• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Gaming hardware is impossible to afford

N

narsbars

2[H]4U
2FA
Joined
Jan 18, 2006
Messages
3,294
This is getting hard. I remember upgrading my 386 to a 40 gig HD, then a 486 to a 486DX 100 and thinking I was getting a boost. Upgrades are getting impossible. I have tried to find a used 4XXX series card to replace my 3070, or a newer AMD to replace my X570, 5900X with 64 gig. NOTHING is affordable for those without lots of toy money and not all of us have it. I bought my last rig to last and it is still doing the job but falling farther behind every month. Are we ever going to see components drop in price? My PC used to be a hobby I could pay for, a new vid card, add memory, upgrade the CPU but now I am seriously considering one of the pre=built units and hating every minute of seeing Cyberpower etc. Anyone make a suggestion on saving some cash on upgrades? I feel due to the age of my rig I have to upgrade just to prevent catastrophic failure and so I can have a functional backup.
 
AMD started making and selling the 5800X3D again. That would be a drop-in upgrade for your X570 gaming wise at $350. It's possible to find a pre built for cheap that you could rip the components out of for a custom build, just have to do some research. DDR5 prices won't be coming down anytime soon, so I would live with 32GB if you're in the market now for a 7800X3D or something. A B650E board can still be had for around $150. New RTX 5070 or RX 9070 XT can be found for around $700. Both would be a decent upgrade to your 3070. The used market isn't much better when it comes to video cards.
 
It does not really fall behind every month (that imply people are upgrading theirs system and that it is not impossible to afford if that the case), if this it for gaming, you will be fine until game targeting PS6 system become the norm would be my guess.

If you want to go the custom built road (the oem, pre-built price are not crazy... but that goes with a list of limitation of course), microcenter have possible to buy bundle pricing:
https://www.microcenter.com/product...ies-32gb-ddr5-6000-kit,-computer-build-bundle

7800x3d, 32GB DDR5-6000 kit, nice asus Board for $750, that's significantly cheaper than what it costed at launch (around $900-1000) and still close to the fastest gaming CPU around.

https://www.microcenter.com/product...-series-16gb-ddr5-6000,-computer-build-bundle
7500x3d deal at $400, is even for any era good price per gaming performance I think, not even need much of an * for today pricing crisis.
 
As mentioned above ...which is same route I have went; I just dropped in a 5800X3D and a 9070 XT recently...

And to prevent catastrophic failure; get that system on a battery backup and/or surge protector of some sort to at least give you peace of mind
 
Last edited:
a 5090 is not a normal GPU, it is a full advanced node wafer reticle sized affair.

https://www.microcenter.com/product...-oc-dual-fan-16gb-gddr6-pcie-50-graphics-card
$450 for a 9060xt 16GB is a lot, but not impossible to buy.. not that far of how much the cheapest 1060 6GB I could find when I bought one in 2018 adjusted for inflation...

a PS5 with 2 controller at costco is $650, a nice 9800x3d gaming system around $2000, gaming hardwarde is not really impossible to afford at the moment (yet)
 
TwistedMetalGear said:
Ah yes, let's just stop whining and fork over $5000 for a 5090. Because that's normal.
Click to expand...
Again, people crying over the price of hardware from nothing but baseless entitlement is a sure sign of a bellend in the drivers seat...and ignoring inflation and increased computing power.

It is the new black to be a crying muppet online...good job.
 
I agree this is a low point for the computer hardware sector, with shitty pricing on some components -- the whole AI thing makes it annoying as hell. The truth is you can get some kickass hardware for the same cost as most other hobbies out there.
 
littlegreenmenfromhome said:
Stop whining and take another look at the past.
Click to expand...

Sorry, does not even compare...

Look in the past, just look into 2025 when things were possible to buy at decent prices.....then AI hyperscaler world took off en-masse, which is why everything is 100%+ more expensive now than the same time last year.

This is not "whining" as normal prices and people wanting things for cheaper, it is being frustrated that if you wanted to build a new system right now, vs same time last year...it is out of reach for many now.
 
MrGuvernment said:
which is why everything is 100%+ more expensive now than the same time last year.
Click to expand...
Not everything, a PS5 is not, microcenter-newegg combo deals are not,

https://www.costco.com/p/-/ibuypowe...70-12gb-32gb-ram-2tb-ssd/4000449752?langId=-1
For example a 9800x3d-32GB-2TB PC with a 5070 12GB, shipped with a nice warranty and a keyboard-mouse was not $1000 last year, same if we look at the whole dell or Apple line up.

Specific very vulnerable spot buyer type price exploded, but not everything/everywhere.
 
MrGuvernment said:
Sorry, does not even compare...

Look in the past, just look into 2025 when things were possible to buy at decent prices.....then AI hyperscaler world took off en-masse, which is why everything is 100%+ more expensive now than the same time last year.

This is not "whining" as normal prices and people wanting things for cheaper, it is being frustrated that if you wanted to build a new system right now, vs same time last year...it is out of reach for many now.
Click to expand...

I look +30 years back, I do not care for whiney entitlement...cry on.
 
littlegreenmenfromhome said:
I look +30 years back, I do not care for whiney entitlement...cry on.
Click to expand...
Who gives a shit about hardware prices 30 years ago? If the price for the same RTX 5090 didn't go from $2000 a year ago to $4000 today nobody would care. The same $400 kit of memory was less than $100 a year ago. The only whining I see in here is you.
 
Vegas P11 said:
Who gives a shit about hardware prices 30 years ago? If the price for the same RTX 5090 didn't go from $2000 a year ago to $4000 today nobody would care. The same $400 kit of memory was less than $100 a year ago. The only whining I see in here is you.
Click to expand...
The OP.
Try reading the first post before posting next time.
 
It's not bad buy once a be done. Might have to settle on 4tb ssds or a few 2tb ssds. The 270k intel is a steal cases are still cheap. I'm still on my 14700k with nothing to fear. Debating weather I should setup TMP 2.0 to worried about lockups again. NY 13700k locked up like crazy no longer useable.
 
This is still better than during Covid when things were expensive + out of stock constantly - at least now they're expensive (even if more expensive), but you can still buy them.
 
LukeTbk said:
a 5090 is not a normal GPU, it is a full advanced node wafer reticle sized affair.

https://www.microcenter.com/product...-oc-dual-fan-16gb-gddr6-pcie-50-graphics-card
$450 for a 9060xt 16GB is a lot, but not impossible to buy.. not that far of how much the cheapest 1060 6GB I could find when I bought one in 2018 adjusted for inflation...

a PS5 with 2 controller at costco is $650, a nice 9800x3d gaming system around $2000, gaming hardwarde is not really impossible to afford at the moment (yet)
Click to expand...
I guess that depends on your definition of "nice"

A 9800X3D is over $400. That's nearly a quarter of the "nice PC budget of $2,000." A decent motherboard costs around $250 or so. 32GB of DDR5 RAM is around $400-500. It's about the same for a decent PCIe Gen4 M.2 SSD that's at least 2TB. We are almost at $1,500 before we even get a PSU, case or GPU. I don't consider anything less than 5070 or 9070 decent GPU. That's still north of $500. A "nice" gaming PC is solidly over $2,000 now. Some OEM prebuilt likely has substandard memory, and a cut rate motherboard. How do I know that? Well, that's how its been since the dawn of OEM computing. They cut corners everywhere they can to have specs that look good on a spec sheet while delivering the bare minimum of quality and features to get there.

The real problem that I think a lot of people on the [H]ardForum are having is that a high end PC build costs too damn much right now. This is a PC enthusiasts forum, so naturally you are going to have people that want top end builds. On that front, it's not remotely affordable and way out of line with historical pricing, even accounting for inflation. Top end motherboards are $1,300+. 64GB of RAM is going to cost you over $1,300. A 5090 is $5,500+. Even a 5080 costs over $1,300. A PSU to run it is $250+. A good high end gaming CPU is still $400+. A 4TB SSD is $1,300+. You can easily spend $10,000+ on a top end gaming rig right now. For enthusiasts who like to build high end machines, it's bullshit. I built my machine around a year and a half ago or so. If I had to duplicate it today, I wouldn't be able to do it for less than $10,000.
littlegreenmenfromhome said:
Again, people crying over the price of hardware from nothing but baseless entitlement is a sure sign of a bellend in the drivers seat...and ignoring inflation and increased computing power.

It is the new black to be a crying muppet online...good job.
Click to expand...
It's a shitty time to be an enthusiast. I know the argument here. XYZ was so much more if you account for inflation. Yes and no. While that's true on the surface, $3,000-$5,000 has been the constant number for a high end PC for the bulk of the 30 years I've been a PC enthusiast. That number has been blown out of the water since about 2020. Sure, we paid $400 or $700 for 16MB of RAM or whatever. Processors were much more expensive back in those days when factoring in inflation. Most of Intel's offerings were north of $500 on the high end. However, we had $100 motherboards that were good, PSU's weren't much more than that. We also have had many periods of cheap RAM. And at one point, a top end 3D accelerator or early GPU wasn't much more than $400. One thing that's really shifted here is where the money gets spent and how much more the costs have gone up generation over generation. It's way more than we've seen in the past.

For example, in 2018, a top end motherboard was $450 or so in the mainstream market segment. Today, ASUS has a motherboard and AIO bundle that costs $3,300 fucking dollars. ASUS' Glacial, MSI's X870E GODLIKE and GODLIKE X are $1,300+. From X470 to X570 was a massive increase alone. These increases go way beyond simple inflation, COVID-19 BS or shipping / logistics issues. It's also not just the fact that PC hardware has gone up, but that we are getting squeezed everywhere. From the price of gas to the cost of PC components, everything is more expensive than it used to be even a few years ago. To make matters even worse, we know that its not really the cost of manufacturing or distribution of the hardware that's driving prices right now. It's datacenter demands and companies shifting their businesses focus away from consumer to commercial applications.

Hardware usually depreciates in cost. Now, things are 2x and 3x the cost (or more) what it was for hardware we bought 2 years ago. Call it capitalism at its finest or call being pissed about it entitlement if you like. It's a shit time to be an enthusiast.
 
Last edited:
Dan_D said:
A 9800X3D is over $400. That's nearly a quarter of the "nice PC budget of $2,000." A decent motherboard costs around $250 or so. 32GB of DDR5 RAM is around $400-500. It's about the same for a decent PCIe Gen4 M.2 SSD that's at least 2TB. We are almost at $1,500 before we even get a PSU, case or GPU. I don't consider anything less than 5070 or 9070 decent GPU. That's still north of $500. A "nice" gaming PC is solidly over $2,000 now. Some OEM prebuilt likely has substandard memory, and a cut rate motherboard. How do I know that? Well, that's how its been since the dawn of OEM computing. They cut corners everywhere they can to have specs that look good on a spec sheet while delivering the bare minimum of quality and features to get there.
Click to expand...
https://www.costco.com/p/-/ibuypowe...70-12gb-32gb-ram-2tb-ssd/4000449752?langId=-1

yes there is downside to the OEM route for sure, but you get there supply chain, bulk purchase, memory reserve, to get more reasonable price than if you do not live near a microcenter (which offer decent bundle-pricing), Newegg bundle are not that terrible either right now.

Dan_D said:
While that's true on the surface, $3,000-$5,000 has been the constant number for a high end PC for the bulk of the 30 years I've been a PC enthusiast.
Click to expand...
Yes but $3000/5000 of 1996 money is $6000/$10,000 of today money. A p3 500mhz cpu at launch was about $1,400 in today dollar, $615 for a voodoo 2 12MB that would be a top of the line card for less than 14 months, there was a relatively small window of cheap wafer for the very high end that was not moving fast to not be that expensive in a per month it stay near the top moments.

By the way it is 100% fine to whine about superficial pitty things even as an adult playing video game at lower setting and this is the perfect place to do it, but it is still whining.

Having your computer blow out if gaming is a big part of your life and having to buy right now is something that can suck, buying stuck on a really nice 64GB 5900x system (or having to sell it at a really high price to upgrade an a reasonable price with that exchange) is not the same.
 
LukeTbk said:
https://www.costco.com/p/-/ibuypowe...70-12gb-32gb-ram-2tb-ssd/4000449752?langId=-1

yes there is downside to the OEM route for sure, but you get there supply chain, bulk purchase, memory reserve, to get more reasonable price than if you do not live near a microcenter (which offer decent bundle-pricing), Newegg bundle are not that terrible either right now.


Yes but $3000/5000 of 1996 money is $6000/$10,000 of today money. A p3 500mhz cpu at launch was about $1,400 in today dollar, $615 for a voodoo 2 12MB that would be a top of the line card for less than 14 months, there was a relatively small window of cheap wafer for the very high end that was not moving fast to not be that expensive in a per month it stay near the top moments.

By the way it is 100% fine to whine about superficial pitty things even as an adult playing video game at lower setting and this is the perfect place to do it, but it is still whining.

Having your computer blow out if gaming is a big part of your life and having to buy right now is something that can suck, buying stuck on a really nice 64GB 5900x system (or having to sell it at a really high price to upgrade an a reasonable price with that exchange) is not the same.
Click to expand...
Look, I understand that $3,000 in 1995 equates to about $6,500 today. This actually meshes with what I was saying earlier. When I built my PC back when the 5090's came out it was about $6,500 all said and done. So that's about right in line with that $3,000 number for a high end computer in 1995. However, in less than two years that same hardware costs over $10,000. That's well past normal inflation. That's supply and demand with most of the demand and supply going to AI datacenters. This primarily effects the high end hardware more than anything else, but regardless, it also means its a shit time to be an enthusiast.

It's not that a high end PC costs the equivalent of $5,000 in 2026 money. Again, it's that a $3,000 computer suddenly costs $5,000 in less than two years. Or in today's money, a $6,500 is now over $10,000. This adjustment happened in a single product cycle without the hardware changing. Let's not also forget that we were in a different place economically in the mid-1990's. We weren't squeezed by record inflation in every aspect of our lives in 1995. It makes that high end PC even more daunting than it should be.
 
Last edited:
The bright side is that hardware keeps getting faster so we're getting a lot better value (FLOPS per dollar) for our money compared to before. At least for now 😅
 
sharknice said:
The bright side is that hardware keeps getting faster so we're getting a lot better value (FLOPS per dollar) for our money compared to before. At least for now 😅
Click to expand...

I've mentioned this before elsewhere, but my HTPC running 14 year old CPU/mobo (with a newer GPU) can still 'play' the latest UE5 demanding games @ 4K - just gets CPU bottlenecked to 30FPS which then needs framegen to 'make 60' - imagine in 2012 lets say when that was new trying to say the same (even @ 30FPS) about using hardware then, from 1998, to play 2012 games - yeah right
 
narsbars said:
This is getting hard. I remember upgrading my 386 to a 40 gig HD, then a 486 to a 486DX 100 and thinking I was getting a boost. Upgrades are getting impossible. I have tried to find a used 4XXX series card to replace my 3070, or a newer AMD to replace my X570, 5900X with 64 gig. NOTHING is affordable for those without lots of toy money and not all of us have it. I bought my last rig to last and it is still doing the job but falling farther behind every month. Are we ever going to see components drop in price? My PC used to be a hobby I could pay for, a new vid card, add memory, upgrade the CPU but now I am seriously considering one of the pre=built units and hating every minute of seeing Cyberpower etc. Anyone make a suggestion on saving some cash on upgrades? I feel due to the age of my rig I have to upgrade just to prevent catastrophic failure and so I can have a functional backup.
Click to expand...
why would you put a 40GB hard drive in a 386?
Dan_D said:
I guess that depends on your definition of "nice"

A 9800X3D is over $400. That's nearly a quarter of the "nice PC budget of $2,000." A decent motherboard costs around $250 or so. 32GB of DDR5 RAM is around $400-500. It's about the same for a decent PCIe Gen4 M.2 SSD that's at least 2TB. We are almost at $1,500 before we even get a PSU, case or GPU. I don't consider anything less than 5070 or 9070 decent GPU. That's still north of $500. A "nice" gaming PC is solidly over $2,000 now. Some OEM prebuilt likely has substandard memory, and a cut rate motherboard. How do I know that? Well, that's how its been since the dawn of OEM computing. They cut corners everywhere they can to have specs that look good on a spec sheet while delivering the bare minimum of quality and features to get there.

The real problem that I think a lot of people on the [H]ardForum are having is that a high end PC build costs too damn much right now. This is a PC enthusiasts forum, so naturally you are going to have people that want top end builds. On that front, it's not remotely affordable and way out of line with historical pricing, even accounting for inflation. Top end motherboards are $1,300+. 64GB of RAM is going to cost you over $1,300. A 5090 is $5,500+. Even a 5080 costs over $1,300. A PSU to run it is $250+. A good high end gaming CPU is still $400+. A 4TB SSD is $1,300+. You can easily spend $10,000+ on a top end gaming rig right now. For enthusiasts who like to build high end machines, it's bullshit. I built my machine around a year and a half ago or so. If I had to duplicate it today, I wouldn't be able to do it for less than $10,000.

It's a shitty time to be an enthusiast. I know the argument here. XYZ was so much more if you account for inflation. Yes and no. While that's true on the surface, $3,000-$5,000 has been the constant number for a high end PC for the bulk of the 30 years I've been a PC enthusiast. That number has been blown out of the water since about 2020. Sure, we paid $400 or $700 for 16MB of RAM or whatever. Processors were much more expensive back in those days when factoring in inflation. Most of Intel's offerings were north of $500 on the high end. However, we had $100 motherboards that were good, PSU's weren't much more than that. We also have had many periods of cheap RAM. And at one point, a top end 3D accelerator or early GPU wasn't much more than $400. One thing that's really shifted here is where the money gets spent and how much more the costs have gone up generation over generation. It's way more than we've seen in the past.

For example, in 2018, a top end motherboard was $450 or so in the mainstream market segment. Today, ASUS has a motherboard and AIO bundle that costs $3,300 fucking dollars. ASUS' Glacial, MSI's X870E GODLIKE and GODLIKE X are $1,300+. From X470 to X570 was a massive increase alone. These increases go way beyond simple inflation, COVID-19 BS or shipping / logistics issues. It's also not just the fact that PC hardware has gone up, but that we are getting squeezed everywhere. From the price of gas to the cost of PC components, everything is more expensive than it used to be even a few years ago. To make matters even worse, we know that its not really the cost of manufacturing or distribution of the hardware that's driving prices right now. It's datacenter demands and companies shifting their businesses focus away from consumer to commercial applications.

Hardware usually depreciates in cost. Now, things are 2x and 3x the cost (or more) what it was for hardware we bought 2 years ago. Call it capitalism at its finest or call being pissed about it entitlement if you like. It's a shit time to be an enthusiast.
Click to expand...
My son just bought a pre-built with a 9800X3D, 5070, 32GB DDR5-6000, and a 2TB ssd for $2000. Building it myself for him would have been $1k more. Only bad part in it was the "850W" Apevia psu that I replaced with a Lian Li 1200w I got from Microcenter for $150 a few months ago.
 
littlegreenmenfromhome said:
I look +30 years back, I do not care for whiney entitlement...cry on.
Click to expand...
Talk about living in the past, only one crying is you on nostalgia apparently...

Guess I should complain about how much my first 40GB harddrive cost, and my first CRT monitor and my first stick of ram for my PIII 533 CPU...

The current pricing for memory based devices, are NOT normal and are inflated by the AI craze and companies pulling out of consumer production to move to server grade stuff.
 
narsbars said:
This is getting hard. I remember upgrading my 386 to a 40 gig HD, then a 486 to a 486DX 100 and thinking I was getting a boost. Upgrades are getting impossible. I have tried to find a used 4XXX series card to replace my 3070, or a newer AMD to replace my X570, 5900X with 64 gig. NOTHING is affordable for those without lots of toy money and not all of us have it. I bought my last rig to last and it is still doing the job but falling farther behind every month. Are we ever going to see components drop in price? My PC used to be a hobby I could pay for, a new vid card, add memory, upgrade the CPU but now I am seriously considering one of the pre=built units and hating every minute of seeing Cyberpower etc. Anyone make a suggestion on saving some cash on upgrades? I feel due to the age of my rig I have to upgrade just to prevent catastrophic failure and so I can have a functional backup.
Click to expand...
If you don't need cores for productivity:

Microcenter is selling the 5800X3D for $300. And Best Buy price matches Microcenter (I personally have price matched Microcenter pricing with Best Buy, 3 times.
2 of those instances, were for X3D CPUs. Oregon doesn't have Microcenter).

That is your best bet for a decent CPU upgrade for gaming. And will allow you to still enjoy that 64GB of RAM.
https://www.microcenter.com/product...-8-core-boxed-processor-heatsink-not-included

https://www.bestbuy.com/product/amd...esktop-processor-black/JXKQHH5Y64/sku/6683550

And Asus' "Prime" RX 9070 and 9070 XT, are $629 and $729, right now on Amazon.

9070 XT is pretty comparable to a 5070 TI, overall. and 9070 is like a 4070 TI Super.



View: https://youtu.be/9PB8pA9_Qiw?si=wmSqcbNpWAUE_uwM
 
Last edited:
MrGuvernment said:
Talk about living in the past, only one crying is you on nostalgia apparently...

Guess I should complain about how much my first 40GB harddrive cost, and my first CRT monitor and my first stick of ram for my PIII 533 CPU...

The current pricing for memory based devices, are NOT normal and are inflated by the AI craze and companies pulling out of consumer production to move to server grade stuff.
Click to expand...
You have never been able to get as much compute per $ as you can today.
The majority of people crying are crying just to cry as we see in this thread, the 5090 being picked as baseline, even when we know most of the people crying would never buy a halo GPU, they just like to complain because it is "is the new black".
 
littlegreenmenfromhome said:
You have never been able to get as much compute per $ as you can today.
Click to expand...
A ridiculously pointless metric. Flops per dollar always goes up as technology improves. As do the demands for resources and computing power. It's also a bad metric that works against you in the GPU market. We are getting less compared to the 4090 per dollar on the 5090. The 50 series in general cost more and isn't as much bang for your buck as the 40 series was. 10% uplift excluding the 5090 over the 40 series at best. In fact, the cost of the upgrade over the 4090 was a sore spot for many at its introductory price. Nevermind what they cost now, even compared to 4090's on the used market.
 
The root cause of all of this, actually, is memory pricing. And the blatant false scarcity made up by the dram makers who are holding the entire world to mercy. Almost literally.

If memory wasn't scarce, everyone could just simply make more graphics cards. AMD could, and would, just under cut nvidia everywhere. The market would re-stabilise. But unfortunately no, dram scarcity is killing it all.

CPUs and motherboards have basically stayed the same throughout all this. But don't quote me Asus's crazy top tier offerings, those aren't serious products. They're just for rich kids' pride who have no idea what they're paying for. It's just the most expensive ergo the best so they buy it blindly. These products have always been there, it's just gotten more outrageous lately as PC gaming has gotten more popular.

(p.s. Paid £300 for my 96gb CL28 ram 10 months ago, teehee)
 
spine said:
The root cause of all of this, actually, is memory pricing. And the blatant false scarcity made up by the dram makers who are holding the entire world to mercy. Almost literally.

If memory wasn't scarce, everyone could just simply make more graphics cards. AMD could, and would, just under cut nvidia everywhere. The market would re-stabilise. But unfortunately no, dram scarcity is killing it all.

CPUs and motherboards have basically stayed the same throughout all this. But don't quote me Asus's crazy top tier offerings, those aren't serious products. They're just for rich kids' pride who have no idea what they're paying for. It's just the most expensive ergo the best so they buy it blindly. These products have always been there, it's just gotten more outrageous lately as PC gaming has gotten more popular.

(p.s. Paid £300 for my 96gb CL28 ram 10 months ago, teehee)
Click to expand...
increase nand pricing and reduced wafer availability and fab capacity is also driving prices up. The root cause is the AI surge sucking up every available resource faster than the industry can supply the raw materials needed to make them.
 
littlegreenmenfromhome said:
I paid $780 for 8 MB Fast Page Mode DRAM for my 486 in 1995 so my Windows 95 would have 16 MB DRAM.

You have never been able to get so much compute for your money as today.

Stop whining and take another look at the past.
Click to expand...
I upgraded my Amiga 3000 with 12MB bringing the total to 18MB in 1993 and I think it was around $40/meg.
Was it really that much in 95 for that DRAM?

My video card was $2400 though, about what I paid for the Amiga. :eek:

I used Gemini to see what it could find,

In 1993, 12MB of ZIP RAM for an Amiga 3000 would have cost roughly $450 to $600 USD (or £450 to £600 in the UK).

How the Calculation Breaks Down​

The Amiga 3000 motherboard features 16 ZIP RAM sockets for Fast RAM, accepting 1x4 DRAM ZIP chips (usually Static Column or Page Mode, rated at 70ns or 80ns). Because ZIP chips came in 4-bit wide x 1 Megabit densities, it required two physical ZIP chips to equal 1MB of RAM:
  • To reach 12MB of RAM: You needed 24 ZIP chips.
  • Individual Chip Cost (1993): According to computer magazine advertisements from 1993 (such as Amiga World and Amazing Computing), individual 1x4 ZIP RAM chips retailed for $18 to $25 per chip (or roughly £15–£20 per chip in the UK).
  • Set Pricing: Mail-order vendors often sold ZIP chips in sets of 8 (4MB increments). A 4MB upgrade set (8 chips) was priced between $140 and $190 in 1993.

Total Estimated Cost (1993)​

  • 24 ZIP Chips (12MB): $432 to $600 USD
Note: Adjusted for inflation, $500 in 1993 is equivalent to roughly $1,100+ today. RAM prices fluctuated significantly in mid-1993 due to the major Sumitomo chemical plant explosion in Japan, which crippled global epoxy resin production and caused temporary worldwide memory shortages.


In 1995, a single 8MB 72-pin Fast Page Mode (FPM) SIMM for a 486 PC cost between $250 and $350 USD (equivalent to roughly $500 to $700 today).
The exact price depended on the time of year and specific module specs:

Key Factors in 1995 Pricing​

  • The $40/MB Standard: For much of 1994 and 1995, memory prices hovered around a strict industry baseline of roughly $35 to $45 per megabyte. Buying 8MB meant multiplying that baseline by 8.
  • Non-Parity ($250–$300) vs. Parity ($300–$350):
    • Standard consumer 486 motherboards used Non-Parity ($2\text{M} \times 32$) modules, which were slightly cheaper.
    • Higher-end workstation 486 boards required Parity ($2\text{M} \times 36$) modules for error checking, adding a 15–20% price premium.
  • Speed Ratings (70ns vs. 60ns): A 70-nanosecond (70ns) FPM SIMM was the standard for 486 systems. Faster 60ns chips commanded a slight price boost.
  • Single vs. Matched Pairs: Early 486 motherboards (with 30-pin slots) required buying 4MB SIMMs in groups of four to fill a 32-bit bank. By 1995, almost all 486 motherboards had switched to 72-pin SIMM sockets, allowing a user to drop in a single 8MB stick without needing to buy a matched pair.

The Great Memory Crash of 1996​

If you bought that same 8MB stick just one year later (in 1996), the price collapsed to under $50 to $80 USD. A massive oversupply of RAM chips, combined with the market shifting toward EDO RAM for Pentium PCs, caused 1995's sky-high FPM RAM prices to drop by over 75% in a matter of months.
 
Last edited:
Zepher said:
I upgraded my Amiga 3000 with 12MB bringing the total to 18MB in 1993 and I think it was around $40/meg.
Was it really that much in 95 for that DRAM?

My video card was $2400 though, about what I paid for the Amiga. :eek:
Click to expand...
Windows 95 drove RAM demand up a bit around the time it was released. I paid about $320 for four 1MB (30-pin SIMMs) to upgrade to 8MB. Fast page mode RAM was being phased out for EDO as well, so that would drive prices up as supply dwindled, similar to how DDR3 prices went up as DDR4 became more mainstream.


Three years later, I bought a 32MB for like $50 or $60
 
BinarySynapse said:
why would you put a 40GB hard drive in a 386?

My son just bought a pre-built with a 9800X3D, 5070, 32GB DDR5-6000, and a 2TB ssd for $2000. Building it myself for him would have been $1k more. Only bad part in it was the "850W" Apevia psu that I replaced with a Lian Li 1200w I got from Microcenter for $150 a few months ago.
Click to expand...
You are right. I got a 400 megabyte drive.
 
spine said:
The root cause of all of this, actually, is memory pricing. And the blatant false scarcity made up by the dram makers who are holding the entire world to mercy. Almost literally.
Click to expand...
The idea that dram scarcity would be blatantly false do show regardless how obvious actual real change in demand can be, that narrative will still be popular.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top