First it was crypto, now it's AI.

Two stupid fucking things we never wanted.

Fuck every crypto bro and every AI enthusiast.

I feel bad for people working in manufacturing for parts like cases or cooling systems. When nobody builds PCs anymore, nobody buys their products either and they go out of business for good.

This whole AI mess is killing gaming as we know it.

The other 39% are optimistically hoping the bubble will pop within that 2 years and there will still be a market to buy from.

I have no such illusions - but a bit of me wonders if, possibly, this may drive the pc market back in the direction of its origins:

Devs were incentivised to write more efficient, leaner code because resources were expensive.

PC users focused on squeezing every. goddamn. drop. of performance out of their existing gear. Overclocking wasnt about making your 200 fps into 300 - it was about making that aging beast play something it had no right to even run.

I dont look forward to the coming days with any optimism... but maybe this whole scene needed a purging fire to foster new growth and diversity.

Or maybe we'll just purge the source of these issues. Or both. Both would be nice. I can dream.

hopefully this wont end with pc component market drying completely so companies can force us to use their stupid remote pc crap.

Switching to Linux breathed new life into my current, newest machine, built in 2019. I lost track of time, and didn't realize it had been that long, but it runs fine and does what I want it to do, so why blow money on a new machine?

This box better not break anytime soon lmaooo

I upgraded my 8 year rig right when Trump was elected thinking tariffs would screw me. Did not forsee AI being the bigger factor

It's not like we didn't have a near infinite amount of games available from retro 8bit games all the way to the latest and greatest. Honestly, there's enough games or there that don't require high end PCs to play.

Heck, I got a long ass list of games I bought nearly 10 years ago that I haven't ended played yet because I bought so many. On PC and Switch!

I'm good.

It's hard to believe that my PC build in 2023 was $1000 and now it is upwards of $2100 (some parts have no price available).

I run my boxes for so long I end up having to basically build a whole new rig by the time it is obsolete thanks to socket, RAM and GPU changes. Feels like it almost defeats the purpose of rolling your own. I mostly just use my Steam Deck at this point. Tired of keeping up with all that combined with shortages.

I'm rocking a 14 year old CPU (3570k), 16gb of DDR3 and a gtx1070 (non-ti).

I was so god damn stoked to build a new machine this year, only to watch first ddr5 then ddr4 soar our of my price range...

Now even the used stuff around me is jumping in price, with mobo cpu ram deals getting scooped up only for the ram to pop back up at twice the price the next day.

Fuck AI.

My rig is 10y old but it doesn’t actually feel all that old thanks to Linux; I also play mostly 2d games so that probably helps. Needless to say I’m overdue for an upgrade but that prob won’t happen anytime soon now :(

Fractal North is still the prettiest PC case I've ever seen. I'm very happy with mine.

I really want to see if the requirements for new games will go down or continue rising.

I'm ready to be on ye ole am4 for at least another decade..... I see no reason to upgrade any time soon. If prices crash in 27 or 28 and upgrading to am5 became financially realistic id consider it but I realistically just don't see that happening

My rig still runs all of my favorite 2D indie games, so I'm good.

"60% of gamers have no plans to build a computer for the foreseeable future." The unspoken part is, "and the hardware manufacturers don't care". Maybe they will after the bubble pops, or maybe not.

I just bought a mini desktop-- Ryzen 5 with 16Gb memory and 1Tb SSD. It cost me almost $500US. It probably was $100 less last year. I'm not a gamer, but I do make heavy use of 3D CAD and sometimes with large assemblies. And my old Nitro 5 and 1650 nVidia had been starting to struggle.

I do like my new little computer, with Aurora 44 installed, win11 was aborted on first boot, it's a snappy little box despite the modest specs. The downside is, there isn't enough time to make a cuppa tea while waiting on a model regen.

And who knows, I may live long enough to afford another stick of ram, or I may win the lottery someday-- assuming I buy a lottery ticket first.

At this rate I will end up downgrading when something breaks instead and just turn graphics down a bit.

Dodged the crypto gold rush twice by managing to buy my GPUs before they happened. The last hard drive purchase was more than a year ago, a 2TB Seagate to replace a damaged one. The PC I'm on now was built four years ago, and the most pricey upgrade was getting a 5700X3D.

Now I think I'll have to be more careful while I use my PC, because we're back to 1995 pricing.

In the other 40% there's the people that, like me, built a good future proof pc several years ago (mine is 10 years old) and it still plays what I like but it's showing signs of aging. One day, it will stop working.

I'm just praying it holds up for a couple more years because otherwise I'm screwed.

I know is probably not possible, but I wish a competitor manufacturer would rise during this times and when the bubble pops we would let these worms starve.

40% of PC gamers plan on building an entirely new PC in the next 2 years? That seems like a lot. I thought gamers just upgraded for like 10-15 years.

25% plan to buy this year. 40% in the next two years.

RAM prices have quadrupled since this time last year. So if only 25% as many people buy this year than last year, then the line still went up for the RAM companies.

This is a huge windfall for them, and there is absolutely zero reason for them to go back to $75/32GB DDR5 kits.

Shame that nobody is capable of restraint...

Glad I upgraded mine before all this shit started. Barring disaster it should play games for years. I don't need all the bells and whistles.

We sold our last desktop before doing a huge move and bought a temp laptop. Now we’re unable to get a desktop because of pricing. Our last desktop cost about 750usd to build and it was pretty good specs for the time. Now the same parts would be 1500… bruh and we wanted to upgrade the whole system… seems like we’ll have to make our temporary laptop semi permanent

This was supposed to be my upgrade cycle. I built our PC's in 2021, and i tend to upgrade every 5 years. Between the pricing and industry collapse, and just plain having more fun with low spec games, i don't know how long it's going until i upgrade again.

My desktop PC is already significantly more powerful than my Steam Deck, yet I game on my Steam Deck significantly more. I don't see any point in upgrading my PC when indy games that run on a potato are more fun than poorly optimized AAA slop that somehow manages the lag the fuck out of the best hardware money can buy.

I upgraded my PC just in time last year before pricing went bonkers. Stayed on my AM4 board, upgraded to 64GB DDR4, swapped my ageing 2600x to an 5950x with 32 cores, snatched a 5070 to expand my smallish VRam, upgraded storage to a total of 43TB.

I'm still in the market for 4 8-16TB HDDs, since I have a very nice NAS standing in a corner. But I will probably opt for used drives with the current prices.

Next PC upgrade is the first time in a long while I have to actually replace the whole PC, but I'll ride out this Madness first.

I game on emulators and old DOS games. The most hardware intensive game I play is Oblivion with mods and OpenMW with mods. Plays just fine on a T14 Gen 3.

I haven't really felt the need to upgrade since I first got a gaming PC. I've only ever replaced it when the last one was broken enough to not be worth trying to repair.

The funny thing is, these days maybe 85% of my time gaming is spent playing games that absolutely don't need all the processing power I have. It is nice to be able to play the occasional AAA game, but all of them have looked fine to me. I haven't really thought "damn this could look/run so much better if I spent another thousand dollars or so."

I've actually been joking with friends about the unnecessary level of detail in some of these games. I was streaming God of War Ragnarok for them and we zoomed in on Kratos' head and we joked about how some guy had to model the wrinkles on the back of his head/neck when it never matters and you only notice it when you're going out of your way to zoom in on the details.

Games have reached a level of detail that is more than enough to convey any gameplay or narrative sufficiently. There's nothing to keep pace with and I'm just hoping this one lasts long enough to avoid the price spike.

I got disenchanted with PC building after my first and last build. It had benefits, like being able to buy one component at a time instead of spending a bunch at once (except now it's spending a bunch many times to build). Reparability is nice too.

But my issue is that despite getting what were some of the best components at the time, I'm at a place where virtually every part needs an upgrade, so I may as well build a whole new PC, and why bother if that's the case?

If the upcoming Steam Machine is less than $1000, I am probably getting one.