Here's what data centers are doing to the PC business. I built my own PC last Sept. as mu old one was 13 years old [View all]

I wanted a nice one that was fairly future proofed for at least 7 years. I always do my DD when going about a project like this. I had a budget of 1500 dollars. That would give me a mid to maybe upper mid range desktop. I came in slightly over budget at 1600 because I wanted a case that would blend in with the living room/office/gaming space. I do most of my browsing, gaming, streaming from my couch.

Regardless, I just priced the exact same parts from the parts builder list I had saved on the web. 2600 to 2800 to build that same PC what, 6-7 months later? I knew there'd be an increase but wow, thats insanely inflationary. All so people can ask their phones for recipe's (yes I'm aware its much more than that)?

These datacenters have bought nearly 90% of the memory capable of being manufactured through 2027 so this is not just affecting PC's and laptops. Nearly everything uses these silicone chips and there are only a few places in the world that make them. All of those products will/are seeing additional inflationary pressure on their final product pricing. I see this as a reverse kind of monopoly where big billion dollar corps buy so much of a single product that whats left prices the consumer out almost all together. Especially a product this hard to produce. It takes nearly 5 years to bring a chip factory online from ground breaking. It's just messed up across the board.

These things need to be strongly regulated because of the giant circle of impacts they have on the general public from pollution to water/energy waste to breaking wallets. They drive up costs on consumers from all directions while profiting a single entity.