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I hung on to my 15 (?) year-old Intel motherboard, CPU, and 16 GBs of RAM; mostly because of e-waste guilt. I cannot believe this has value but here we are. I

I hung on to my 15 (?) year-old Intel motherboard, CPU, and 16 GBs of RAM; mostly because of e-waste guilt. I cannot believe this has value but here we are. I also wish I built a new gaming rig during the summer last year.

yurishimo 10mo ago
Prices will come back down. That’s the beauty of pc gaming.
- nirav72 10mo ago
  PC gaming is a small single digit percentage of the total volatile memory market. Neither Samsung or micron or Hynix currently have any incentives to increase production to address the shortage and lowering prices for that segment of the market. It’s just not a money maker for them.
  - yurishimo 9mo ago
    That doesn't mean that the price will never return to "normal". All three companies have new fabs being built in America and Europe right now, but they won't be online for a couple of years. Also, if demand for AI chips continues to be sky high for years and year, the memory that is being developed now will eventually be phased out for new standards (DDR6/7/8???) and the DDR5 from existing products will be stripped and resold by other companies. Also, if demand continues to stay high, then new companies will enter the market to cut off a slice of that monopoly pie and drive down prices. Supply and demand dictate that prices must go down if supply increases. Personally, I think the demand will drop off a cliff if/when the AI bubble pops, but we don't know when that will happen. Until then, everyone can enjoy their Steam backlog and wait it out :)
rwyinuse 10mo ago
Almost any working PC has some value. I've sold nearly 20 year old Intel Core2Duo systems, old 1TB hard drives and lots of other old components for about 10 - 20 dollars each. My primary gaming PC is from 2011.
marak830 10mo ago
I'm in the same boat, almost pulled the trigger 8 months ago to spend 4K on a powerful new system (with 128GB ram) .... boy am i kicking myself now.

yurishimo 10mo ago

Prices will come back down. That’s the beauty of pc gaming.

nirav72 10mo ago
PC gaming is a small single digit percentage of the total volatile memory market. Neither Samsung or micron or Hynix currently have any incentives to increase production to address the shortage and lowering prices for that segment of the market. It’s just not a money maker for them.
- yurishimo 9mo ago
  That doesn't mean that the price will never return to "normal". All three companies have new fabs being built in America and Europe right now, but they won't be online for a couple of years. Also, if demand for AI chips continues to be sky high for years and year, the memory that is being developed now will eventually be phased out for new standards (DDR6/7/8???) and the DDR5 from existing products will be stripped and resold by other companies. Also, if demand continues to stay high, then new companies will enter the market to cut off a slice of that monopoly pie and drive down prices. Supply and demand dictate that prices must go down if supply increases. Personally, I think the demand will drop off a cliff if/when the AI bubble pops, but we don't know when that will happen. Until then, everyone can enjoy their Steam backlog and wait it out :)

rwyinuse 10mo ago

Almost any working PC has some value. I've sold nearly 20 year old Intel Core2Duo systems, old 1TB hard drives and lots of other old components for about 10 - 20 dollars each. My primary gaming PC is from 2011.

marak830 10mo ago

I'm in the same boat, almost pulled the trigger 8 months ago to spend 4K on a powerful new system (with 128GB ram) .... boy am i kicking myself now.