I had some other thoughts for the title of this blog post:
“PC Parts Aren’t Disappearing—The Media Just Wants You to Think They Are”
“Fear Sells: How Games Media Helped Justify 100% PC Part Markups”
“Stop Paying Panic Prices: The Truth About DIY PC Costs Right Now”
“This Isn’t a Shortage—It’s a Narrative (And It’s Costing You Money)”
“From Journalism to Fearmongering: Why PC Prices Feel Out of Control”
Look. I’ve never been one to make a lot of noise about “anti-consumer”, “price-gouging”, or really just price increases in general. The market always seeks equilibrium between suppliers and buyers; you guys have heard that old saw from me a million times. No need to beat a dead horse.
What’s going on right now in DIY PC-land is pretty much a travesty. Let’s start with the games media. Quite frankly, whether it’s the PC market, console market, or just consumer electronics in general, I’ve kind of had it with the brain-rot headlines that have made up a recurring sensationalist wave these first four months of the year.
Literally every day, I see some multiple sites run a headline that “…so and so says umptyscrunch prices are likely to increase in the next x months”. About everything. SSDs. RAM. Power Supplies. Steam Machine. Project Helix. PS6.
And so what does this lazy journalism based on rumor, conjecture, speculation, gossip, and bullshit lead to? Today WCCftech ran a story discussing the current pricing of components at Microcenter. Let my accusation be clear: this egregious pricing is being enabled by the games and tech media + influencers with their nonsense. Tom’s Hardware is the only site I’ve seen (there may be more) who are running weekly price-checks of various component categories. Even as I say that I admit that I have not checked to see how valid they are, so dip there with your own cognizance. The rest of the games media are having weekend freelance bloggers run brain-dead assertions of a thing that is not happening, thereby enabling things that should not be happening.
For Microcenter, let’s walk this dog:
Microcenter => 2TB at $699
Amazon => $343.45
Microcenter => 128GB RAM kit at $4199
No one and everyone => no one needs 128GB of RAM so who give a s***?
Microcenter => 32GB of RAM at $699
Newegg => 32GB of RAM at $389
Even with the notion of there being a price premium for being able to procure locally, there is zero excuse for a 75 – 103% markup over similar-to spec’d components available from other retailers. Microcenter is doing this because they know now they can get away with it. And they know they can get away with it because of the idiotic fear-mongering going on in the games media and online. For months the media and wanna-be-relevant influencers have slaked off of the doomsday scenario that there’s nothing left and prices for components are in the 1000’s of dollars. They have also not revisited historical prices trends and depicted how RAM and SSD prices have moved over time. We’re only ten years into SSDs becoming priced to be the normalized pick for your boot drive, 5 – 7 years for capacity drives, and only 4- 6 years for picking nVME as the norm. Prior to each of those transition times, SSDs in either 2.5″ or nVME form-factor had not hit the affordability points to be the norm. And I’ve already covered the realistic view of RAM over the 30 years of past history.
I get that a lot of people who came into PC gaming when you could get 32GB of RAM for $82 are experiencing sticker shock. The does not excuse the lazy reporting, the doomsday extinction-level event story-telling, and the fabrication of a crisis that does not really exist. And of course @BRAP_Podcast just bought a perfectly performant gaming PC with an RTX 5080 for $2600 (actually I think he even got it marked down on sale).
Don’t buy into the BS. Check prices. Expect more of the games media. It’s pretty pathetic right now. But also, do not pay these ridiculous prices at Microcenter. Especially when the truth is they have plenty of stock. And yet are selling components at scalper and pirate prices.
Rounding Off Infinity 