What is this fuss about showing their top of the top end motherboards first is nothing new you could get x470 and x570 and z590 z490 z390 z290 etc etc boards in the 400 -600 price range and even higher at times , such boards are so over kill they can feed 500 watts a CPU and not go out in a firing blaze for the glory of the benchmark scores ! And you pay for having better sound chipset extra controllers more usbs more phases faster lan wifi .... Overkill cooling on top of the overkill vrm.... 150-200 mbs will come they will not have overkill vrm but there will be models with decent . Some usb will be missing too few ports here and debug LCD or power and reset button will not be on the board but performance will be the same. You know as it is right now.

Soon a MB will cost a grand, ram will cost a grand, gpu miltiple grands, psu a grand, case a grand, the whole package will be close to 10 000. Yet i'm pretty sure my salary was not multiplied by 5 in the last 5 years.

DarkQuark:

OK so essentially within the next few years a gaming PC (or a high end PC) will only be something in the upper middle class can afford assuming there is still such a thing in the coming years. I find this concerning because the higher these prices trend in general for laptops and PCs the more folks you leave behind on the lower end scale of what people make each year. And the reality is that pool of people is fairly large and growing by leaps and bounds. Now if you are somewhat older like me you will remember how PCs started. They were initially kind of a luxury item. But that was before the internet was critical for functioning in modern life. If we go back to that you will have a large pool of people who won't have PCs. It will be like say India (as I understand it) where folks mostly use phones (usually low end) to interface with the internet.

Just wanted

DarkQuark:

OK so essentially within the next few years a gaming PC (or a high end PC) will only be something in the upper middle class can afford assuming there is still such a thing in the coming years. I find this concerning because the higher these prices trend in general for laptops and PCs the more folks you leave behind on the lower end scale of what people make each year. And the reality is that pool of people is fairly large and growing by leaps and bounds. Now if you are somewhat older like me you will remember how PCs started. They were initially kind of a luxury item. But that was before the internet was critical for functioning in modern life. If we go back to that you will have a large pool of people who won't have PCs. It will be like say India (as I understand it) where folks mostly use phones (usually low end) to interface with the internet.

THIS comment relates to me. I'm 36 and when my dad left me at a young age and my brother schools were pushing students to use PC's. My mom was tight on money and got us a PHILLIPS WEB TV. Boy that was a struggle LOL! Getting to the point I agree with your comment and I see that separation on some products the only good news is that computers are saturated market and sadly now the lower end class are the bottom feeders but you can still get a PC cheap it will be old or slow though.

are these prices a joke? or are the being serious.

DarkQuark:

To take exceptions and apply them as a rule does not mitigate the reality that most people face. What you have mentioned is possible yet rare in the overall. In MOST cases your amount of income (whatever the source) will dictate what you can afford to purchase either as a necessity or a simply a want. In MOST cases higher income earners will generally be a separate class. That's pretty much how humanity has operated since it started.

I disagree in modern times, and by that i mean maybe the last five to 10 years. people are living beyond their means, personal dept has skyrocketed, certainly more recently where inflation has leapt. Il also give a personal example. a friend of mine earns almost double what i do, but he has a mortgage, several loans, two cars on credit, he likes to drink and smoke and his family rarely cook so order in or eat out, his annual expenditure is significant. Me, being a single guy (children are grown up) have a ton of disposable income, i worked hard to clean my mortgage years ago, have no personal dept, have a lifestyle that is sustainable, saved up and bought my cars and pay my CC off at the end of each month if i use it. Its basic maths and its true whether you are running a country or family, in the short term you can only influence the economy in three basic ways, generate greater income, decrease expenditure or borrow.

Dimitrios1983:

sadly now the lower end class are the bottom feeders but you can still get a PC cheap it will be old or slow though.

4K 60fps gaming is far from being a basic human right.