Definitely not the case. You can easily get all-in-one mini PCs for $400-500 that can play most any new game at 1080p without much issue. Thanks to all the new stuff like DLSS/FSR, you can get away with a lot more for a lot less.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Maybe they came back down, but when I looked at parts a year or so ago, the prices were extremely high. Unless you're one of the lucky few who lives anywhere near a Micro Center. There's not even one in my state, so I rely on sites like NewEgg, Amazon, and Best Buy.

I built my first PC for ~$1k in 2017, and it was moderately good. Unless something has changed and I've not noticed, I don't think I could even build that again for that price with the exact same parts.

Or maybe I'm clueless, and you can show me an alternative site that I'm unaware of.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Depends on your target. The integrated GPUs from AMD these days are very good, and can run a lot of games at 720p pretty well. Discrete GPUs have also come down in price over the last year.

What happened was the pandemic created a supply chain bottleneck combined with scalpers gathering up what supply there was. The issues were worked out by the end of that generation, but then Nvidia released the next generation with prices where they assumed people would just pay that now. That's bitten them in the ass, and there's been a lot of market correction as GPUs sit on the shelf (though probably not enough).

As usual, AMD comes out looking like the good guy by being slightly less shitty than its competition. They also had elevated prices this generation, but kept it just a bit lower. Looking good by being a smidge less bad than Intel and Nvidia is a plan that's worked for them 100% of the time every time in the past, so why change it?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

I mean, in the graphics department, despite starting out rough, Intel is looking kind of sweet if you tolerate some drivers shennanigans every now and then

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Modern games and hardware are expensive, but you can get an absolute slayer of titles from previous years for a steal. You won't run new games at the bleeding edge of graphics, but you don't need to.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

Yeah, I know that. I'm a very patient gamer, but my comment is referring to the cost of hardware. That can be somewhat offset by the lower cost of games, but you're not getting as much bang for your buck by building your own PC as you would have had in the past. Not even close!

Add to that the fact that game sales and discounts are nowhere near what they once were and that things like HumbleBundle have taken a nosedive, and it's very much a rich person's plaything, in comparison to what it was in the past. Even used gear is going for more than what one would expect.

I agree with your tips, though.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, prices went super high during the pandemic, and prices for GPUs in particular stayed high for a while due to crypto miners. They're largely back down to earth now, though.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

That's good news! They were still high last I checked, but it's been a while since I've even thought about upgrading anything.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

depend if your gpu seller is amd or nvidia

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Bought a fine used pc for relatively cheap and upgraded it over time. The CPU from 2016/17 is still mighty fine.
Also NVMe SSDs are dirt cheap nowadays, although they are more expensive than last year they now cost about as much as I paid for a crappy HDD back in 2017.

[–] Lucidlethargy 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I have no idea why you think this... In 2020 you may have had a point, but GPU prices have returned to normal after the cryptodouches destabilized the market.

I bought a gpu last week that's was just $120 (Arc A360), and it's pretty dang solid. A high end (but still affordable) GPU would be about $250 (GTX 3060).

If we're talking about matching the latest consoles, then you're looking at $340 (Radeon 6700) GPU with a $120 CPU (Ryzen 5600). I don't recommend that, but that's where the comparison starts. Throw another $60 into that and you start getting specs way above the latest generations.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Can you show me which site is giving you these prices? I'd love to be wrong!