begs

Building a computer today is more complicated and more expensive than it was just a few months ago. It is not just that some components are in short supply, but that the market balance has shifted and is directly affecting availability and prices. Memory is one of the best examples of that pressure, and what is happening in that market It’s starting to have knock-on effects.. What seemed like a problem limited to certain user profiles has been gaining scope and can no longer be understood as something isolated. The scene that explains everything. In Akihabara, one of the great electronics and computing centers in Tokyo, a store has decided to do something unusual: ask its own customers to sell it their used computers. Sofmap Gaming posted a message on his X account in which he openly acknowledged the situation: “Gaming PCs, even second-hand, are really out of stock right now.” Next, they launched a direct request: “Please, if you are going to buy a new one, sell us your gaming PC…”. The scene was completed with practically empty shelves and another revealing detail: the store itself assured that it is buying back quite expensively and that it buys practically any PC, whether gaming or not. Click to see the original message in X It is not an isolated case. We are facing the visible consequence of a tension that has been accumulating in the hardware market for some time. First it affected those who assembled their own equipment, with increasing difficulties in finding certain components or assuming their price. Then it began to be noticed in manufacturers and assemblerswho have had to adjust configurations and rely on previous stock to keep up. Now, that pressure has ended up being transferred to the point of sale, where it is no longer just about selling, but also about getting the product. What’s behind the shortage? To understand what we are seeing we have to look at a clear change in the industry’s priority. The explosion of AI has skyrocketed the demand for memory for chips and systems intended for that businessespecially in the data center environment, and that is altering how production is distributed. Part of the problem arises in the most advanced memory used for AI, but its impact ends up spreading to the rest of the market. From Micron they summarized it this way in statements to CNBC: “We have seen a very strong and significant increase in demand for memory, and it has far exceeded our ability to supply it.” Consequences. The pressure on memory ends up trickling down to the devices we buy, whether in the form of higher prices or less ambitious configurations. As we have said, it has already put in the computer industry, but it is also threatening the smartphone sector and the consoles. Without going any further, Sony recently announced an increase of 100 euros on the PlayStation 5. And everything seems to indicate thatCars are not going to escape this crisis either.. Old hardware that is revalued. In this context, what until recently we considered old hardware begins to have a different value. Not because its performance has changed, but because the market around it has. What we have seen in Akihabara is not an isolated anecdote, but a sign of the extent to which availability has become a real problem. When a store asks its customers to sell it their own equipment, what it is showing is that something does not fit into the usual supply chain. Images | Andrey Matveev In Xataka | The price of RAM has skyrocketed and the best example to see the debacle is a 100 euro PC: the Raspberry Pi