It’s 2026, I own a PC using parts up to a decade old. Its worth less than 2 weeks of minimum wage. All the games are digital, I just got 15 of them for under £80 and can backup the installer to an external drive.
I can even get a refund a few weeks later if I don’t like one of the games.
It’s 2017, I’m using a state-of-the-art PC with a Ryzen 1700X and DDR4 RAM.
It’s 2025, I’m upgrading my obsolete PC to a Ryzen 5700X3D to get a little more life out of it on the cheap, sticking with DDR4 RAM instead of upgrading to DDR5.
It’s 2033, I’m using my PC with a Ryzen 5700X3D and DRR4 RAM that is now much faster than anything that can be bought in the current market at anything approaching a reasonable price. I am desperately hoping the capacitors on my 16-year-old motherboard continue to hold out.
(In reality, I have another AM4 motherboard I could use in a pinch. It would just be inconvenient because it’s micro-ATX instead of mini-ITX and I’d have to shift my home server to something even older.)
(Also, motherboards are the one component that isn’t really going up in price.)
You could also just replace the capacitors. Normally it’s not worth doing because the time investment isn’t worth the cost of another motherboard but these days you never know what they’re going to do with pricing.
ok. but my financial nightmares. I have this laptop and can’t afford something new. I wanted to pay for a deposit for a house before the tech industry collapsed.
You can get laptops for under £200 at CEX here. Sometimes under £100. They will still run UT1999 at 60FPS. Probably 144FPS if it supports outputting that high over what ever port it has for an external display.
It’s 2026, I own a PC using parts up to a decade old. Its worth less than 2 weeks of minimum wage. All the games are digital, I just got 15 of them for under £80 and can backup the installer to an external drive.
I can even get a refund a few weeks later if I don’t like one of the games.
It’s 2017, I’m using a state-of-the-art PC with a Ryzen 1700X and DDR4 RAM.
It’s 2025, I’m upgrading my obsolete PC to a Ryzen 5700X3D to get a little more life out of it on the cheap, sticking with DDR4 RAM instead of upgrading to DDR5.
It’s 2033, I’m using my PC with a Ryzen 5700X3D and DRR4 RAM that is now much faster than anything that can be bought in the current market at anything approaching a reasonable price. I am desperately hoping the capacitors on my 16-year-old motherboard continue to hold out.
please don’t give me new financial nightmares. I’m already poor.
(In reality, I have another AM4 motherboard I could use in a pinch. It would just be inconvenient because it’s micro-ATX instead of mini-ITX and I’d have to shift my home server to something even older.)
(Also, motherboards are the one component that isn’t really going up in price.)
You could also just replace the capacitors. Normally it’s not worth doing because the time investment isn’t worth the cost of another motherboard but these days you never know what they’re going to do with pricing.
PC repair shops are back in business! Repairing motherboards worth nothing because it’s the only way to use the RAM which is worth £7500
ok. but my financial nightmares. I have this laptop and can’t afford something new. I wanted to pay for a deposit for a house before the tech industry collapsed.
You can get laptops for under £200 at CEX here. Sometimes under £100. They will still run UT1999 at 60FPS. Probably 144FPS if it supports outputting that high over what ever port it has for an external display.
We are going retro!
Aren’t motherboards fairly cheap in comparison? If it gets bad enough they may still be making DDR4 motherboards in 2033…