First it was crypto, now it's AI.

Two stupid fucking things we never wanted.

Fuck every crypto bro and every AI enthusiast.

I feel bad for people working in manufacturing for parts like cases or cooling systems. When nobody builds PCs anymore, nobody buys their products either and they go out of business for good.

This whole AI mess is killing gaming as we know it.

Switching to Linux breathed new life into my current, newest machine, built in 2019. I lost track of time, and didn't realize it had been that long, but it runs fine and does what I want it to do, so why blow money on a new machine?

The other 39% are optimistically hoping the bubble will pop within that 2 years and there will still be a market to buy from.

I have no such illusions - but a bit of me wonders if, possibly, this may drive the pc market back in the direction of its origins:

Devs were incentivised to write more efficient, leaner code because resources were expensive.

PC users focused on squeezing every. goddamn. drop. of performance out of their existing gear. Overclocking wasnt about making your 200 fps into 300 - it was about making that aging beast play something it had no right to even run.

I dont look forward to the coming days with any optimism... but maybe this whole scene needed a purging fire to foster new growth and diversity.

Or maybe we'll just purge the source of these issues. Or both. Both would be nice. I can dream.

My rig is 10y old but it doesn’t actually feel all that old thanks to Linux; I also play mostly 2d games so that probably helps. Needless to say I’m overdue for an upgrade but that prob won’t happen anytime soon now :(

It's wild, like people get into things when there is novelty and affordability and then leave when one of those goes away.

My biggest question now is, what will supplant PC building/other super high end stuff? I grew up on Halo and early CoDs, but now that I'm old and suck at video games (particularly online multiplayer), and seeing a huge shift toward battle royale and dark souls style gameplay, I felt like I was long overdue to start reading more/working out more/hiking/etc.

This box better not break anytime soon lmaooo

hopefully this wont end with pc component market drying completely so companies can force us to use their stupid remote pc crap.

I'm surprised that so many (40%) have plans to build a new PC in next two years. Especially because we are talking about PC Gamers, who are already PC Gamers. I would assume that most either do not, or upgrade instead build a new PC. From those 40% of 1.5k tomshardware readers who participated in the survey, I wonder in what state their PC are and if they HAVE to build a new PC or they just have a lot of money around and can afford it. Do they sell the old system or parts of it? Unfortunately these are unanswered at the moment.

It's not like we didn't have a near infinite amount of games available from retro 8bit games all the way to the latest and greatest. Honestly, there's enough games or there that don't require high end PCs to play.

Heck, I got a long ass list of games I bought nearly 10 years ago that I haven't ended played yet because I bought so many. On PC and Switch!

I'm good.

I'm ready to be on ye ole am4 for at least another decade..... I see no reason to upgrade any time soon. If prices crash in 27 or 28 and upgrading to am5 became financially realistic id consider it but I realistically just don't see that happening

my 1st gen is still going. it's i7 and 32gb ram so still plenty good for what i need it to do (hell, so is the older athlon next to it, ftm), even with the unsupported 'upgrade' and ancient hdd for boot and storage. i have a spare identical mb and cpu, just in case. i have better systems, i just like that one. we have a long history together and everything is right where i want, and expect, it to be.

At this rate I will end up downgrading when something breaks instead and just turn graphics down a bit.

I game on emulators and old DOS games. The most hardware intensive game I play is Oblivion with mods and OpenMW with mods. Plays just fine on a T14 Gen 3.

It's hard to believe that my PC build in 2023 was $1000 and now it is upwards of $2100 (some parts have no price available).

I got disenchanted with PC building after my first and last build. It had benefits, like being able to buy one component at a time instead of spending a bunch at once (except now it's spending a bunch many times to build). Reparability is nice too.

But my issue is that despite getting what were some of the best components at the time, I'm at a place where virtually every part needs an upgrade, so I may as well build a whole new PC, and why bother if that's the case?

If the upcoming Steam Machine is less than $1000, I am probably getting one.

I run my boxes for so long I end up having to basically build a whole new rig by the time it is obsolete thanks to socket, RAM and GPU changes. Feels like it almost defeats the purpose of rolling your own. I mostly just use my Steam Deck at this point. Tired of keeping up with all that combined with shortages.

We sold our last desktop before doing a huge move and bought a temp laptop. Now we’re unable to get a desktop because of pricing. Our last desktop cost about 750usd to build and it was pretty good specs for the time. Now the same parts would be 1500… bruh and we wanted to upgrade the whole system… seems like we’ll have to make our temporary laptop semi permanent

My big computer is knackered. It's about 10 years old now and properly starting to chug on even the newer indy games I like. But with a 16 month old toddler in the house and a crunch on cost of living upgrading I have nothing to spare on a new computer especially how much components are costing these days.

40% of PC gamers plan on building an entirely new PC in the next 2 years? That seems like a lot. I thought gamers just upgraded for like 10-15 years.

My desktop PC is already significantly more powerful than my Steam Deck, yet I game on my Steam Deck significantly more. I don't see any point in upgrading my PC when indy games that run on a potato are more fun than poorly optimized AAA slop that somehow manages the lag the fuck out of the best hardware money can buy.

My pc was 8 years old and I had already planned on upgrading so when the prices started going up I got a microcenter CPU/mobo/ram bundle that was still reasonably priced. I paid extra for the video card though. I managed to keep it under 2k buying all new parts but the same build is almost 1k more expensive just two months later.