Personal computing is in shambles right now. It has been for a bit. It was hard to buy video cards for a while, now other components are affected too.

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toddmorey 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Well, I think from the technology side, the performance and capacity you can get in a personal computer (especially a laptop) is absolutely incredible.

It's just component suppl and that supply is being eaten up and re-diverted to data centers. Prices and availability will be in poor shape. Though I am wondering if GPU compute and memory start to diverge enough that AI companies begin using such specialized chips they stop threatening consumer devices. Maybe that's just wishful thinking.

	▲	vlovich123 9 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I think you have it backwards. Personal computing was a huge market driver in the 80s and 900 and 2000s. In the 2010s this became less so with the ramp up of cloud computing, mobile computing, and death of Moore’s law. Now personal computing is a footnote that generally takes the left overs from mobile or server and will continue to get squeezed due to lack of meaningful market demand. Prices must come down not because AIs switch to accelerators - they still need huge amounts of ram for inference* AND training - but because if RAM isn’t a pricing cartel then supply will increase. * Technically there’s at least one company I know of burning models into ASICs but you still need the RAM to store the weights. SRAM is too power and heat heavy but RAM will only get a reprieve if Cerebras pans out and given OpenAI is the company that partnered with them and then cornered the DRAM market it suggests there’s challenges scaling that approach.
	▲	tverbeure 9 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		When fabs are full, you produce silicon with the highest margins.

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paxys 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Personal computing was essentially dead when companies figured that renting hardware and software and charging monthly subscriptions was a lot more profitable.

	▲	drnick1 7 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It's not dead. I refuse to rent hardware and software. I host all of my stuff at home on my own hardware, and encourage those around me to do the same. I have converted countless e-waste laptops to Linux and will continue to do so. Personal computing is only dead if you accept that outcome.
	▲	pasc1878 8 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		But the latter mindset from companies was a main reason why personal computing took off.

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Scroll_Swe 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My pre-built desktop PC is as cheap today as last year at the same store...

Dont get the panic. :)

ryzenn 9800x3d 32GB ram 9070xt

about 2k

	▲	shadowfacts 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Then you overpaid a year ago. A 2x16GB DDR5 kit was around $90 a year ago and is over $400 today.

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sneak 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This is ridiculous. A used M1 MBAir is the best personal computing value ever offered in the history of the world.

	▲	paxys 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Such great value that it’ll stop getting updates next year.
	▲	frollogaston 7 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Yep, replaced my old Mac Pro with an M1 Mac mini that's actually faster. MacBook Neo is probably faster and nicer for most people's uses than what they already have, except of course video games.