PC run good

[ZLoth]

SSD prices have been dropping quite a lot lately. One 2TB SATA unit that I ordered in November for $131 is now going for $116.

I paid $60 for a 500GB NVMe drive around 2 years ago, but I opened PCPartPicker for a look and 1TB ones are as little as $50 now. Looks like Moore's Law is proving to be an underestimation

I think that might be more of a supply-demand thing than anything else. Everyone was buying PCs in 2020 and 2021. By now, the demand has been trickling down. Those who needed a new PC or laptop to work from home, or whoever wanted one for fun at home, got one already. Except for me, I waited until now.
[/quote]

Also, the gamers. For the past few years, the cybercurrency craze caused the price of gaming graphics cards to skyrocket to stratospheric levels and making it too expensive for the regular gamers to purchase the cards. I don't know about AMD, but this affected both the nVidia 2xxx and 3xxx series up until early 2022 when the market crashed. As a result, the graphics card manufacturers had a glut of 3xxx cards. When nVidia introduced the 4xxx series last fall, they only introduced the 4080 and 4090 cards, and then only at inflated MSRP pricing during the holiday season in order to clear out the 3xxx inventory. I've been holding off on replacing my 1080 card with a 4080 card until the prices drop.

[JoePCool14]

Also, the gamers. For the past few years, the cybercurrency craze caused the price of gaming graphics cards to skyrocket to stratospheric levels and making it too expensive for the regular gamers to purchase the cards. I don't know about AMD, but this affected both the nVidia 2xxx and 3xxx series up until early 2022 when the market crashed. As a result, the graphics card manufacturers had a glut of 3xxx cards. When nVidia introduced the 4xxx series last fall, they only introduced the 4080 and 4090 cards, and then only at inflated MSRP pricing during the holiday season in order to clear out the 3xxx inventory. I've been holding off on replacing my 1080 card with a 4080 card until the prices drop.

Bingo. That's the other big reason graphics cards have finally come down in price.

Overall, I'd say now is the right time to be making upgrades to your machine (or a brand new one). If you have the money available, of course thanks to our wonderful inflation.

[Bruce]

I have hundreds of open Chrome tabs on my laptop and desktop (a symptom of too many concurrent research projects and no desire to close them out). Might need to upgrade my RAM, but luckily things aren't too hard on my poor little PCs.