Random musings about hardware prices

[Papercut]

There's something in the air, anyone else feel it?

Seriously though, I've been thinking...take the cost of buying a decent gaming rig these days and compare it to just a couple of years ago. Prices of CPUs are very reasonable in terms of price-to-performance, and graphics cards are still quite ok too with a lot of different models to cater to your needs and budget. Hard drives are cheaper too. But the RAM prices have skyrocketed lately, as most of you would have realised.

Ok, 2 years ago you can comfortably game with 1GB of RAM which would set you back maybe US$100. And a 400W PSU, give or take, for say US$50? Look at the situation now...2GB is the "status quo" for gaming these days, and even without the RAM price rise, it's still close to double what we were paying for 1GB. It shouldn't be this way, right? Hardware is supposed to get cheaper and better (higher capacity in the case of RAM) as the years go by. And now for new builds people are having to fork out upwards of US$100 for a beefy PSU that can handle the power draw of performance parts. My Enermax PSU still costs the same now as it did 2 years ago - what happened to economies of scale and reducing costs as demand goes up?

Hope that made sense...this was brought on by helping a friend configure a new rig, looking at prices and realising that it will probably be a long time before I can afford an upgrade
Basically it seems to me like the overall cost of building a high-end PC has gone up instead of down. Perhaps after all these years, we're finally hitting a plateau?

[Chai]

Just RAM only? Are you sure?

IMO, a gaming PC has gone up really high, almost everything is extremely expensive.

Not too long ago, US300 for a high end graphics card was not very common, only the ultra high cost Voodoo5 started raising the bar. Now, people have to spend US300 for a sub high end card, and pay another $100 or more for the highest end, which outdates in 3 months.

Processors? I used to remember buying processors for less than US250 as well, only the LICH has to pay more for almost negligible performance differences. Nowadays, manufacturers are WAY smarter. Want high performance, prepare to pay more. They even make the top of the line processors unlocked just to entice the LICH enthusiasts.

And the worst of all, motherboard. Abit BH6, the ultimate enthusiast board of its time, how much did I pay for? $100? DFI LANPARTY NF4? $200. Now if you wanna buy 975X based mobos, $250 or more!

Manufacturers are just taking advantage of us. I would have upgraded to Core 2 Duo if everything was cheaper. Unfortunately, that's not the case.

[Max_87]

I miss the PIII/Celery~AXP days

[PsYkHoTiK]

Well like I said, the NF4 SLI-DR was only 140. The 180 was with all the useless junk (lan bag.) Mobo prices now are retarded. High end is ~250 (with no lan bag LOL.)

Ram prices are retarded. Everything else is SOOOO cheap....

[Chai]

I bought my LANPARTY NF4 SLI-D for RM770 thereabout. That's like $200.

[PsYkHoTiK]

I bought my SLI-DR for $172 when it was pretty recently launched (before you got yours.)

I thought that was pretty high then. Now its even higher (DFI Infinity is the same price as my Lanparty)....

[Chai]

Well my point is, it's even worse now!

[ChampionLLY]

can i say that coz improvement of technology reduces the cost of production + more ppl buy; mass produced; thus lower cost?

[PsYkHoTiK]

Originally Posted by Chai

Well my point is, it's even worse now!

No arguments there...

[PsYkHoTiK]

Originally Posted by ChampionLLY

can i say that coz improvement of technology reduces the cost of production + more ppl buy; mass produced; thus lower cost?

Well pricing is a balance between base cost and market conditions (supply and demand.)

Economics of scale drops the base cost but that doesn't mean that the benefits could be transferred to the customer. What we need is a price war on mobos/CPUs/Ram. We're already seeing that with AMD AM2s.