GPU prices coming down are an indicator of the overall market sentiment around buying and building PCs with parts.
5090 are still not anywhere at MSRP though reliably. Seems like 2800 is the lowest on a shelf near me. 9070xt comfortably under 600 now though.
Memory prices are hitting the news everywhere but even at 200% or 300% of normal price you’re still saving money over buying a gaming GPU in the first 6 months of the year when GPUs were chronically sold out. 16GB is kind of tight but 32gb is only $250 for 2x16gb @ 6000mhz CL30 at microcenter right near me. If this is “200-300%” pricing then I don’t see what the big deal is.
News outlets have pointed the finger at “AI” rollouts, but we’re several years in to AI rollouts and although HBM memory used in AI cards has had elevated prices, it hasn’t affected desktop memory very much until the last couple of months. I suspect pre-emptive hoarding by commercial system builders is more to blame as companies like lenovo have mentioned having 150%+ of normal part inventory levels. Buy and hoard has been a key strategy to handling taco tariffs too for all kinds of nonperishable products all year long.
You’ve somehow gotten two downvotes, but nothing you’ve really said is incorrect.
Well, I mean, I think $250 for 32gb sys RAM is a bit ridiculous, buuuuut…
Yeah, yeah, for most GPUs, at least in the US?
You scammed yourself if you bought one late last year / early this year.
Nobody (in terms of retailers and GPU mfgers) expected the economy to fucking nuke itself after more or less Trump decided to turn a very, very shaky, almost/maybe “recovery” (really more like ‘stabilization’), into a tumbling collapse down a cliffside.
People also just arent’t spending anywhere near as much on video games, the things you use the consumer grade GPU to play.
(Expect a lot of AAA publishers/studios to either go very, very big into debt/buyouts, or just utterly collapse in 2026.)
So, the result is, for the large part… demand has cratered, retailers are sitting on too much supply, and storing shit in a warehouse indefinitely costs money, so they’ve just been ticking down prices to try and induce demand.
Consumer spending in general is collapsing, so uh… yeah, fairly good time to buy now, assuming you’re not in the ~60% of Americans who do not have $1,000 set aside for an emergency.
I did not know lenovo just straight up said they’re sitting on a 150% of regular parts inventory, but uh yeah, if the entire computer industry basicslly becomes hoarders, yeah, yeah, that’d cause a price spike in system ram alright…
It really is a simple as… system ram is modular and can go into a bunch of shit, GPU ram is already part of the board, and just generally, consumer oriented GPUs are waaaaay more niche than consumer oriented system RAM.
The tariff thing has been astounding. The amount of announcements, exceptions and cancellations has made it nearly impossible to keep up. I think we just exempted brazilian beef and some other thing? Plus I believe semiconductors still have total exemption- sure maybe a GPU has a buck of tariffs on the aluminum in it but that’s nothing lol.
I had friends looking to build computers 6 months ago and balking at GPU prices. The prices overall today are just cheaper, unless you were not buying a GPU. CPU prices have come down a tiny bit too.
GPU prices coming down are an indicator of the overall market sentiment around buying and building PCs with parts.
5090 are still not anywhere at MSRP though reliably. Seems like 2800 is the lowest on a shelf near me. 9070xt comfortably under 600 now though.
Memory prices are hitting the news everywhere but even at 200% or 300% of normal price you’re still saving money over buying a gaming GPU in the first 6 months of the year when GPUs were chronically sold out. 16GB is kind of tight but 32gb is only $250 for 2x16gb @ 6000mhz CL30 at microcenter right near me. If this is “200-300%” pricing then I don’t see what the big deal is.
News outlets have pointed the finger at “AI” rollouts, but we’re several years in to AI rollouts and although HBM memory used in AI cards has had elevated prices, it hasn’t affected desktop memory very much until the last couple of months. I suspect pre-emptive hoarding by commercial system builders is more to blame as companies like lenovo have mentioned having 150%+ of normal part inventory levels. Buy and hoard has been a key strategy to handling taco tariffs too for all kinds of nonperishable products all year long.
You’ve somehow gotten two downvotes, but nothing you’ve really said is incorrect.
Well, I mean, I think $250 for 32gb sys RAM is a bit ridiculous, buuuuut…
Yeah, yeah, for most GPUs, at least in the US?
You scammed yourself if you bought one late last year / early this year.
Nobody (in terms of retailers and GPU mfgers) expected the economy to fucking nuke itself after more or less Trump decided to turn a very, very shaky, almost/maybe “recovery” (really more like ‘stabilization’), into a tumbling collapse down a cliffside.
People also just arent’t spending anywhere near as much on video games, the things you use the consumer grade GPU to play.
(Expect a lot of AAA publishers/studios to either go very, very big into debt/buyouts, or just utterly collapse in 2026.)
So, the result is, for the large part… demand has cratered, retailers are sitting on too much supply, and storing shit in a warehouse indefinitely costs money, so they’ve just been ticking down prices to try and induce demand.
Consumer spending in general is collapsing, so uh… yeah, fairly good time to buy now, assuming you’re not in the ~60% of Americans who do not have $1,000 set aside for an emergency.
I did not know lenovo just straight up said they’re sitting on a 150% of regular parts inventory, but uh yeah, if the entire computer industry basicslly becomes hoarders, yeah, yeah, that’d cause a price spike in system ram alright…
It really is a simple as… system ram is modular and can go into a bunch of shit, GPU ram is already part of the board, and just generally, consumer oriented GPUs are waaaaay more niche than consumer oriented system RAM.
I saw the lenovo thing on slashdot. I would link the articles directly but they all have paywalls for me https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/11/24/154202/lenovo-stockpiling-pc-memory-due-to-unprecedented-ai-squeeze
The tariff thing has been astounding. The amount of announcements, exceptions and cancellations has made it nearly impossible to keep up. I think we just exempted brazilian beef and some other thing? Plus I believe semiconductors still have total exemption- sure maybe a GPU has a buck of tariffs on the aluminum in it but that’s nothing lol.
I had friends looking to build computers 6 months ago and balking at GPU prices. The prices overall today are just cheaper, unless you were not buying a GPU. CPU prices have come down a tiny bit too.
I… am an econometrician, programmer and hardcore gamer, rofl.
Yeah, watching this has been fucking insane.
I used to work for a major international logistics company, made the reports for C Suite.
I guarantee you people at my old firm were literally pulling out their hair when the de minimis exemption got annulled.
… anyway, as far as PC builds go?
Here’s the best possible bang for your buck, as far as I can tell:
Minisforum BD790i se, + RX 9070.
Put that, a 600W PSU, 32 gb sys ram, 1 or 2 TB SSD, and a big ole fan on top of the cpu, all inside an ITX lunchbox?
~$1500, and that’ll get you over 60 fps on nearly anything, at nearly any settings level, at 1440p. Most games you’ll be over 90 or 120fps.
Its more or less a Steam Machine on steroids.
… presuming you are running Linux, lol.
I was buying 64GB DDR4 kits for like $115 not long ago. I get that your example is DDR5 but still, $250 for only 32GB is quite absurd