As whole electronic world suffer from RAM shortage and few super greedy fucks… aye, all the prices are stupidly high.

Buying market premade is often worst idea to - they put one nice part and 5 others are lowest tier possible, but then, drop ads that one part is super awesome (and not even always is)… making it whole barely handle unmoded minecraft (quite old game, with much simple graphics).

Buying all parts as You see them on stores now - its freaky expensive, yes… ImHo… don’t, unless You don’t care for wallet.

How to - again, we are in shitty times, but how it used to work before dramas - hunt the promos. You make a list of compatible parts (mostly CPU vs motherboard - they have to be same type, having same “socket type”). And seek promos daily on all stores around, if You see something fairly cheap - get it, then hunt other parts… It may take even few months to complete. Making it work together is no big deal, but for first time, could recommend getting a friend who did that before (there’s plenty).

Sadge, the promo hunt tactic, even if should be waaaay cheaper… is risky now - after few months, we may end with few great parts bought for silly monies… but the last one or two parts may get fucky high prices by the time… market is fucky crazy now, the way is risky, still should be cheapest for strong pc.

Note for hunt, sometimes, it may be even worthy getting whole cheap pc from market mentioned earlier - and throw bad parts out, keeping only 1-2 good parts for friendly price, it happens too, many tech markets don’t care the current prices, if some old stuff block warehouse, they may push them out for whatever, to just make warehouse space for newer things.

Yeah, market is sick… some called me mad, but few solid pro premades are on the market too… Personally, I’m standing with SteamMachine - went for it at moment of preorders, at moment, price of it was called high… today (half year later), price is still same, and everything else is stupidly higher. The power of SteamMachine is just a mid tier, nothing fancy. Some hunted could still be cheaper and-or stronger, at cost of daily checking lots of places for promos, if some have time for that, maybe maybe…

Note for SteamMachine being fairly cheap now, but being only mid tier… The rush for photorealistic graphics is gone. New mid tier pc from 2005-2015 would last 4-5 years before newest games wouldn’t run on this mid pc of back then. Currently, it all slowed down a lot - current mid tier pc, like SM… I expect it to handle new games just fine in 6-8 years in mid settings, so still playable.

Woah, wall of text. Welcome to the herd of PCMR.