Railworks America

If you want to upgrade, better do it soon, if not now. All the damage in Japan, as well as the flooding in Taiwan, is going to impact the PC hardware market hard. 45% of the hard drive makers are under water. They don't work very well like that. RAM prices, CPU's, motherboards, it's all gonna skyrocket.

Sad fact is, nothing is made in the US. It's all Taiwan, Japan or China. Not going to get political here, it's just a fact, so let's not go down that road. Just FYI, if you want to to upgrade (or buy stock, I suppose) do it soon. I'm buying two spare drives and more RAM. Everything else better be OK for a while. (darn, still need a good microphone)

When I was putting my system together a couple of weeks ago the salesman at Fry's was already trying to scare some hapless customer by telling him that HD prices will be up 200% in a couple of weeks. According to some estimates, since a lot of people can't really afford hardware right now, it may be 1st quarter of 12 before the HD supply dries up and the price increases really hit. One that is really going to hit is the Solid State Drive market because laptop makers are going to switch to them when the platter drive supply dries up.

Memory and CPU prices are the lowest i've ever seen, so it would be a good idea to buy now, and buy as much as you can.

BTW, the inner components from my old system are available if anyone is interested.

arizonachris wrote:(darn, still need a good microphone)

Consider this one.

http://www.hercules.com/us/webcam/bdd/p ... cal-glass/

That's what I use on VORA. It also doubles as a web cam, in case you want to use something like Skype for video-chat.
You can get it at NewEgg for a monstrous $14.00.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6826606006

Sounds good, Hawk! (yes, pun intended) I'll get that along with the 8Gb of RAM and the two hard drives. Total is gonna be a little under $200, free shipping too. Gawd, I love New Egg.

SMMDigital wrote:When I was putting my system together a couple of weeks ago the salesman at Fry's was already trying to scare some hapless customer by telling him that HD prices will be up 200% in a couple of weeks. According to some estimates, since a lot of people can't really afford hardware right now, it may be 1st quarter of 12 before the HD supply dries up and the price increases really hit. One that is really going to hit is the Solid State Drive market because laptop makers are going to switch to them when the platter drive supply dries up.

Memory and CPU prices are the lowest i've ever seen, so it would be a good idea to buy now, and buy as much as you can.

BTW, the inner components from my old system are available if anyone is interested.

In this case, the salesman was actually right. When I was putting together my wishlist a few months ago, WD Black 2TB drives were going for $80-100, today they are going for $240...

It's already hit. I have a friend over in Thailand. He says hard drive, RAM and CPU prices are now up 300%.

I looked at New Egg yesterday, DDR2 prices are nuts. I want 8Gb (two sticks) they want $240? DDR3 is cheaper than gasoline! I can buy a new motherboard that takes DDR3 AND 8Gb of RAM for less than 8Gb of DDR2. Nice thing about AMD CPU's is, sockets are backwards compatible. I can run my Phenom II in a brand new socket AM3 board. Sweet! Try that with your Intel CPU. (just kidding, y'all, no flame wars )

WD drives are being rationed over here; either can't buy them, or you can only buy one at a time...

Other stuff seems the same price though.

DDR2 is high because it probably isn't being manufactured by the major manufacturers any more; they have switched over to producing DDR3 now.

WD drives are rationed because it was their big factory that was flooded in Thailand.

GaryG

I paid $80 for my 1TB WD Caviar Black last year.. It's now $220.. Holy ....

styckx wrote:I paid $80 for my 1TB WD Caviar Black last year.. It's now $220.. Holy ....

Why my new rig is on an indefinite hold... Storage it set to cost more than Mobo, processor, PSU, and RAM combined.

Well, that and that I've somehow managed to get it in my head that jumping out of an airplane sounds like a good idea. So I'm saving $2,500 to get my jump license...

Here's a good article about the price spike that might interest some.

http://windowssecrets.com/top-story/wha ... es/#story1