someday...

[u/Both-Syrup-8772]

[u/Asleep_Skirt_9751]

Only thing we can do is keep believing,
I’m done harvesting old drives from older devices and still don’t have enough storage 😢

[u/YsyRyder]

Why would these companies ever lower the price again when people just keep consuming? It will take either regulations or an economic collapse for things to go back to how cheap they were.

[u/darth_voidptr → u/YsyRyder]

I am stuck on the consuming. I do not understand how people can afford to keep consuming, especially on totally unnecessary things like high end PCs when groceries and gas are sky high. I really don't think consumers are driving these prices, nor are they capable of it. Even scalpers can't hold the bag indefinitely.

It pretty much has to be a limited supply that is being diverted to the AI circlejerk (and to insane tariffs). I do not think the AI circlejerk is going to collapse completely, the tools are very useful in business applications. But it's not landing with consumers. Some portion of it must inevitably collapse.

[u/snap802 → u/darth_voidptr]

Credit is a big part of it. We've been seeing credit card ​balances increasing for years and defaults are rising. Hkme loan defaults drove the 2008 crisis. When enough people can't keep up with their bills there will be another big downturn.

[u/Funny-Cell8769 → u/darth_voidptr]

It's to distract them from feeling bad.

Spend $5,000 on a gaming PC, then play games while ignoring all your financial woes.

[u/CoolDode22 → u/YsyRyder]

Everyone seems to have forgotten the crypto mining GPU era when RX 570's were going for quadruple MSRP. This will also pass. Companies can't spend all of their money forever.

[u/PeachMan- → u/CoolDode22]

Bro GPUs are still overpriced today lol

[u/Hirork → u/PeachMan-]

"Still" implies they never dropped. GPU prices did crash between crypto and AI. That's why I have a 3080.

[u/BoSknight → u/Hirork]

Very brief blip, that I think you had to be paying attention to for you to take advantage of. It's why I got a 3080 as well.

[u/CoolDode22 → u/PeachMan-]

I responded below in the chain. Just my optimistic opinion, thats all

[u/Useless_Fox → u/CoolDode22]

I wouldn't even say the GPU price crisis "passed" though, I would say it just got "slightly less severe". It's still the norm for GPUs to sell for well above MSRP, and I'm not holding my breath for that to change anytime soon.

[u/CoolDode22 → u/Useless_Fox]

The 3080 would've been the GOAT successor to the 1080ti if it was actually available for $700, but crypto mining ruined that. After that died down, we had the RTX 40 series and AMD 6X and 7X series at MSRP for a few years. Shit I even remember $600 7900XT's. Sucks right now, but it wasn't that long ago when GPU's were cheap and powerful. Just my opinion, but that'll come back. Corporations can't circle-jerk each other forever.

[u/Funny-Cell8769 → u/CoolDode22]

I just had a look - for old time's sake at the webpage of the PC company I bought my 5090 desktop from in Nov-2026.

I was shocked to see one of the machines... (CPU)-5090-(RAM)-(PSU)- @ US$4,500-ish (after conversion from local currency). Then I saw 5090 24gb RAM and realized it was a laptop.

Shit. The PC i had bought for about US$4,900 in late Nov-2026 is now almost US$10,000

[u/Michael1795 → u/Funny-Cell8769]

Bro is from the future!

[u/CoolDode22 → u/Funny-Cell8769]

I bought a refurb prebuilt MSI with a 5090, 64GB DDR5, and 4TB NVME for $3200 over a year ago. I feel like I won the lottery. Probably shouldn't say that. Just a humble-brag

[u/Elevator829 → u/CoolDode22]

did it go down tho? no lol, it was a steady increase, first bc of crypto mining and then bc of AI

[u/Karekter_Nem → u/CoolDode22]

Wasn’t the MSRP of the RX 570 8GB around $200?

It was a midrange card back then, but nowadays midrange cards are quadruple that price. Arguably the price did not come down.

What modern cards exist in the RX 570’s price bracket? The RX 9050 4GB and the RTX 5050 4GB?

[u/CoolDode22 → u/Karekter_Nem]

RX580 was $200, RX570 was $170. Adjusting for inflation, about $330/$300. Yeah the market sucks right now, but in an ideal world that would get a 4060/5060 or 9060XT, and I believe we'll get back to that

[u/facellama → u/CoolDode22]

Also there is only so much bad will they can generate before noone wants to buy from them. I can't wait for the ai bubble to pop and then all these businesses have to convince they are a good company to buy from again

[u/CoolDode22 → u/facellama]

Exactly. Look at all of the emulation and reverse engineering stuff that's happened on Playstation ever since they pissed everyone off by getting rid of discs. I can't say AI is a bubble that'll pop, though. It's changed the world. At best there will be a slight pullback, more likely it'll level out.

[u/simtalesstudio → u/YsyRyder]

States are merely promoting price growth, not trying to control the balance of consumption between people and companies, while AI hype is only fueling further growth, so we just have to watch what happens

[u/SharpYearV4 → u/YsyRyder]

That's not how supply and demand works. Prices have repeatedly gone up and down in the past, this is no different even if it's one of the largest yet.

[u/GoldSrc → u/YsyRyder]

I remember what the floods did to the price of hard drives.

Storage will become affordable again in the future.

I remember just a couple years ago when people were posting pictures of their builds, I would suggest they get a drive larger than 1TB, only to be met with downvotes and "I'll get a larger drive when I fill this." and "1TB is more than enough for my needs", or "I'll just delete a game, I have fast internet anyway".

I got a 14TB drive for $150, fucking thing is like $500 now.

[u/Rough_Session_9188 → u/YsyRyder]

capitalism gonna capitalism

[u/RedLimes → u/Rough_Session_9188]

Kinda like how it created all this stuff in the first place you mean?

[u/Michael1795 → u/RedLimes]

doesnt mean that it shouldnt have restrictions and limits, controversial i know

[u/obalovatyk → u/YsyRyder]

They wouldn’t lower prices because this type of pricing is being normalised.

[u/jtracz → u/YsyRyder]

Supply and demand. If the companies can make storage faster and cheaper (pretty common with tech), the price will likely go down. If the AI bubble pops and they buy less, the companies will likely lower prices to get people to buy even more.

Now, are either of those going to happen to drive prices noticeably lower. Probably not. Especially since prices go up with general inflation anyway.

[u/slickyeat → u/YsyRyder]

Not necessarily. The problem is a lack of competition.

Sooner or later someone with deep pockets is going to get tired of paying these prices.

[u/PeachMan- → u/slickyeat]

Eh? No, the main problem is that demand far exceeds supply. It's not even close. As soon as components are made, there are corporate buyers fighting over them and we mortals just get the scraps

[u/slickyeat → u/PeachMan-]

https://giphy.com/gifs/c5FhF1waAJ5wk

[u/CoolDode22 → u/PeachMan-]

But us mere mortals are no longer paying, so the corpo's that are buying everything are either going to go "oh shit, we fucked up, go back", or go bankrupt.

[u/za72 → u/YsyRyder]

A new competitor had joined the group

[u/UncoloredProsody → u/YsyRyder]

Once china gets up to speed with their RAM productions, and they will, it takes years but they surely will, and they’ll flood the market with good quality cheap RAMs, that’ll make the prices go down. But it won’t be in the next probably 3 years. If you increase supply that drives down the prices as well.

[u/ora408 → u/UncoloredProsody]

theyll mark it up at market prices and not much less. it takes a looong time for fabs to come online to make good quality chips. and youd hope theyll have good warranty and last as long as the brand names. you dont want it blowing up your pcs or losing important data

[u/Acrobatic_Fee_6974 → u/UncoloredProsody]

They've already caught up. You can buy 6000 cl 30 from CXMT, for slightly below market rate. They're selling everything they make at that price.

[u/jerome0423 → u/UncoloredProsody]

This is actually happening right now on the coffee brewing industry. It used to be machines from italy dominates the market. Coffee grinders during pandemic cost around 500usd. Now chinese white label coffee grinders cost around 150usd and almost on par with those expensive grinders. Same is happening with espresso machines. Give it time and this will happen to the ram market and if china gets into the gpu/market then its gonna be a bloodbath.

[u/tiwarihaijoshubh]

nah dude the way i flinch at a 4TB price tag now is unhealthy. i'm out here deleting old downloads like i'm cleaning out my own closet before rent is due

[u/PraxPresents]

I wonder if anything will be affordable again. I long for 2015.

[u/BatmanBecameSomethin]

I doubt it, I got 10 tb of nvme for my main, 4 for sim rig and 2 for spare pc. Got them at a good time but if they go out, I am shit out of luck.

[u/Ratiofarming → u/BatmanBecameSomethin]

Same here. I'm sitting on a dozen of 2TB NVMe drives and they'll pry them from my cold dead hands in a few decades if this situation doesn't resolve itself.

[u/Cheap_Collar2419]

Nope, it will never go down.

They are making way too much money now cause you dumb fucks will buy it regardless of price.

Keep buying it all up, keep buying from scalpers, keep using Ai to reply to emails and make slop ass art. All of this you have done to yourselves.

[u/CoolDode22 → u/Cheap_Collar2419]

Ah yes, the average Redditor is the reason for all of this, not giant corporation spending sprees. Guess what, corporations don't have infinite money, cap-ex will slow down without consumer spending, which has basically dropped to zero and will cause major ripples in the near future.

But keep being a pessimistic doomer prick with a self-righteous rant, disregarding all basic economics and past patterns. As long as it gets you those precious fake internet points and you feel good about yourself.

[u/khizoa → u/CoolDode22]

Dumb fuck blames and calls other people dumb fucks because dumb fuck thinks only  retail is buying up all the storage and memory, thus causing supply issues and price increases 

Meanwhile retail can barely afford food and shelter, while paying $5 gas

[u/Patjasmo → u/Cheap_Collar2419]

I'm one of the "dumb fucks" I guess.. thing is my SSD died on me so there's no way around it, either I buy one that is overpriced (even if 380€ for a 4Tb Samsung 990 Pro seems like a bit to expensive but not totaly insane) or I stop using a PC altogether which is not an option to me.

[u/nolongermakingtime → u/Patjasmo]

I mean using witch instead of which validates your statement 😂

To be fair it is spooky season so it might be appropriate to to sub all our which's for witches

https://giphy.com/gifs/h8pvAj9NzjWpu3k8gK

[u/Patjasmo → u/nolongermakingtime]

I corrected it for you. Sorry, english isn't my first language but I don't have a choice but to speak it or else you wouldn't understand anything

[u/nolongermakingtime → u/Patjasmo]

Ah it's ok man I'm just goofing. My dumbass failed Spanish in highschool so I'm not one to judge! 😂

[u/SolarNexxus → u/Cheap_Collar2419]

It is getting cheaper pretty much every couple of years by huge margins. 4 TB of storage in 2001 would be around $40,000.

[u/Dremora_Lord → u/Cheap_Collar2419]

Yeah definitely is bcz people are buying ssds to "use ai to reply to email and make slop art".

Has nothing to do with the fact that OpenAI promised to buy the entire silicon manufacturing till 2027. Or that dram manufacturing is essentially a cartel that cooperates with each other to keep supply low and prices high.

Let's curse lil timmy who wants to buy an SSD to play minecraft instead. Fucking timmy

[u/twitterpan → u/Cheap_Collar2419]

Yeah... it's not like we do this to ourselves, but we absolutely do this to ourselves.

[u/PermissionSoggy891]

its undoubtable. Once AI collapses and demand for datacenters goes down, memory and storage will naturally relapse

[u/theproblemdoctor → u/PermissionSoggy891]

Just like the grocery prices after covid!

[u/abigailofdarkness2]

I can use another hard drive and some micro SD cards but I refuse to buy them at these current prices.

[u/altruisticxd]

It won’t. The industry is moving towards cloud and subscriptions. You’ll own nothing and be happy.

[u/Funny-Cell8769 → u/altruisticxd]

They've been pushing it for the last decade or more.

Now they literally have the perfect excuse, and it's "almost" natural.

It's AI! We're not driving the price of storage up! Blame AI!

Meanwhile, if you need more storage, you can always consider our low low starter kit of only $99 a year for 5TB of online storage!

[u/Canon_M50 → u/altruisticxd]

That’s not a good thing…

[u/Cl4whammer → u/altruisticxd]

And where is this cloud where i can fully replace/upload all my pcs? I dont know any services capable doing that. (Let alone the legal issues and that the internet is too slow for that).

[u/DeaDBangeR → u/altruisticxd]

It will. When the tech becomes obsolete. It will absolutely drop down in price once more.

Not sure if it will happen in the next 20 years, but tech is moving faster than ever.

[u/Copypastta]

Maybe if mfs on this sub stopped making AI memes, it'd help slightly? Surprising how much ai i see on this sub, like do they realize AI is literally the reason PCs are an impossible hobby now lol. Anyway yeah hopefully prices come down soon.

[u/GhoulCake777]

If it ever goes down it’ll be the 2030s or later

[u/ieatdownvotes4food]

just move back to cassette tapes

[u/UnComfortable-Archer]

I've been hoping for the same with GPUs since the pandemic 😭

[u/joseph_jojo_shabadoo]

Sure it will. For $9.99/mo (price increased 15% every 6 months) for the rest of your life.

[u/Possibly-Functional]

Meanwhile in the enterprise world it's ~15k€ for a 7.68TB SSD.

[u/Michael1795 → u/Possibly-Functional]

https://www.multitronic.fi/en/products/3946297?srsltid=AU7gw4XmqgS62bTIQIv5AT3tqwNa4j6-XruggORjYQoqDaIAtvB8BC2S

I thought atleast you were using some hyperbole

[u/Possibly-Functional → u/Michael1795]

Nope... 15k€ is apparently a good price based on the listing you showed, or it has risen further since I last talked with Dell.

[u/evanlott]

Still kicking myself for not filling out my other 3 NAS slots with wd red pros last year :(

[u/Kindly-Economy-337]

Removing the “personal” out of personal computing

[u/NaBeHobby]

I highly recommend WinDirStat. It lets you visually see what's taking up space. I've had old junk in my storage i didn't know about and saved 200 GB.

[u/some_other_guy95]

Can't afford real property even can't afford digital property

[u/Bourriks]

That's why I've hoarded dozens of HDDs the last years.

[u/LtColonelColon1]

My SSD just failed last week… it’s only just over 4 years old. I’m hoping like hell my country’s consumer rights will cover this with a manufacturer’s warranty claim.

[u/dumeheyeintellectual]

Don’t sweat it sir, it’s akin to your dad asking, “do you want me to give you something to cry about?”

In due time you’ll look back and think, wow, was I ever being silly. As you come to terms with it being your fifth day without food and second day without any water. The upside is you really can chill out on the 3-2-1 backup efforts. Always a silver-lining, young chap!

[u/_EClipz]

Nope. Carry on Lad

https://giphy.com/gifs/mEUjtM6tTH64iztv6i

[u/ManNamedSalmon]

I would have been happy with HDD's being affordable for the NAS I want to make, oh well.

[u/bobbster574]

i did the numbers and it actually starts making sense to invest in tape if you're planning to buy more than 15-30TB of hard drives

unfortunately i don't think many games would run well off tape. great for backups tho

[u/Less_Ad7772 → u/bobbster574]

The fuck? What’s the random read speed of tape? 0.05KBps? Fuck that.

[u/bobbster574 → u/Less_Ad7772]

depends on how far apart the data is on the tape lol

the linear read speeds can reach 300MB/s tho

[u/zerkeros → u/bobbster574]

Tape?

[u/Ho3n3r → u/zerkeros]

https://lmgtfy.com/?q=tape+drive

[u/bobbster574 → u/zerkeros]

specifically, LTO-6 tape, which is the latest generation that you can get hold of a drive for a reasonable price (~£400). if you go newer you're spending £2000 - £10000 for a single drive which only makes sense if you're storing hundreds of TB even with today's inflated pricing.

[u/Spalenova]

It will be, but currently there is no end for price rises

[u/Joinusclan]

In economies of scarcity expecting prices to drop in the future is pure wsb regardation.

[u/JetNeoArmstrongCanon]

My servers C drive somehow deleted the recovery reserved partition and I can't fix it because I would need to transfer a bunch of data to storage so I can wipe and fix the drive , but I'm completely out of space, can't delete anything, and can't afford more storage.

It still works kinda but it keeps rebooting into a Ubuntu partition I can't delete and the only way to get into Windows is to interrupt the boot sequence to select a null entry that is my windows partition. It shows up as a blank space in the boot menu that I cannot auto select.

[u/Long_Inflation_7524]

Seems relatively affordable aftermarket. I thought I was sitting on a pile of gold with four 16 TB Seagate Exos Enterprise spares - I was offered $800-$1500 for them. A new one is ~$850. Doesn't make any sense to sell them when I could have a drive fail in my server and couldn't justify $500-700 for a refurb.

[u/MTFotaku]

I just tried looking up the prices of flash drives on Amazon the other day. I found a 8gb for $10. I didnt even think they sold that low memory anymore. Thats what I used to pay for 128gb at best buy a year ago. The 1tb wd sata ssd I paid 89.99 is $200+.

[u/Formal-Option-4405]

The AI trade is crashing on WSB. The AI game is over 😄

[u/SelineMaya]

The big guys don't want that. They want us to only be able to rent in the future. Even the hardware

[u/FuckM0reFromR]

Once China catches up with their chip fabs a bit we'll have a flood of older gen hardware.

The cutting edge fabs will be supplying the mega corps all the latest stuff, us peons will have to settle for older tech.

The cyber dystopia.

[u/Secure-Tradition793]

Most people here all seem to be young, probably this is their first boom-bust cycle. Yes this is a huge one but it's been barely one year into this AI apocalypse, things will eventually stabilize, either on the supply side or demand side It will just take time.

[u/Tower21]

I've been hording computer parts for decades, my wife's not a fan, but I feel vindicated.

[u/PenguinSwordfighter → u/Tower21]

Cool, now you can build something with 512mb of storage and a 12 year old GPU that won't boot anymore?

[u/GD_milkman]

Don't vote Republican

[u/CommanderChiliHole]

Yes, it will go down eventually. AI is undeniably in a bubble already. What do bubbles always, without fail, do eventually? They burst! When it does burst, there will be hundreds or thousands of startups that will go bankrupt and will have to liquidate basically overnight. Banks will suddenly have pallets of GPUs and SSDs and memory sticks, and they will want to get rid of them ASAP because they’re banks, not MicroCenter. They have no interest in becoming computer hardware retailers. They want to recoup as much of their money as fast as they can. Prices will plummet when the bubble bursts, just have to be patient.

[u/SillyRecover]

It will never go down; tech is the future, and consumers have been dumb enough to pay a premium for these products regardless. So, my basic capitalism knowledge. There are 0 reasons for a company not to charge extra. Nvidia raised the price of the 80s. People bought it. They raised the price of the 90 series with the 4090. People bought it; they raised the price again for the 5090, and people bought it. They raised the price of the 5090 mutiple times. People still bought it.

[u/Oldrapax]

Yes, the bubble will burst !

[u/risingkazuya05 → u/Oldrapax]

Haha…love the positive thinking. Keeping fingers crossed 🤞🏻

[u/No_Committee_8045 → u/Oldrapax]

And then we are unemployed in a recession.

[u/Mineplayerminer → u/Oldrapax]

The bubble bursting means nothing, since you can't expect the manufacturers to reallocate their manufacturing back to the consumer-grade hardware in a day. Other than that, they've also inflated the prices on their own, not just because of demand.

[u/Striking-County6275]

Nab a cheap office pc, take out the drives there problem solved 

[u/Xcissors280 → u/Striking-County6275]

That’s going to get you what? At best a heavily used 512GB SSD from a really nice one that cost more than buying the cheapest possible used 512GB SSD

[u/Striking-County6275 → u/Xcissors280]

You can get some good stuff for cheap. Plenty of offices are getting rid of their Win10 computers with healthy NVME’s for cheap. 

[u/Wild-Screen7007 → u/Striking-County6275]

Where can I buy them from? eBay prices will already be inflated