It would be nice to have a small heated workshop in these winter months, but I have to put up with the vastness of the garage and my tiny computer bench, that is my lot in life I suppose, an old curmudgeon, sore joints and a reliance on alcohol, cold beverages and a cold garage but busy things to do and those RAM prices going through the roof and people on the internet losing their minds about computer prices, again. I like to add things to the blog to remind me of what I was up to at a certain time, I do not track computer builds in spreadsheets any more although perhaps I should have with this one.
This build is for an MSI Z370-A Pro with an i3-8100 at 3.60 GHz with 16GB DDR4 and an ASUS GTX 1060 GPU with 3GB. There have been wheelings and dealings with the parts. I bought a 6th generation computer for $100 and sold the motherboard and cpu for $60 and the power hungry Zotac GTX 1070 that came with it for $110. The 8th or perhaps 9th generation MSI motherboard, cpu and cooler, along with another 8GB DDR4 were $80. The 6th gen computer had come with a 2.50" 500GB SSD and most recently the GTX 1060 was a $50 deal on Marketplace on New Years Eve. Therefore, this computer has cost me $60 so far, plus that little 250GB M.2 drive which was $30.16 from eBay. Total is $90.16 however, technically that 8GB extra DDR4 is worth $20 so we can say $70.16 and if I decide to not use the M.2 and use the larger "free" SSD instead, that will drop to $40
Forty bucks!
I found a few spreadsheets from over twenty-eight years ago detailing a computer upgrade I did for a buddy of mine, at the time 16MB (Megabytes) of 72 pin fast page RAM were $51.49 including tax and I consider that was probably a bargain price back then. The industry is up in arms at the moment with the apparent impact of the AI data centres and Crypto industries inflating the price of DDR5 and consequentially, DDR4 because of big greedy ram manufacturers opting for easy printed government money and throwing consumers to the wolves, however, based on that $51.49 which worked out at $3.22 a megabyte, that "free" 8GB stick of DDR4 represents 8192MB or approximately $26362.88 in 1997 value, who says things have gone up?
An 8GB stick of DDR5 is currently valued at $138.88 and more on Amazon so I don't see what all the fuss is about...
Post note. less than three weeks later, that extra 8GB of used DDR4 that I said was worth $20 is now worth $35 and it seems that prices are still going up, it is a mad, mad, mad world.
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