So now is not the time to start looking at gaming PC's? I can hold off for now but my system is getting really old in the tooth - a bit like me! It was memory that I was looking forward to splurging out on too - for things like video editing and the like.
Unfortunately not with gaming PCs probably being hit the hardest so far with prices way up on ram and SSDs with GPUs looking to follow at least with shortages initially. It's really difficult to know where the market is going to go because there's some expectations that the situation will calm down in 2027 to 2028 but we've seen it before when prices go high for whatever reason, they never come back down when companies can see how much more people will pay.
On the other hand, there's clearly an element of artificial price rises as well with some components and parts having steep price rises even though they're not affecting by AI datacentre demand. There's also been a lot of panic buying so there's some hope that the situation is not as grim as it looks but that's perhaps being a bit optimistic. It's possible it may get worse if there's GPU shortages but it's all guesswork, I certainly wouldn't be building at the system unless I really needed to. My main desktop PC is approaching its 7th birthday and performance is still superb but I'm getting a bit nervous about component failure (especially the graphics card) since my original plan to upgrade its platform when that happened is not viable now.
It is NOT at all. The AI industry essentially have pre-bought all stock in 2026 and 2027. Basically everything rolled off the factory for the 18months has already been bought by AI data centers.
The bargain now is actually Apple...they have the buying power and long term contracts in place that means they haven't put their price up...yet.
They're definitely not a bargain because their prices were already higher than the inflated standalone ram prices and that's before Apple have raised prices so they're only going to get worse since we know Apple have agreed to a 100% price increase for iPhone memory. To upgrade a Mac Mini from 16GB to 32GB of ram is a staggering £400 for just 16GB of memory, you can buy 32GB of high speed PC memory for under £400 which is a hugely inflated price. You can't go up to 64GB ram without upgrading to the M4 Pro which makes the cheapest option with 64GB ram £2000, I can't find any Apple without crazy pricing to get 64GB ram.
SSD prices are also much more than current PC prices, to gain an extra 256GB cost £200, going up to 1TB is £400 and 2TB is £800. With current PC prices a 2TB SSD is around £200 and 4TB for £300 so still massively cheaper. To put it into perspective just how bad these prices are for the PC parts, I bought 64GB high speed ram for my current PC for just over £200 and a 4TB SSD for £110 although the latter was an exceptional deal bought right at the dip. Furthermore the PC parts are all socketed so you can buy a lower spec now and upgrade them later with ease while the Apple parts are either soldered or proprietary with either no or limited upgrade options.
This is all just specifically comparing value but also the person above had said they wanted a gaming PC which an Apple device would not be a good choice for.
