I think the parent was predicting RAM, HDs & GPUs will become more expensive as more and more people buy off the shelf non-upgradable hardware. Without a large

I think the parent was predicting RAM, HDs & GPUs will become more expensive as more and more people buy off the shelf non-upgradable hardware. Without a large base to spread costs over, it will become a more and more specialised field. Both Intel & AMD are moving towards not selling individual CPUs and instead having them built into the main board, and I imagine that after that RAM will become built in as well. GPUs are disappearing from the low end (onboard is getting pretty good) and if Intel succeed with Xeon Phi cards, thats going to start splitting the HPC market away from GPUs. Without the low end to get rid of older stock and increase the yield, I could very well come that Nvidia and AMD aren't able to keep the R&D dollars in GPUs. Component manufacturers will start exclusively targeting consumer electronic companies, and the Off the shelf market may find that it is forced to pay premium prices, further reducing the number of people who are participating. Unfortunately consolidation is a sign of a maturing market, with most people being happy with an off the shelf system (i.e. most people even on HN are happy with a macbook pro / air and its limited upgradability). A quad core laptop, 8gb of ram and 256gb SSD is suitable for most people, especially if they have a way of storing another 1tb of rarely used content (external hdd, NAS, online storage). They have been available for the past 3 years, and we are starting to get to the stage where they will likely be suitable for the next 3 as well. It will be a shame as the days of building cheap consumer grade servers for home use will be behind us, as will High performance workstations for 1/3rd of cost of Dell / HP / whoever.