in the lab tested. reviewed. verdictized.
LAB NOTES ZAK STOREY, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
The rising cost of the humble PC
GPUs might not be the culprit
THIS MONTH
, I was doing a bit of research on a phenomenon that’s been afflicting the tech industry. Namely, how the cost of PC parts has skyrocketed over the last decade.
Go back to September 2015 (my first issue), and the Blueprints reveal dramatically different rigs. Yes, there have been hardware advancements—we’re not stuck with 16GB of DDR4 on a Turbo build—but if you look at the products, you’re getting more for the money, or so it seems.
I did the math, and on the graphics card front, what we all imagine to be the biggest culprit of price hikes, it’s honestly not that bad. Take the GTX 660, for instance. It launched at $230 in 2013. With inflation today, that’s about $310. The RTX 4060 launched with an RRP of $300.
It’s a bit different on the high end, where margins have increased. The GTX 690 debuted at $1000, the RTX 4090 at $1600 But that is an outlier GPU, to be fair, and arguably the way the latest 90 cards are specced is far more wild than the 690 was, mimicking Titans rather than 90s.