[Gamers Nexus] Death of affordable computing | Tariffs impact and investigation
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from exu@feditown.com to technology@lemmy.world on 23 Apr 15:52
https://feditown.com/post/1260782
from exu@feditown.com to technology@lemmy.world on 23 Apr 15:52
https://feditown.com/post/1260782
cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/28611045
gamers nexus just dropped a 3 hour video where they talk to various companies involved in the consumer PC space, some of whom really open up about their costs and economics and how operating in america just isnt feasible under the current tariffs
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I do not envy anyone who is trying to upgrade an aging PC. Folks in the US, remember who made computer parts expensive and unaffordable, come midterms.
I’m glad I did so just before Trump got elected again. I’m also glad I got a GPU when I did, despite the ridiculous cost.
Built a gaming PC last year and a mini computer arrived last month riiiiight before tariffs kicked in. I think I’m good for the next 4 years at least. My daily driver laptop was built in 2011 so I’m used to hanging onto tech for a while!
What are the specs of the 2011 laptop?
Ah! It’s a 2012! I was off a tad.
Anyways, it’s a Mac Pro 2.3Ghz i7, 16G ram, 2TB drive, with an internal bluray drive.
Had certainly served me well over the decade.
I’m almost exclusively using tech from before the pandemic (desktop from 2019 being the oldest) and it’s such a blessing not having the time to keep up with new games. I’m convinced I won’t need more powerful computers before 2030.
I was dumb enough to get a new Samsung phone last time I needed a phone so the battery will likely be toast long before that, but in terms of power my old Samsung S9 (2018) is still plenty.
It’s wild to me that gamers are still expected to upgrade their rig every other year or even sooner.
So glad I built my 5800X3D/7900XTX system when I did. It’s got plenty of horsepower for the next several years for my usage.
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Kinda to glad I was able to move up my plans to build a new PC right when I heard we actually went through with the tariff plan.
Bloody hell, this is a damn documentary.
Somehow everything will become more expensive in Europe too
And somehow those prices won’t really drop when the tarriffs are quietly removed.
I’m looking at you, energy prices.
Watch the Louis Rossman segment of the video, where he actually makes a pretty good point about why the price doesn’t go back down: youtu.be/1W_mSOS1Qts?t=5774
Fascinating perspective, I hadn’t considered the business confidence angle but the metaphor of the body storing more energy from a feast after starvation was great
Exactly. Uncertainty leads to higher prices, because businesses need to weather potential higher costs to them. Protectionism leads to higher prices, because it cuts out foreign competition, and competition is what leads to lower prices.
Louis Rossmann is 100% correct here IMO.
Louis part alone needs to be extracted out as a separate one. Interesting.
I’m still only a little over halfway through the documentary, but here are the main new things I’ve learned so far:
Even if all the uncertainty and instability stops right now (which it won’t, short of Trump being removed from office entirely), we are going to be absolutely fucked in 3-6 months not only with higher prices, but probably also outright shortages just because every business will have a big gap in their procurement pipeline due to the couple of weeks of uncertainty that already happened. And it’s not just going to be computer components; it’s going to be consumer goods of every kind.
Everything about this seems almost designed to murder small businesses.
Those with enough capital backing, resources and funds can take the hit, maybe cut some expenses, shedding crocodile tears about how terrible the economic impact of this trade war has affected them while dispassionately watching scores of no-longer-employees pack their things and try to figure out how to tell their kids that the promised trip next month they’d been looking forward to all year is cancelled.
Edit: This might have been ambiguous. I was trying to highlight how big corporations can survive by doing what big business does to protect the bottom line. Small businesses, obviously, can’t do that.
Kind of splitting hairs, but a company that can let go of “scores” of employees and still exist is not a small business.
That was my point, actually, expanding on the previous point of the policy being designed to kill small businesses. The big corps can do that, pretending to be ever so regretful about the firings, while small ones face insolvency.
I just shelled out to upgrade my 9 year old PC. Upgraded from an rtx 1060 to 4060. My current i5 is like 9400F and now I am upgrading to a 13400f. I’ve been wanting to and holding off for a while, but if things are going to get more scarce and more expensive, might as well do it now while I have money to spend.
Here’s a (well) written article on the subject from the same publisher
Wtf is that website? Why there are no ads at all, the article is well written without evident use of a LLM and it’s extremely thorough in writing? Without even a pause “article continues in the next ad-ridden page”. I didn’t know that it was technically possible to make websites like that
It’s amazing what you can accomplish when not being greedy.
Aka, Gamers Nexus :)
I was going to wait until the 2030s to upgrade my 7700X to whatever is the fastest CPU once the AM5 platform is dead, but now I’m thinking that maybe I should just get a 9950X3D now and ride out this platform until the 2040s.
You and me both
Great video. Steve keeps doing the good journalistic work.
Death of affordable anything.
And also freedom, democracy, privacy, etc.