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Wait for the silver lining

The computer hardware scene is pretty bleak right now.

Large and rapid increases in the price of almost all silicon-based devices has seen high-performance computing put almost out of reach of the average consumer.

Gaming PCs are super expensive right now and even upgrading an existing system will inflict a world of hurt on your wallet.

Even if you have no plans to upgrade or expand your existing computer systems you are not immune to these changes. What happens if your computer suffers a GPU or SSD failure? The cost of fixing it may be far more expensive than you would think.

Predictions are that the price of these critical components will continue to increase for at least the next 18 months

However, every cloud has a silver lining.

The reason for the price increases we're seeing is mainly down to the huge demand from data centres, especially those with a focus on AI.

Artificial intelligence systems are incredibly memory, processor and storage-intensive, that's why the price of all these commodities has skyrocketed. This means that there is an incredible amount of this stuff already in use within the walls of AI datacentres across the face of the globe.

So where's the silver lining for us... the plebs who sit right at the end of the priority list for such things?

Well the pace of improvement, especially when it comes to GPU/NPU technology, is amazingly fast.

The next generation of GPUs from NVIDIA (Rubin) are claimed to offer ten times the price-performance ratio when compared to the current (Blackwell) devices.

What does that mean to us?

Well once the Rubin devices hit the market, older tech will become a liablity and a burden rather than an asset.

I predict we'll see every AI datacentre throwing out their legacy silicon as quickly as they can and replacing it with the much more cost-effective new stuff.

Imagine that -- a virtual tsunami of Blackwell-based GPU silicon flooding the second-hand market.

That has to spell good times ahead for those who don't need to live on the bleeding edge of performance.

Just as you can pick up an X99 motherboard, dual Xeon processors and DRAM on AliExpress for just a few hundred dollars these days (a *huge* discount from when they were first sold), I'm picking that pretty soon we'll see a raft of ex-data-centre silicon hitting the second-hand market. A bunch of smart hobbyists will also be coming up with ways to turn this stuff into high-performance desktop computers.

Of course there is only one potential fly in the ointment...

I would not be in the least surprised if, simply to protect its market, NVIDIA and others demand that this last-gen gear be destroyed rather than resold.

NVIDIA and other suppliers could make this a condition of sale for the newer generations of their silicon. If datacentre operators want access to the newest and most cost-effective devices they may have no option but to physically destroy their existing GPUs, CPUs RAM and other bits rather than sell them for re-use.

Only time will tell.

Carpe Diem folks!

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