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Comment by Ygg2 | Hacker News Reader

> Does it have to be DIY?

Yes. Because only DIY allow your computer to be repaired at will. Go laptop or corporate and those get increasingly hard to fix. Not to mention if DIY market is healthy the non-DIY market is even cheaper.

> But price per performance continues to improve. A 5050

If 5050 didn't beat a 10 year old graphics card it would be an even greater waste of sand.

> Governments might want it, but that doesn't transfer to chip makers.

If governments want it, there is money to be made.

> Plus people could buy old datacenter chips for pennies on the dollar.

Sure, but no one will be able to afford all the other amenities. Buying a server CPU isn't the issue. It's buying every other part of the server rack. Namely the board, the cooler, the memory and the storage. And housing and power for it.

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> If 5050 didn't beat a 10 year old graphics card it would be an even greater waste of sand.

It beats the 10 year old high end. That's not necessary to avoid being a waste of sand.

But that's not the point. As long as you can keep getting better performance for less money, things are getting more affordable.

> Buying a server CPU isn't the issue. It's buying every other part of the server rack. Namely the board, the cooler, the memory and the storage. And housing and power for it.

Motherboards are looking at the smallest price hikes of all. Coolers are dirt cheap and a quality thermalright is less than $20. Housing for a server is about the same as a desktop and not changing. Half this list is nonsense.

Memory is going up a lot. But that's the one we started on. And you can get a reasonable amount for a couple hundred dollars, and acceptable storage for less than one hundred. Power isn't going crazy either.

And you didn't address how your threshold for "affordable" would exclude every year before about 2019. It's too strict.

> Because only DIY allow your computer to be repaired

Listen, if I can get a whole computer for $300 then I don't need repair. It's a real downside, but if the CPU and motherboard are soldered together and take each other out then it's like I doubled the risk they break within seven years. And after seven years I'd replace both anyway. So that's like a $50 penalty, not a disqualifier. And the mini PCs I was citing have detachable memory and storage.

> It beats the 10 year old high end. That's not necessary to avoid being a waste of sand.

I remember when GPUs didn't need to wait 10 years for same chip makers worst offering to beat the top of the line.

> Motherboards are looking at the smallest price hikes of all.

For now.

And for the record I bought a bargain bin Xeon. Only to realize later the only motherboard that accepts it costs $1000. And I needed another Xeon chip. This was around 2020

> And you didn't address how your threshold for "affordable" would exclude every year before about 2019. It's too strict

Honestly. It's the last time hardware prices were close to sane.

> Listen, if I can get a whole computer for $300 then I don't need repair.

If you are willing to bear externalities of e-waste. Fine.

Also replace them with what? You think industry will care about power users? Nah. They can eat cock. Everyone gets a tightly sealed mobile phone that LARPs to be a computer.

> I remember when GPUs didn't need to wait 10 years for same chip makers worst offering to beat the top of the line.

It sucks, but it's nowhere near being the kind of barrier you're describing.

> Honestly. It's the last time hardware prices were close to sane.

What I mean is such a standard says that 1990-2018 was all unaffordable. 2019 was basically the only year that qualifies.

> If you are willing to bear externalities of e-waste. Fine.

In terms of e-waste, if you look at an unfixable mini computer with core parts that on average die 2 years sooner than a full-size computer, it causes less e-waste because it's so much smaller.

> Also replace them with what? You think industry will care about power users? Nah. They can eat cock. Everyone gets a tightly sealed mobile phone that LARPs to be a computer.

They can sell bigger chips that cost more money to power users, why would they not care?

But even if it was just phone chips, that would only set back the exponential speed increases by a few years. It wouldn't destroy the market. My brand new phone is way more powerful than my aging desktop. If I could let the desktop borrow its CPU I would do so instantly.

> What I mean is such a standard says that 1990-2018 was all unaffordable. 2019 was basically the only year that qualifies.

Nah, the period around 1080 was honestly the golden age, before the age of RTX ushered the pest that is AI.

> In terms of e-waste, if you look at an unfixable mini computer with core parts that on average die 2 years sooner than a full-size computer, it causes less e-waste because it's so much smaller.

I don't think any particular component in a PC has the same amount of waste as a Mac Mini. And replacing a component is part of 3R (Reuse, Reduce, Recycle).

> They can sell bigger chips that cost more money to power users, why would they not care?

Because power users have less money than large corporations and governments. By selling you an GPU for $1000 that could be sold for $10000, they are losing the $9000 on each sale.

> But even if it was just phone chips

Not just Phone chips, locked down sanitized spy garden. It's very hard to do anything remotely creative on a phone like programming or rendering. You want to use your phone as a Desktop? That's not allowed. It's called War on General Computing. Not war on Consumer Computers.

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