You’re not wrong. I answered in a reply to someone else but I have a gaming laptop with a decent enough GPU to play newer games. Not well, in many cases, but good enough.

It’s just that with prices of everything being so inflated again, I don’t want to pay more for older hardware than it’s worth, especially if it won’t be as significant a step up from what I’m using now.

I expanded elsewhere in this post, but basically it’s a combination of:

1. I do own a laptop I bought in the pandemic which has a 2070 mobile GPU, and between that and my PS5, I am not truly in a rush.

2. Older hardware is also being price gouged. If I do buy something, I don’t want it to be more than 1 gen old, but at current prices I’d be paying more than the new stuff goes for at MSRP.

3. I budgeted to be able to buy something good, not just good enough. Since I’m not in a rush, I’m willing to wait and keep trying to buy something closer to top-of-the-line. I can afford scalper prices, but I just refuse to support scalping out of principle.

Yep, this basically sums up my experiences a couple months ago. I’ve been telling myself since about 2016 that I would save up to go all in and build a solid gaming desktop.

But then there were floods in southeast Asia hindering supplies where I lived. No biggie, they’d recover quick.

Then crypto took off and GPUs and some other hardware tripled or quadrupled in price. No biggie, it’s a fad that will go away quick.

Then COVID destroyed production and distribution of computer hardware. No biggie, gives me time to save up more to afford these new crazy prices.

Then everyone needs GPUs for the AI craze, and prices went up even more. No biggie, I’ll just…cope?

Finally, I was at the point of “Fuck it, I’m tired of waiting. I’m buying a 5080, even if it costs as much as 2 PS5s.”

So I planned it out, made sure I had everything lined up to immediately snag one once they were available. And then day of:

• Nvidia’s store: Never had any in stock at any point.

• Microcenter: In-store purchases only, and stores were given single-digit stock while hundreds of people queued up for days.

• Newegg: Never loaded until their stock was all gone.

• Best Buy: Had a very attractive “Add to Cart” button display for a period of about 10 minutes at random intervals throughout the day, which placed me into queues that all ended with me getting kicked out after a few minutes.

• Amazon: Well, fuck Amazon, but they didn’t have any either.

So then I thought, forget Nvidia. Just because their cards are dropping earlier in the year doesn’t mean it’s them or nothing. I’ll just get an AMD card if Nvidia doesn’t have stock by then.

And, well…here we are in this article.

PC gaming is the best deal, eh?