When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Heres how it works.
Gatekeeping is something that’s brought up a lot, isn’t it?
I’m not here to talk about that trashcan snare drum, though no.
I bought my first gaming PC back in 2011.
Perfect for a bit ofWorld of Warcraft: Cataclysmraiding with my guildFractureat the time.
In January 2013, I upgraded to a GTX 660, Asus DirectCU II, with 2GB of VRAM.
Flash forward to 2024, and its a whole other ball game.
That’s an increase of 40% over that 11-year time frame.
RTX 4090s debuted at, what, $1,800?
Even the best Titans used to land around the $800 to $1,000 mark back in the day.
That’s nearly double the cost for the flagship GPU of choice.
Certainly with the moreaffordable GPUs, anyway.
A good PR move and a smart sales move.
First on the agenda, localized buying power has not kept up with inflation.
Certainly not in the US.
Simply put, wages haven’t kept up with rising costs.
And then there’s everything else.
Cooling, lighting, fans, custom keyboards, monitors, the works.
Everything is a specialist product now, and that all adds to the overall build cost of a PC.
All of that comes together to push an average system build well out of reach of an average wallet.
Now, it’s a pipe dream.
A memory from within the mists of time.
Oh boy, it is top-notch, at least on the value front.
Well played, Intel.
Team Blue has made a grand statement with this thing.
Where will all this lead?
Still, this is just one drop in the ocean.
One component out of many.
PCs are still too expensive.
This is just a fact.
You want the best experience?
Best take out a loan or remortgage the house.
There’s always been an “us and them” mentality when it comes to PC gaming.
Always a Red versus Blue, or Green versus Red, or PC versus console conflict.
There wasn’t artificial financial gatekeeping as there is now.
