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.
I’ll make plans to build a new PC if I win the lotto or get a better job. My rig went from everything running great maxed out to needing mods to hit 60 fps on low in new releases within the span of 3 months. But to be fair, most of those are horribly unoptimized UE5 games, which can get a significant performance boost just tweaking the Engine.ini file.
I just straight up refuse to play games running on UE5
I’m surprised that so many (40%) have plans to build a new PC in next two years. Especially because we are talking about PC Gamers, who are already PC Gamers. I would assume that most either do not, or upgrade instead build a new PC. From those 40% of 1.5k tomshardware readers who participated in the survey, I wonder in what state their PC are and if they HAVE to build a new PC or they just have a lot of money around and can afford it. Do they sell the old system or parts of it? Unfortunately these are unanswered at the moment.
I replaced my old PC only because I went from an i5 6600 to a ryzen 7800x3d and thus needed to replace the RAM as well.
Combone that with an old 4GB 960 and an older 2TB HDD and wanting another case the math was quite easy.It’s alao a quesrion how you interpret that? At what point is it a new PC vs upgrading? If you have replaced all parts from the original starting build?
Might explain the higher percentagei built a monster pc in 2024 and maxed out the RAM and CPU the motherboard could handle. New 4k monitor and a 32gb RTX video card. I think I spent about $1.5k
no way could I get that stuff for the same price. I could probably sell the parts for more
it’s still a monster and in Linux, I can tweak it just a bit more to get everything it can give.
I’m thinking that the way games have progressed in the last 5 years, there’s nothing on the horizon that says prepare for the new technology that will blow my mind
32g vram gpu for less than 2k is unlikely. A 4090 itself would be close to 2k
“Oh yeah I got the video card for free”
That’s honestly the only explanation for that build at just 1.5k. More likely they’re just a stinking liar 😅
With the specs they’ve claimed and that price, they either got much of it for free or are… yeah, straight-up lying. That price will get the case, mobo, CPU, RAM, PSU, and storage, probably. Maybe not even that much, if it’s all high-end stuff, before prices inflated. GPU and high-end monitor? Nah.
A high end monitor alone cost fourth the 2k budget. (Edit: edited)
For real, especially a few years ago. Now though, the 1440p/OLED/240hz version of my Acer Predator 27” is like 350 or less! Incredible deal.
I can currently just barely figure out how to do a 9070 (non XT), 24gb DDR5, 1TB SSD via an AOOStar Gem 12 (soldered on 8745hs, iirc) total setup for the rig, at just a bit above $1500 before tax.
Without a monitor, of course.
That’s like the absolute most bang i can figure how to squeeze out of the least bucks, and its a non tradtional setup that works via a dock/cradle and Oculink (cost of that is included).
Doing the same specs in a traditional PC just ends up being more expensive, though its debatable as to whether the approximately 10% to 15% max performance hit on the GPU that OcuLink incurs in highly demanding scenarios makes that 100% true.
So yeah, this… this person is like, hilariously out of the realm of reality.
There… is only a single, mainline, broadly available RTX GPU with 32gb VRAM.
It’s the 5090 RTX.
Which came out in January of 2025.
At an MSRP of $2,000.
With many partner models considerably exceeding that, up to as high as $5,000.
Not only is the pricing ludicrous, the timing is not possible.
The only thing in 2024 or prior I can find with 32 gb vram is basically an unofficial mod or variant called the RTX 4090 D, that never left China, or, maybe it would be something like about as hard to find as a GRE variant AMD card in the US.
I guess unless this person’s uncle works at
NintendoNvidia, or something.Outside of that, we’re talking workstation/server type GPUs, generally with even more ludicrous pricing.
This person is either very confused or very bad at lying.
Also wtf does ‘maxed out the system ram’ even mean?
You can get 128gb of sys ram into… most middle to higher tier mobos with 4 dimm slots. Many higher tier pc mobos can do 256gb.
???
I recently built new to pass my current rig to my kid who is only interested in Roblox and other smaller games. And I mean the entire rig, including the desk.
I think you may overestimate how many people build their PCs instead of buying a prebuilt.
That’s not my estimation, that is the direct result of the survey.
The question is kind of weird. I want to build a new gaming computer, but that is nothing I’m doing at current prices and I can totally live without building a new one. If that one breaks, I might reconsider. But I really do not know if there are people around who are planning to build a new computer in May 2028.
In online communities at least, people seem to be keen to stay on the cutting edge and always have the best and shiniest. Toms Hardware is going to attract this very audience.
I accept that I’m probably too far the other way on the spectrum of patient gamers…but people don’t seem to think of the utility of the item and rather stay obsessed with “10% performance gains”. For the vast majority of people, phones, laptops and computers can easily last over 5 years (sometimes 10 years depending on use case).
Although these frequent upgraders do give a good stock of items for people like me to pick up and stay in the sweetspot of positioning behind the frontline of cutting edge products on the secondhand market.
I just wish I could get my friends into ‘patient gaming’ for multiplayer stuff, rather than that 10% performance gain for the latest and greatest ‘’‘’‘AAA’‘’'. The patient gamers communities here seem a little slow for finding people who want to play the same genre, and linking the lemmy account to any other account, like steam, gog, epic, etc., just doesn’t seem kosher.
I’ve abandoned any hope of playing multiplayer games, old or new, with people I know. No friends play indie/old games. Few people play games at all. I wish there were more asynchronous games to play. Turn taking at your leisure or progressing a shared game whenever you are able. It would be so cool if Don’t Starve Together could have a persistent server with a small group and everyone could dip in or out at any time to contribute to the farming and base building.
I’d love to play don’t starve together just because I am trash at don’t starve. I think I get about three nights in and… starve.
It can be people budding into the genre. They’ve heard about how nice Steam is, and maybe play some games on a cheap laptop, but recognize a genuine desktop is the better experience.
One streamer I follow is in that situation. She streams off her PS5 and Switch, but has a donation incentive to help build her PC.
Don’t forget this market insanity started around COVID, and has basically been succeeded by consequent crises with few dips.
The typical release cadence of PC components is around 4-6 years, which requires new motherboard, CPU, and RAM.
Adding in the GPU basically results in a new build, and that’s being generous assuming no upgrades/changes to other parts like PSU and storage.My take is that a lot of these people wishing to upgrade are those who have simply been holding out since 2020 or earlier. This seems to vaguely match up with the Steam Hardware results, with a fair number of people still using RTX 3000 series or RX 6000 series, of which even the top end cards are starting to become par/outperformed by their modern mid level counterparts.
Anecdotally but several of my friends build a new PC and then slide their old one to siblings who game but don’t need high end
Heeeey, it’s me! Your sibling! You got any of that sweet sweet ddr5 ram??? Don’t hold out on me, boy!
Domated mine to the after school “day care”.
They helped me so much, I wanted to repay it in some capacityI got my friends old box the same way. I’m into games that don’t require all that much. And will also use it to play minecraft with my kids.
Minecraft? MINECRAFT??? OH GOD NO!!! YOU WOULD NEED A $4,000 TOP OF THE LINE PC!!! 512GB RAM, 8 CORE, 16 THREAD AT 20GHZ EACH!!!
Gaming is too expensive. You should sell a kid.
Well… I did upgrade mine progressively, I don’t think it still has any original parts, maybe some sata cables? I was able to get a smaller pc offspring out of this, ended up as my nephew’s gaming rig, does it count as my old rig? are both the same rig? damn computer of theseus causing philosophical problems!
It’s way easier to get rid of an entire computer second hand than it is bespoke parts that you’ve replaced, so this is what I do too. I used to be on a 4-year cadence with new PCs, but then I kept getting more and more mileage out of my machines, since graphics don’t leap forward so quickly like they used to. My current machine is 5 years old and still runs the latest games on high settings.
Yeah I found that strange too most of my gaming PCs have lasted me somewhere between 7 and 10 years. Would seem completely unnecessary for most people
I just upgrade one or two parts every 2-4 years. seems to have worked fine for over a decade. dreading when I need to do a mobo update which will include ram
I would imagine that 40% is saying that hoping for a best case scenario to occur. Prices haven’t even plateaued yet, they are still rising, so at some point regardless their enthusiasm they will be priced out of the market.
The thought that hardware prices will drop to normal levels in the next few years is just wishful thinking.
More than I expected. My theory was if only rich people can afford upgrades, video game tech stalls too or at the very least caters/scales down to commonly owned weaker hardware. Therefore I wouldn’t need to buy anything long term besides replacement parts for potential hardware failures which haven’t been common in my lived experience. We’ll see how it pans out.
My main concern is monopoly and permanent higher pricetags from many vendors going out of business as AI sucks the air out of the hobbyist room.
I didn’t update my last pc in 15 years. And I just bought a new rig in 2025.
So I’m good until 2040 when, idk, the cryptospider inteligence will drive sound card prizes to the roof or whatever.
I had plans. Those plans have been taken out back and shot.
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.
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.
I used to upgrade every two years. In the last decade though, it’s been 3-4 years, because hardware can keep up with new games and tech as they come.
I am glad I bought two PC’s in late 2024, though, before billionaires decided they were going to force people to rent PC’s for life. I should be set for a while, maybe even as long as we end up waiting for a crash.
3-5 was pretty normal for a long time, in general and for myself. But I’m sitting at 7 years now, and idk if I’ll build a new one until there’s some kind of crash in prices. Might upgrade the cpu to a 5700x3d though if AMD does actually make more of those
Just grab a 5800x3d from Facebook marketplace, no need to buy new anymore.
Yeah they all either look like a scam or cost more than they did new…
If they don’t rerelease it, I’ll probably pick up a used 5800x(t). Still a big upgrade from my 1700
Damn, around my area they’re still selling semi cheap. Like $200 cheap.
Sure, but I built my previous rig in 2012 and kept it in service up until I put together my latest one just at the end of last year. Even with the best will in the world I had absolutely no intention of building yet another new gaming computer any time in the next two years regardless of geopolitical fuckery.
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.
Devs were incentivised to write more efficient, leaner code because resources were expensive.
AI are the devs now. And efficient code is probably the last thing they are known for doing.
Don’t worry they’ll turn their datacenters into virtual PC hosting so that people who can’t afford to upgrade will have to rent the hardware…
Middleman all the things. It pains me to say that, in all likelihood, this period of time will be known for nothing but reinventing something that already exists - making a worse version of it - then enshitify.
What blows me away is while most people read dystopian stories and view them as cautionary tales… these rejects are using it as a framework.
“We finally succeeded in building the ‘Torment Nexus’, inspired by the book ‘Don’t create the Torment Nexus’.”
Dont forget how many of these twats name their companies after shit that literally screams “we are the baddies.”
Goodness who ever would have thought that “child crushers inc :)” would be crushing children?
I’ll stick with factorio if that is the case.
That plus the ever growing push for device linked personal ID on personally owned device feels like the real end goal. Governments can already snoop all web traffic. Now they want to close the gap on device level surveillance by pushing more and more people towards renting virtual devices with traceable payment methods. For people who don’t, device link to personal ID means they no longer have any of that mess of having to prove ownership or who took the action.
Removing the tinfoil hat though, I really hope this causes cloud resource cost to drop through the floor.
It was always about control. No tin foil. Just reality. When you get to these levels of disproportionate power, greed, and corruption… you need to be able to quickly “stamp out” anything that even vauguely looks like a threat.
They dont want us to communicate. Obviously. Communication leads to revolution. No secrets. No encryption. No rights. Be a good drone and keep your head down. Smile for the cameras.
Thats ezactly what they want to do, bur when that happens we must resist it. Play old game. Use legacy hardware. Participation is tantamount to acceptance.
If there are economic bubbles, I am figuring on picking up some gear on the cheap after the big companies start falling apart. For now, I am just buying stuff that aren’t fairly generic and not prone to aging. In this case, a THOR NAS desktop tower. My older THOR V2 chassis isn’t quite right for modern GPU lengths, so hopefully the THOR NAS would be able to accommodate my older hardware while permitting the new stuff.
I got about 20tb of SATA SSD and a optical drive, so I needed a tower with front bays to accommodate those. Plus, I will be trying out this newfangled “M.2” stuff with my next build for the OS & Gaming drives, which takes up further case space.
I don’t see myself upgrading my 3080Ti ever.
builds a new PC.
continues to play Half Life 2.
I started putting together a RAID, got the housing and the first drive, the plan was to buy a drive with each paycheck until I had the 4 drives I need. The first drive was like $250, arrived last week. Then I checked the price this week and the same drive is now $650.
I feel like that’d be the stats even if we didn’t have a component disruption. Do all gamers build a new machine every year? They’d be broke (said the guy who buys / builds a lot of toys).
It’s cool to phrase non-news as clickbait. 50% people think $MYTEAM will win the big game. Holy crap, that’s news!
It is still a metric of whether we’re aspiring to build a pc or not. I have been meaning to build a new PC for years. Now I have entirely shelved those plans. I wish I hadn’t procrastinated :(
