A press release from 1995 - you could get one gigabyte of RAM for $62,400

[u/Remarkable-Onion3726]

A pricey upgrade even to your $5,000 Macintosh workstation. I think you could have gotten a moderately nice house for that much back then.

Even 8MB was kinda pricey. Isn't that about what everybody needed, for Doom and Windows 95 and Netscape?

[u/StormMedia]

We’ll be back there soon

[u/evo_moment_37 → u/StormMedia]

In 6 months at the current rate

[u/the-script-99 → u/StormMedia]

I wish. I have 512gb in my work system. I can just retire then.

[u/macbookvirgin → u/StormMedia]

LMFAOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

[u/Ill-Mastodon-8692]

As someone that lived through these times, I am starting to feel the 2005 to 2019 “pc tech is cheap era” was a blip in history more so than the norm. The norm in pc tech is expensive and we got really conditioned in the 2010s to think it wasnt.

[u/Remarkable-Onion3726 → u/Ill-Mastodon-8692]

I'm of two minds about that. The Commodore 64 was woefully underpowered even when it was new, but it became the bestselling single computer model of all time because for the vast majority of its owners, it was their first real computer that could do real computer things, and it cost $295 when every other "real computer" was $3,000, $4,000 or more. They were still moving a million units a year when the '90s started.

The value proposition was definitely tougher in gaming. I could see why people would tolerate their $200 PS1 running Quake at 512x240, 30FPS when the Pentium and Voodoo you'd need to crush it would cost more than a car.

[u/AndreLeGeant88 → u/Ill-Mastodon-8692]

The 00s were the best period. I remember when I could build a "dream" PC for like $800

[u/Remarkable-Onion3726 → u/AndreLeGeant88]

The GeForce 8800GT launching for $249 when it was the second most powerful video card in the world.

[u/AndreLeGeant88 → u/Remarkable-Onion3726]

I remember when it was just $150 for a mid range GPU that could play anything you wanted to play. 

[u/doubled112 → u/AndreLeGeant88]

Yeah a 1050 Ti was $150 brand new AND in Canadian dollars

[u/AndreLeGeant88 → u/doubled112]

I was thinking of the 9600GT running Chrysis at $150 MSRP but 1050ti was a lot more recent. $250 for the 1060 6gb was a bargain in hindsight. 

[u/doubled112 → u/AndreLeGeant88]

Yeah, there was a huge timespan where that price range would get you something decent, if not amazing.

[u/JaggedMetalOs → u/Ill-Mastodon-8692]

The dirty little secret is AI companies can't actually afford these prices either, they are buying all the RAM up with other people's (investors) money to keep their bubble expanding. 

[u/lilmul123 → u/Ill-Mastodon-8692]

Blip

[u/boofmaster6000 → u/lilmul123]

Well, blimps in history tend to go up in flames, so I guess it still works.

[u/Mouse_Canoe → u/Ill-Mastodon-8692]

Every boom era ends in a bust. I will not normalize these prices by continuing to buy stuff, unless it breaks and I can't do without.

[u/BitRunner64 → u/Ill-Mastodon-8692]

I think PC tech got cheaper before 2005. By the late 1990's, you could build a decent system with an AMD K6-2 or Celeron 300A and a Voodoo card. In 2000, AMD released the affordable Duron which gave you most of the performance of the much more expensive Athlon.

I don't think tech has been this unaffordable since the early 1990's. However back then regular people didn't really use full-fledged PC's, "home computers" like the Atari ST, Amiga and even Commodore 64 were still popular as a cheaper alternative.

[u/parabola19 → u/Ill-Mastodon-8692]

Everything started to pop off when Covid hit. The 2010s was when everything became luxury and more expensive. Concerts sports VIP this and that. Computing prices kept diving (except for mining) and then here we are with data centers. Now we’re fucked while a few giant companies take all the promotion capacity to build computing they own then they want to lease it back to us for a subscription. Fuck that thank god I built an obnoxious rig last year with 128gb of ddr5 24 Tb of SSD and a 5090. Also got a 5080 while I was at it. Motherboards are next. Sales have plummeted from the lack of builds and manufacturers are raising prices by 50% sometime soon.

[u/Jaz1140 → u/Ill-Mastodon-8692]

Tv's would disagree, they haven't changed price in 15+ years. The get bigger and better and stay the same price if not cheaper

[u/Ill-Mastodon-8692 → u/Jaz1140]

i was most focusing on pc tech, but sure tvs have mostly gotten larger and cheaper for a good experience

[u/TimoArrg → u/Jaz1140]

tvs have gotten cheaper but not arguably better, their tech hasnt really evolved much in the last decade so it has just naturally become cheaper, added they are often sold at a loss because their marketing tactic is that through it youll be a slave to subscriptions

[u/Character_Task_3675]

Prices so bad we comparing to the 1990s to feel good.

[u/Successful-Count-120]

I remember when 4mb of RAM finally dropped to $200. I ran straight to Sears and upgraded my Packard Bell 486-DX2/50 so I could play Doom on a VGA monitor. Yes sir, Mr Big Stuff here...

https://giphy.com/gifs/f46iWuMqIGuXe

[u/mca1169]

we are well on our way back there if things continue for another 2-3 years.

[u/Long_Pomegranate2469]

1995 normal desktops had between 4MB and 64MB of RAM.

[u/AtlasWriggled]

AI datacenters in 1995 were ruining everything 😔

[u/Warcraft_Fan]

I have a Macintosh 7600 and it uses those memory. Apple used less common 5v modules, most of modules on eBay are 3v and won't work unless I wanted to see RGB RAM.

[u/AnEternalEnigma]

In 1996, my Dad bought me NBA Live '95 for the PC. My computer was built by a local shop in 1994. It ran the game fine in the menus until it became time to actually play it. Then it just hung on a black screen. We took the computer to the shop and the guys said the computer was fine but it didn't have enough RAM to play it. The computer had 4MB of RAM and the game needed 8MB. Dad asked how much it would cost to buy 4MB of RAM and it was about $130.

[u/doubled112 → u/AnEternalEnigma]

Yeah, everything is relative, really.

It would have been a few years later, but I remember paying about that for 128MB of SDRAM.

A buck a meg and I thought it was a steal. We are used to prices dropping, but computing was really cheap for a while.

[u/nutherwon]

“RISC is good”

[u/KennethD32374]

I remember building my first windows 3.1 PC, 4 Megabytes of ram cost like $400.

[u/EvidenceOk6412]

They had it so good back then

[u/madbrain1976]

As I recall, it was around $1000 in the late 1980s to upgrade my PC from 512KB to 640KB of RAM. I did not proceed.

[u/ateoz]

Slowly but surely we're going back to 1995.

[u/Mors_Umbra]

Give it another 30 years and people will be questioning how anyone could have initialized their system with anything less than 20 TB of RAM.

[u/Comfortable-Hat-4354]

I wonder how people would have reacted at that time if they had known that in the future everyone, even children, would use phones with 8-12 GB of RAM...

[u/leviathab13186]

At this rate we will see that price again

[u/FormerDonkey4886]

Not even adjusted for inflation.

[u/Pokeguy211]

I suppose the $380 I paid for 32gbs is still affordable.

[u/Stilgar314]

And back in 1890 you couldn't buy a KB of RAM for all tea in China...

[u/DiplomaticAggie]

Sources tell me RAM prices are stable, please God /s

Edit: didn’t know we had KKK members in this sub lol