All open computer components are, right now, the cheapest they are likely to ever be again for the rest of your life. This is the end of open personal computing, and you should build something to ride out until the grave now.
Let’s focus solely on pricing first. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=emm_epm0_pte_nus_dpg&f=a is a good resource for that (dot gov so… grain of salt). In 1998, the “retail gasoline price” was 1.072 $/gallon. That is approximately $2.11 in 2025 dollars according to a random website. But whatever metric that site is using says 3.224 $/gallon.
Because, yes, under pure microeconomics, it is all about supply and demand. But that just isn’t reality. Instead we have prices skyrocket because of economic/geopolitical turmoil… and then The Companies use that to experiment to figure out what the new price floor should be. Prices go down, but not that much.
Now let’s talk about bubbles. Two of the biggest bubbles in the past 30 or so years have been the Dot Com Bubble and The Housing Bubble. Both were quite brutal on the economy and working professionals and that is why houses are worth jack all now and nobody has a website.
Wait… That isn’t right?
Because take the dot com bubble in particular. Yes, a LOT of web based companies were deeply stupid. But the fundamental concept of “order it online” is a very good one that, ironically, benefits more rural people more than anything else. Yes, it continues to ravage brick and mortar and contributed a lot to the destruction of “Mom and Pop” stores. But also… how often do you actually need to touch a product before you buy it? Incredibly valuable when you do, but you are likely to get MUCH better data from a youtube review than from trying to feel how clicky a button is while the sales associate keeps telling you that you need a gold plated HDMI cable to go with that stereo.
And… Amazon and Google essentially became the megacorps they are because of it.
Which is what we are expecting for The AI Bubble. Most of those “AI Assistants” are going to crash and burn because they are insanely expensive frontends to the same voice assistants we have had for closer to twenty years than not. Search engines may or may not stay in their current form. Generative AI is anyone’s guess (and mostly about legislature) but you can bet there will still be a cottage industry for sex pests.
But much of what is driving the data center boom… isn’t that. It is the kind of machine learning we were doing 10-20 years ago and is mostly about pattern matching. AKA “Big Data”. Companies will realize that they can’t fire their entire fraud investigation and cybersecurity teams. But they can very much only hire a fraction of their previous workforce and have them interpret/validate the “AI” results. Same with coding.
And, regardless, if there is an economy/world there is going to be social media and ecommerce and media. All of which benefit from lots of servers.
So I do disagree that this is the cheapest they will ever be again. But I also suspect we are looking at a baseline closer to late 2025 than 2023/2024.
The best computer is the one you have. I built a rig 3ish years ago now and found that I just don’t play the AAA games that require the cutting edge hardware often enough to justify what I spent back then (let alone today). I could have grabbed a used 10 year old machine and played all the games/run all the productivity stuff just fine with that.
All open computer components are, right now, the cheapest they are likely to ever be again for the rest of your life. This is the end of open personal computing, and you should build something to ride out until the grave now.
What nonsense. The AI bubble will burst and prices will collapse.
Yes and no.
Let’s focus solely on pricing first. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=emm_epm0_pte_nus_dpg&f=a is a good resource for that (dot gov so… grain of salt). In 1998, the “retail gasoline price” was 1.072 $/gallon. That is approximately $2.11 in 2025 dollars according to a random website. But whatever metric that site is using says 3.224 $/gallon.
Because, yes, under pure microeconomics, it is all about supply and demand. But that just isn’t reality. Instead we have prices skyrocket because of economic/geopolitical turmoil… and then The Companies use that to experiment to figure out what the new price floor should be. Prices go down, but not that much.
Now let’s talk about bubbles. Two of the biggest bubbles in the past 30 or so years have been the Dot Com Bubble and The Housing Bubble. Both were quite brutal on the economy and working professionals and that is why houses are worth jack all now and nobody has a website.
Wait… That isn’t right?
Because take the dot com bubble in particular. Yes, a LOT of web based companies were deeply stupid. But the fundamental concept of “order it online” is a very good one that, ironically, benefits more rural people more than anything else. Yes, it continues to ravage brick and mortar and contributed a lot to the destruction of “Mom and Pop” stores. But also… how often do you actually need to touch a product before you buy it? Incredibly valuable when you do, but you are likely to get MUCH better data from a youtube review than from trying to feel how clicky a button is while the sales associate keeps telling you that you need a gold plated HDMI cable to go with that stereo.
And… Amazon and Google essentially became the megacorps they are because of it.
Which is what we are expecting for The AI Bubble. Most of those “AI Assistants” are going to crash and burn because they are insanely expensive frontends to the same voice assistants we have had for closer to twenty years than not. Search engines may or may not stay in their current form. Generative AI is anyone’s guess (and mostly about legislature) but you can bet there will still be a cottage industry for sex pests.
But much of what is driving the data center boom… isn’t that. It is the kind of machine learning we were doing 10-20 years ago and is mostly about pattern matching. AKA “Big Data”. Companies will realize that they can’t fire their entire fraud investigation and cybersecurity teams. But they can very much only hire a fraction of their previous workforce and have them interpret/validate the “AI” results. Same with coding.
And, regardless, if there is an economy/world there is going to be social media and ecommerce and media. All of which benefit from lots of servers.
So I do disagree that this is the cheapest they will ever be again. But I also suspect we are looking at a baseline closer to late 2025 than 2023/2024.
The best computer is the one you have. I built a rig 3ish years ago now and found that I just don’t play the AAA games that require the cutting edge hardware often enough to justify what I spent back then (let alone today). I could have grabbed a used 10 year old machine and played all the games/run all the productivity stuff just fine with that.