PC 'price hike' coming as cost of memory soars – analysts The PC industry has ended a two-year run of declining shipments, by growing 0.3 percent in Q4 of 2023, amid a warning that the cost of components will rise this year, as will the cost of laptops and desktops. This is according to analyst Gartner's figures, but other analysts have a different view of proceedings: IDC reckons …
PC parts are vastly outliving the need to upgrade. The pace of change has slowed to a pedestrian crawl. In the 90's and 2000's there was always some gadget or expansion card to pick up. Today; motherboards have (almost) everything one could ever want... In my case I keep a SAS controller around and a fancy soundcard, but those are anything but the norm.
I've fancied a new graphics card for 4 years now. Clearly, there's no rush to swap, or I already would have. The absence of a mid-range option means it is quite pointless to upgrade. The old card is a high-end one of it's generation, still does everything even the most ardent fan could need.
I did a CPU upgrade in a lockdown boredom splurge; swapping from a 3800XT to 5950X. While clearly an enormous step up in capability, there really was no need to do so beyond "because I could". I suppose it benefits the odd compile operation from the AUR archives...
Hell, I have an ancient 6700K which is still a very, very capable system. The only bottleneck comes from PCI express 3, and M$ dumping software support. Too bad for M$ that I've ditched them.
So yeah, when the PC fans have little reason to upgrade; and many businesses are in trouble. I'd be slowing down manufacturing too, if I were in the sales game.
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Suez has been shut before; adding a couple weeks to deliveries should not be that big a deal, not really. In fact, the fact that many operators still choose to go the riskier, shorter route says that their risk-benefit analysis says "take the risk".
There is one very obvious other waterway that if interfered with would have outcomes more in line with the oil crises of the 1970s; if that goes then all hell really will break loose.
Consider what happened to US airlines around the time of Desert Storm. A complete and utter crash in public confidence in the US aviation industry; despite the fact that the domestic threat was essentially zero.
There's nothing stranger than the reactions of people...
No worries; I'm not planning to buy for another couple of years anyhow, though I am starting to acquire the collection of used parts suitable for 1080p gaming system. Not the latest and greatest technology, but a perfectly viable system. Just might put one together just so I can sell off the whole stack of used hardware as a _useful_ unit - PCs sell for a lot better than parts do around here - most people aren't into upgrading their own machines, but take them to the shops in town for repairs the should be able to do themselves in an hour.
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