmart Superstore! My first time in one, I got a bit overwhelmed.

From the stories I've heard about Fry's, the experience is much the same thing. So I consider Microcenter to be somewhat like the East Coast version of Fry's, but it's true that Microcenter spread throughout the United States.

The only difference: Fry's sold some appliances too. And they sold a LOT of electronics components too (transistors, capacitors, breadboards, wiring, etc.). Microcenter doesn't do that usually.

So Fry's was kinda like Best Buy + Radio Shack + Microcenter. I understand why Microcenter isn't the same, but at least they're a brick-and-mortar store that's an improvement over Best Buy.

My regional Microcenter (about a 90 minute drive from me) would often price their CPUs competitively with even Amazon. But of course, once you're in the door, you'd find a reason to spend money on things where their profit margin was much higher...

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto

Reply 23 of 26, by wiretap

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A lot of Microcenter locations are now making a DIY/maker section. The one by my house took out their book library area and has now dedicated it to Raspberry Pi, Arduino, Nvidia Jetson, Intel Edison, PCB making and breadboarding, robotics, IOT, 3d printing, etc. There's quite a selection of circuit components to build a wide variety of projects.

My Github
Circuit Board Repair Manuals

Reply 24 of 26, by sf78

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Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-06-16, 20:32:
Supply and demand ? The Prices of modern computer components has gone threw the roof in the last month. AMD B450 mother which on […]
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Supply and demand ?
The Prices of modern computer components has gone threw the roof in the last month.
AMD B450 mother which once sold for $89 is now $200
AMD Radeon 7 graphics card which once sold for $500 are now $1000 if you can find one.

Probably the import/export tax wars you guys are playing with the Chinese. I checked the local prices and they were $139 and $780. Still pretty steep if you ask me.

Reply 25 of 26, by shamino

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Fry's has become sad. At least around here, the store still exists but there's nothing in it. The company still says they're in business, but it's hard to believe. I'm half expecting hobos to start moving in while the lights are still on.
I used to sometimes shop for some electronic components there, but I noticed that the component section started to shrink and get moved, and they stopped restocking anything. I stopped bothering when I had a couple disappointing shopping trips. Ordering online isn't as much fun but at least they have stuff.
A few years ago Fry's electronics section was like Radio Shack might have been in the 1970s or 80s. Now they're rapidly becoming as useless as Radio Shack was in the 2000s.
Fry's started in the Silicon Valley catering to electronics engineers and the booming PC industry. Now they sell dishwashers. Or maybe nothing at all, I haven't checked in a while.

A relative recently built a hackintosh after his work got shut down by the virus. He needed it to keep up with video editing jobs he started getting. He had some trouble finding the parts available to buy, so I'm guessing prices could have been higher as a result. It was still a lot cheaper than an equivalent "real" Mac, and I haven't heard of any issues with it yet.

I don't keep up with the latest prices personally. I still use 6-10 year old hardware, and I don't keep up with the latest games other than some occasional undemanding "indie" type games. The requirement of modern PCs to run Windows 10, and the annoyance of UEFI that I've thus far avoided having to live with, have both deterred me from taking any interest in a new PC that I don't need.
A few years from now maybe I'll upgrade to something a few years newer, but it won't be new.
I bought a new laptop in 2018, but it was one of the last ones that could be coerced into running Windows 7, and that's what I did with it.

It's interesting to me how ATIAMD and nVidia have lost the market segmentation they used to maintain between gaming and professional video cards. Gaming cards are routinely used for profitable ventures now, which is the biggest reason their prices went crazy a few years ago.
People used to complain about the feature nerfing that kept gaming cards from being used to make money, but that strategy did serve a purpose. It broadened the market for a given chip design, improving economy of scale while still protecting the higher prices that professionals were willing to pay for a fully-enabled card.
When everybody uses the same cards, the prices converge somewhere in between, float further upward as economy of scale is lost, and casual gamers start buying Playstations.