How to survive the memory shortage crisis: a PC owner's guide
Urgh. Have you seen memory prices lately? If you somehow haven’t, make sure to look through your fingers, as they are truly terrifying. DDR5 RAM sticks are ungodly expensive, older DDR4's not much better, high VRAM graphics cards are ridiculous, and any PC hardware that includes at least one of these (which is a...
Urgh. Have you seen memory prices lately? If you somehow haven’t, make sure to look through your fingers, as they are truly terrifying. DDR5 RAM sticks are ungodly expensive, older DDR4's not much better, high VRAM graphics cards are ridiculous, and any PC hardware that includes at least one of these (which is a lot) is suffering ludicrous price hikes in turn. That includes the new Steam Machine, while handheld PCs are being stripped of affordable options, and next-gen, standalone VR headsets are unlikely to do much better.
But we’re been here before, right? We made it through the crypto-mining-induced GPU price spikes of 2018, the 2011 hard drive shortages caused by flooding in Thailand, and the pandemic-driven PC surge. Remember the Discord stock alerts? The retailer lotteries? The waiting lines for websites?
We can do this. We can weather the storm of new memory price hikes. But we don’t have to do it in silence. We don’t need to damn our enthusiasm for the PCs that play our PC games. There are ways to still upgrade and improve your rig, and its gaming prowess, even with memory prices as ridiculous as they are.
Original reporting appears on the publisher’s site.
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