if they're still around when the financial shell game they're playing finally comes to a stop. who am i kidding the government will bail them out.

Of course, not all the companies survive and now there’s decreased competition, so we can shove prices up a little bit further

Absolutely

You have to remember that "get that bag" is practically inherit to business. We spend a lot of time and effort making it illegal to fuck people over and do bad business stuff, but kinda-sorta since Regan the businesses have slowly been winning that battle.

That's every company

Not every company, just most. Privately owned corporations aren't legally obligated to kill long-term viability for short-term gaing like publicly traded companies are.

Many owners of privately owned corps are that dumb, but not all of them

Question is, though, who now isn't on your blacklist?

Samsung and SK Hynix never sold to consumers directly, yet seem to be avoiding flak. Micron is now joining them in that.

Who do you get that isn't that three? Almost all RAM on the market is Samsung, SK Hynix, or Micron.

On top of that, Samsung and SK Hynix were the ones that signed the OpenAI deal (OpenAI bought 40% of the world's DRAM supply and kicked off panic buying), so tbh Micron is the least responsible for the current DRAM market issues.

I only change motherboards when moving up to the next RAM format or CPU chipset. I stick with AMD due to cost and low thermals, and while their CPU generations shared the same interface I had one mobo for DDR3, one for DDR4, etc.

Can't wrap my head around constantly upgrading the mobo to be honest. Sure, they have lots of features but I haven't seen a situation where a mobo would be an upgrade worth doing without also upgrading everything else.

Yeah but it's like the gearbox. While everything's pulled apart, you may as well swap out the clutch, bearing, and flywheel too because they'll need replacing again first. Especially if better versions of them are now supported.

because youd only swap mobos for either aesthetics(expensive, not often done) at best because you choose to downsize, or because you need more pci-e I/O.

the average user doesn't use all their pci-e i/o, and the ones that do, are looking towards workstation motherboards, which is almost a completely different market from the consumer level stuff. It's a game of, you know when you need more i/o, and if you needed it, you probably would have never bought the consumer level board in the first place.

As much (well deserved) hate that Nintendo gets, they are fantastic at this. They seem to be able to make games look good on low powered systems with stylistic decisions and smart optimization/coding. They learned some pretty important things in the NES/SNES era about using tricks to squeeze performance out of the few KB/MB they had to work with.

DLSS has made devs lazy. Why bother optimizing when you can have some whiz bang AI algorithm turn a low res input into a greasy looking high res output.

This statement sounds defeatist.

I'm pretty convinced this is the play. Drive up DIY PC parts then promote thin cloud clients as a way to have a PC without paying the crazy prices that they set. It's a lot easier to tell you "it's safer for the children" and pillage every file, action, and keystroke for AI training and data brokerage. Your owned PC is a black box for them and it's their wet dream to own it for you... As a subscription of course.

5 years ago I would’ve called you insane, but with everything happening right now… it’s a distinct possibility.

RAM’s unaffordable, GPU’s will likely be harder to come by and more expensive. Microsoft is actively driving people away from Windows, Steam is launching their Steam Machine…

Here’s hoping many gamers will jump to Linux and grow that platform instead. But even then, too expensive hardware will be an issue.

We’re living in interesting times.

That is an increasingly high risk I can see, PCs just no longer exist.

same. I have over 300 games in my steam library that i've bought over the years and the vast majority of which I never launched. So now i'm going through them. combine that with finally getting retroarch/libretro all PROPERLY set up I've also got a shit ton of roms from various consoles to play also, games I couldn't afford as a kid.

Like right now I'm FINALLY playing Ocarina of Time for the first time ever and it's a blast, now I understand why people love it so much. Also started playing New Vegas and System Shock on the PC which I've owned for years and never played and both those are great too. New Vegas is REALLY fun.

Likewise. I haven't bought a game that wasn't at least a year old in a decade. Heck, right now I'm playing Psychonauts.

Same here, the Steam Deck changed my life 😆. Less AAA, more AA and indie games, especially at work.

That's alright. USB rails for a PCI slot are dirt cheap.

My eyes aren't good enough for 4k. Lol

Yeah, I had the ram, but the 6600xt was the most I could buy without having to also upgrade my PSU.

Paid under $200 for it and it punches well above the 1060 I've been using. Wanted a Radeon because they play nicer with Linux and this card is the beefiest AMD I could go without having to also buy a new PSU. Also couldn't go much nicer anyhow or I'd be creeping up on games cpu limited, so it pairs nicely with the r 5 5600x. So for me and my particular set up it made for a nicely balanced hardware and cost choice. After this it will just be time for all new hardware in a few more years.

I don't agree. The prices will rise across the board no matter where you site the memory or if it's in a gaming computer or otherwise. Renting will always be more expensive than owning because competitors must recoup the capital cost of buying and make margin at the same time.

These companies have been found guilty of collusion in other markets (lcd panels anyone?) so what you are saying while factually correct, is in fact because of the failure to address the post collusion market. A fine is paid and then business as usual. It's like a chicken vs egg argument except instead of just recognizing it doesn't matter and regulate a market properly we use it as perfect justification for doing nothing.

Problem I see with new foundries is that the profit is still going to be selling to data centers. It would take a philanthrope like Marc Cuban selling meds at cost, selling at a loss to enthusiasts.

Calling Marc Cuban a philanthrope feels icky, but he is doing a thing that I think is genuine.

Asus is a significant ODM, supplying boards for brands like HP. I'm not sure what lines/models they make today, but they are a lot bigger than just their consumer lines.

But this only works long-term with collusion. Which i don't see the current administration persecute much.