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#1
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Have hardware prices gone crazy during Covid?
Well, I was looking at a couple of upgrades for a friend's computer. I
built the computer for them several years ago, so it's now time for a few performance upgrades. The system currently consists of a Haswell-generation Celeron, and using just Intel graphics. So the idea is to upgrade that processor to higher end 4th or 5th gen (Haswell or Broadwell) Core i5 or higher, preferably i7. And also to upgrade that graphics to a lowest-end graphics card, because they got themselves an ultrawide monitor. So I looked at the prices of some of these parts and my eyes popped out of their sockets! Have they gone crazy? WTF? CPU's, the prices of the CPU's range from C$89 to C$3316! The cheapest $89 one was the price of the same Celeron G1840 that they currently have right now, and it's more expensive than when they first bought it! I'm going to ignore any of the ones that cost over $1000 (actually some of the $1000 ones are Core i3's)!!! The cheapest Core i3's range from $281 to $607. The Core i5's range from $400 to $953. The Core i7's range from $631 to $817, and in some cases the lower end ones cost more than the higher end ones. https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/products...ice&X=0,100000 Then I looked at the low-end GPU's, eg. RX 550, something that should be easily under $75 these days. They're going from between $85 and $252! https://pcpartpicker.com/products/vi...ort=price&qq=1 I mean, I guess I can go towards used parts, but after seeing these prices for new parts, I wonder how low used parts would be by comparison? Yousuf Khan |
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#2
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Have hardware prices gone crazy during Covid?
"Yousuf Khan" wrote in message ... Well, I was looking at a couple of upgrades for a friend's computer. I built the computer for them several years ago, so it's now time for a few performance upgrades. The system currently consists of a Haswell-generation Celeron, and using just Intel graphics. So the idea is to upgrade that processor to higher end 4th or 5th gen (Haswell or Broadwell) Core i5 or higher, preferably i7. And also to upgrade that graphics to a lowest-end graphics card, because they got themselves an ultrawide monitor. So I looked at the prices of some of these parts and my eyes popped out of their sockets! Have they gone crazy? WTF? CPU's, the prices of the CPU's range from C$89 to C$3316! The cheapest $89 one was the price of the same Celeron G1840 that they currently have right now, and it's more expensive than when they first bought it! I'm going to ignore any of the ones that cost over $1000 (actually some of the $1000 ones are Core i3's)!!! The cheapest Core i3's range from $281 to $607. The Core i5's range from $400 to $953. The Core i7's range from $631 to $817, and in some cases the lower end ones cost more than the higher end ones. https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/products...ice&X=0,100000 Then I looked at the low-end GPU's, eg. RX 550, something that should be easily under $75 these days. They're going from between $85 and $252! https://pcpartpicker.com/products/vi...ort=price&qq=1 I mean, I guess I can go towards used parts, but after seeing these prices for new parts, I wonder how low used parts would be by comparison? Yousuf Khan Core i3 - $26 to $563 https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100007...&orde r=PRICE Core i5 - $50 to $429 https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100007...=3&order=PRICE Core i7 - $34 to $773 https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100007...96&order=PRICE These are refurb, used, and new CPU's, and I have no idea what shipping would be to your neck of the woods, but they seem pretty reasonable here (although for the high-end ones, not a lot cheaper than what you're seeing). -- SC Tom |
#3
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Have hardware prices gone crazy during Covid?
On 28/06/2020 12.17, Yousuf Khan wrote:
Well, I was looking at a couple of upgrades for a friend's computer. I built the computer for them several years ago, so it's now time for a few performance upgrades. The system currently consists of a Haswell-generation Celeron, and using just Intel graphics. So the idea is to upgrade that processor to higher end 4th or 5th gen (Haswell or Broadwell) Core i5 or higher, preferably i7. And also to upgrade that graphics to a lowest-end graphics card, because they got themselves an ultrawide monitor. The first thing I look at is the disk. If it is rotating rust, I upgrade to SSD. That alone improves performance a lot. -- Cheers, Carlos. |
#4
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Have hardware prices gone crazy during Covid?
On 6/28/2020 7:47 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 28/06/2020 12.17, Yousuf Khan wrote: Well, I was looking at a couple of upgrades for a friend's computer. I built the computer for them several years ago, so it's now time for a few performance upgrades. The system currently consists of a Haswell-generation Celeron, and using just Intel graphics. So the idea is to upgrade that processor to higher end 4th or 5th gen (Haswell or Broadwell) Core i5 or higher, preferably i7. And also to upgrade that graphics to a lowest-end graphics card, because they got themselves an ultrawide monitor. The first thing I look at is the disk. If it is rotating rust, I upgrade to SSD. That alone improves performance a lot. The disk is fine, it's actually one of those hybrid SSHD's with a small SSD caching a 1TB HDD. The important upgrade here is the graphics card, they really need something that will accommodate their ultrawide monitor's resolution natively. Yousuf Khan |
#5
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Have hardware prices gone crazy during Covid?
In article , Yousuf Khan
wrote: Well, I was looking at a couple of upgrades for a friend's computer. I built the computer for them several years ago, so it's now time for a few performance upgrades. The system currently consists of a Haswell-generation Celeron, and using just Intel graphics. So the idea is to upgrade that processor to higher end 4th or 5th gen (Haswell or Broadwell) Core i5 or higher, preferably i7. And also to upgrade that graphics to a lowest-end graphics card, because they got themselves an ultrawide monitor. The first thing I look at is the disk. If it is rotating rust, I upgrade to SSD. That alone improves performance a lot. The disk is fine, it's actually one of those hybrid SSHD's with a small SSD caching a 1TB HDD. it may be fine, but an ssd will be a significant improvement, by far the easiest and most cost effective upgrade. hybrid drives are only slightly faster than a regular drive except in the unlikely scenario everything is running from cache. The important upgrade here is the graphics card, they really need something that will accommodate their ultrawide monitor's resolution natively. how wide is ultrawide? |
#6
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Have hardware prices gone crazy during Covid?
"Yousuf Khan" wrote
| So I looked at the prices of some of these parts and my eyes popped out | of their sockets! Have they gone crazy? WTF? | I've noticed that, too, but it started before coronavirus. I don't know why, especially given that just about any hardware these days is "good enough". I built my current system in 2015, with an 8-core AMD FX-8300. At the time I think it was about $65. The whole system was only about $400. The motherboard, Asus M5A78L-M, was also about $65, and the onboard network/graphics/audio are perfectly fine for me. I don't see why anyone but a gamer needs a dedicated graphics card. Later I saw the same CPU for more like $200+. And today there seems to be a much larger range. It used to be that the newer ones were expensive, then they quickly got cheaper. Today I haven't kept up with technology changes, so I have no idea what another $1,000 buys you. Recently, though, I needed a cheap graphics card for an older Win7 computer so that I could get an HDMI port to feed to a TV. I think it was something like $39 at Microcenter. Reasonable. They must have had 100 of them. apparently low-end graphics is a big seller. I also find things vary more than they used to. Staples sells an HDMI cord for maybe $22-35 while Microcenter has it for $10. Similarly, Staples was selling network switches starting at about $50. I think I paid about $20 from a company called Provantage. The prices often just seem arbitrary. I suspect that maybe software is setting the prices. I saw an interesting example of that the other day in Home Depot. A couple were looking at safety glasses. There's a whole section of them, mostly the same thing. They were loolking at a pair of plastic glasses for $10, in a blister pack. I stopped and pointed out that the very glasses I had on, as part of my coronavirus shopping attire, were the same thing and came in a plastic bag, 6 pair for $20. That item was just a couple of feet away. It's nuts. Recently I decided to set up something new for my brother, who recently had a stroke, and I decided to do it with a Raspberry Pi. Microcenter had a monitor on sale for $70. That was the big expense. The whole Pi setup kit was only $90, plus about $20 for wireless keyboard/mouse. About $200 for a complete, serviceable Linux system for Internet, email, etc. That gets him 25 GB+ storage and 2 GB RAM. And those Pi's are fast. |
#7
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Have hardware prices gone crazy during Covid?
On Sun, 28 Jun 2020 13:47:46 +0200, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 28/06/2020 12.17, Yousuf Khan wrote: Well, I was looking at a couple of upgrades for a friend's computer. I built the computer for them several years ago, so it's now time for a few performance upgrades. The system currently consists of a Haswell-generation Celeron, and using just Intel graphics. So the idea is to upgrade that processor to higher end 4th or 5th gen (Haswell or Broadwell) Core i5 or higher, preferably i7. And also to upgrade that graphics to a lowest-end graphics card, because they got themselves an ultrawide monitor. The first thing I look at is the disk. If it is rotating rust, I upgrade to SSD. That alone improves performance a lot. Second that. In my very limited experience, SSD with slower CPU makes for a faster experience overall than HDD with faster CPU. I have a Dell Inspiron with i7 and rotating hard drive, and an Asus with only i5 but an SSD. When I bought the Asus, after five years with the Dell, I was amazed at how much faster it was with the slower processor. The Asus is much, much faster at opening programs and files, or saving files to disk -- no surprise there. But it even seems faster at computational stuff. I imagine that means those operations depend on virtual memory, and of course virtual memory is just disk accesses. -- Stan Brown, Tehachapi, California, USA https://BrownMath.com/ https://OakRoadSystems.com/ Shikata ga nai... |
#8
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Have hardware prices gone crazy during Covid?
On 6/28/2020 8:34 AM, nospam wrote:
how wide is ultrawide? 3440 X 1440 |
#9
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Have hardware prices gone crazy during Covid?
On 6/28/2020 8:48 AM, Mayayana wrote:
I don't see why anyone but a gamer needs a dedicated graphics card. If you have an ultrawide monitor, you would need a graphics card too. 3440 X 1440 is ultrawide in this case. I don't think any embedded graphics can run at such wide resolutions. Perhaps some of the Ryzen APU's with embedded Vega graphics?? Yousuf Khan |
#10
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Have hardware prices gone crazy during Covid?
In article , Mayayana
wrote: I also find things vary more than they used to. Staples sells an HDMI cord for maybe $22-35 while Microcenter has it for $10. $7.49 at staples: https://www.staples.com/32AWG-High-S...eneric/product _2504576 less than $4 online: https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=3992 of course, not all hdmi cables are created equal, but if price is your only criteria and you want it same day, staples is fine. Similarly, Staples was selling network switches starting at about $50. I think I paid about $20 from a company called Provantage. The prices often just seem arbitrary. I suspect that maybe software is setting the prices. actually, staples has switches starting at $20 for a trendnet, but it's out of stock, however, they do have a netgear in stock for $23: https://www.staples.com/NETGEAR-ProS...-Ethernet-Desk top-Switch/product_446867 Recently I decided to set up something new for my brother, who recently had a stroke, and I decided to do it with a Raspberry Pi. Microcenter had a monitor on sale for $70. That was the big expense. The whole Pi setup kit was only $90, plus about $20 for wireless keyboard/mouse. About $200 for a complete, serviceable Linux system for Internet, email, etc. That gets him 25 GB+ storage and 2 GB RAM. And those Pi's are fast. not really, especially the zero. a pi 4 is acceptable for casual use but it's not what one would call fast by any reasonable standard, and they're a *lot* less than $90. a pi 4 2 gig is $35, assuming you buy only one at a time: https://www.microcenter.com/product/...model-b---2gb- ddr4 |
#11
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Have hardware prices gone crazy during Covid?
Yousuf Khan wrote:
On 6/28/2020 8:34 AM, nospam wrote: how wide is ultrawide? 3440 X 1440 HDMI 2 or 2.1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI Perhaps DP 1.2 ? Tables here are less useful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayPort The problem is, the entry level video cards now are pretty expensive. And even if you could find an FX5200, it wouldn't have the output :-) Paul |
#12
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SSDs/HDDs, memory ... (was: Have hardware prices gone crazy during Covid?)
On Sun, 28 Jun 2020 at 07:53:20, Stan Brown
wrote: On Sun, 28 Jun 2020 13:47:46 +0200, Carlos E.R. wrote: On 28/06/2020 12.17, Yousuf Khan wrote: [] The first thing I look at is the disk. If it is rotating rust, I upgrade to SSD. That alone improves performance a lot. Second that. In my very limited experience, SSD with slower CPU makes for a faster experience overall than HDD with faster CPU. OK you guys. I accept (daft not to) that SSDs are faster than HDDs. (Though I do have of course the nagging feeling that lazy programmers will soon have eliminated that advantage - but they're going to rule the roost for everyone anyway, so that's irrelevant.) My main concern over SSDs is still of sudden and complete failure - more so than HDDs (which I know - yes, from experience - _can_ go suddenly, but _tend_ not to). Yes, I know everybody should be backing up their system, on the hour, every hour, to a remote site, so it - but come on, some of us want to _use_ our computers. so: using an SSD, is there anything - either something in the SSD, or third party software - that will _reliably_ give, say, a month's warning of failure? (And by "failure" I include go-to-read-only.) I have a Dell Inspiron with i7 and rotating hard drive, and an Asus with only i5 but an SSD. When I bought the Asus, after five years with the Dell, I was amazed at how much faster it was with the slower processor. The Asus is much, much faster at opening programs and files, or saving files to disk -- no surprise there. But it even seems faster at computational stuff. I imagine that means those operations depend on virtual memory, and of course virtual memory is just disk accesses. If you're using virtual memory for more than very occasional peaks, then I'd say you haven't enough RAM. This may be less definite with SSDs, but I suspect your old Dell with the spinner _does_ have that problem. Have you _looked_ (at what it is using) lately? Memory consumption has, like everything else, been creeping up steadily: I'd say more web "pages" (really programs) in the last four or five years than anything else. -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf "To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition." - Woody Allen |
#13
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SSDs/HDDs, memory ...
J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
so: using an SSD, is there anything - either something in the SSD, or third party software - that will _reliably_ give, say, a month's warning of failure? (And by "failure" I include go-to-read-only.) A RAID1 mirror consisting of a multiplicity of different brands/models of SSD. Mirrors can have more than two drives as far as I know. When one drive fails, the array runs in "degraded" mode. You could use, say, a couple WDC Blue 1TB drives and one (good) Samsung Pro-class drive. The WDC ones are $100 each. The reason for mixing up the drive brands, is so failures don't correlate (precisely). If you used all Samsung drives, maybe they all wear out on the same day. Paul |
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SSDs/HDDs, memory ... (was: Have hardware prices gone crazy during Covid?)
In article , J. P. Gilliver (John)
wrote: My main concern over SSDs is still of sudden and complete failure - more so than HDDs (which I know - yes, from experience - _can_ go suddenly, but _tend_ not to). ssds are significantly more reliable than hard drives, but if they do fail, they generally give warning (via smart) and often fail read-only, which means you can still access your data. Yes, I know everybody should be backing up their system, on the hour, every hour, to a remote site, so it - but come on, some of us want to _use_ our computers. backups can happen in the background. backups can also be scheduled to run in the middle of the night when you *aren't* using your computer. better yet, do both, to two different targets. so: using an SSD, is there anything - either something in the SSD, or third party software - that will _reliably_ give, say, a month's warning of failure? (And by "failure" I include go-to-read-only.) yes, via smart. you can also run a diagnostic every so often. or just not worry about it since ssds fail a *lot* less than hard drives do. |
#15
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SSDs/HDDs, memory ...
In article , Paul
wrote: The reason for mixing up the drive brands, is so failures don't correlate (precisely). If you used all Samsung drives, maybe they all wear out on the same day. it's best to *not* mix brands (and may not even work). however, it *is* a good idea to get the same drives from a different manufacturing *batch*. don't buy the drives at the same time from the same vendor. buy one each from different vendors and/or different times. unfortunately, it might be more expensive that way. and raid doesn't answer the original question about ssds. |
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