>The lack of buying is taking the oxygen out of the system. These guys are cutting costs where they can, but there will come a time in your lifetime where buyin

>The lack of buying is taking the oxygen out of the system. These guys are cutting costs where they can, but there will come a time in your lifetime where buying a cost effecting "PC" class machine out of parts will be very very hard to do, they just won't have the volume. A new TV with similar smarts? Still cheap. But a desktop machine? Servers have been moving in the other direction all my life, becoming more and more like your commodity desktop. My dad worked with mainframes; when I came of age, SUN sparc was still a thing. As far as I can tell, as time goes on, the server stuff starts looking more and more like the consumer stuff. Hell, half the low-end server stuff these days has a built-in APU, and there's a lot of discussion on how we server types can use that. That said, yeah, if you doomers are right and people stop buying desktops all-together, your 3x-4x estimate on cost multipliers /for the motherboard/ isn't unreasonable. Personally? I think the reason why old computers work fine right now is that everyone who used to spend effort writing new software to make your PC seem slow is now writing new software to make your cellphone seem slow. The thing is? I think this will pass. This is the first wave of "wow, pocket computers are actually useful!" which is cool and all, but I think that we're approaching the point where we are going to run up against the fundamental limitations of the form factor. But yeah, that's the thing; until someone gets around to writing new software that makes your PC seem slow... PC makers are going to hurt. Interestingly, check out AMDs CPU roadmap: http://www.amd.com/us/press-releases/Pages/amd-unveils-2013june18.aspx http://www.amd.com/us/press-releases/Pages/amd-unveils-2013j... Looks like their low-end server chip is going to be an ARM. This is consistent with the idea that the volume (and thus the innovation) is going to be in the mobile arena. Of course, it could also just be a desperation move by AMD.