Early 2023 was prime build era

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ijustwanttolive14@reddit

It was good for being bad but man I miss the 2016 days.

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testfire10@reddit

Prime build era in the last 3 years? Maybe.

Prime build era ever? Nah. That was like 2010 or earlier

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Sandy Bridge launch time was great. AMD and NVIDIA were actually quite competitive, the 2500K was great value and I don’t remember RAM being terrible. SSDs were just starting to hit the point where any midrange build could add one (but still needed a HDD for bulk storage).

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Eeekpenguin@reddit

AMD cpus was not competitive in the sandy bridge era. Their bulldozer cpus were hot garbage. That being said you might mean gpus which I agree with tho. I remember I had the Nvidia GTX 560ti which was solid mid range card but I think AMD gpus were fine back then as well. RAM was fine, ssds like you said were new and expensive for size so most builds had a HDD. DVD drives too in pretty much every build. And man I think cases back then kinda suck to build in.

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dertechie@reddit

I definitely meant on the GPU side.

The Phenom II chips did well enough against Core 2 and the first generation Core i5/7 series. Nehalem was unquestionably better but it was also a much more expensive X58 platform and CPU, as much as enthusiasts usually just got the i7-920 and overclocked it so hard that Intel started charging extra for that. They did well enough that I was considering a Phenom II tri-core for my college build right until Sandy Bridge info started dropping in earnest. I remember not being overly impressed with the Lynnfield i5/i7 designs and intentionally waiting for the next iteration. To get technical, Nehalem moved the memory controller on die and Lynnfield used a traditional north bridge. I was waiting to see if Sandy Bridge could match Nehalem despite being short a memory channel. It exceeded my expectations and I rode that chip for a decade.

Phenom II was at least strong enough that Intel priced Sandy Bridge to beat it instead of ignoring it - Sandy Bridge blew AMD out of the water and did it at a good price. Once Bulldozer joined the party CPU competition in the midrange and above was kind of over until Zen showed up five years later.

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JonWood007@reddit

Eh there's a prime build period every 5 years or so imo. 2007 had the legendary q6600/8800 gt build, 2012 you had an ivy bridge i5/i7 with a 2 gb ram gpu like a 660 or 7850, 2017 you got 6 core i5/i7s with 1060s/580s, and then 2023 is when you had various cpu options that were affordable and you had just about the best pick of gpus for the money that we've seen. Its not the best ever but the best in modern times.

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Eeekpenguin@reddit

I think 2017 would be ryzen 5 and 1070 right? For best bang for buck gaming performance. 2023 would be 5800x3d with a 4070 but that's getting pricier post pandemic. 60 series Nvidia used to be mid range but 2060 and beyond feels out of step now with not enough vram.

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OrbitalOutlander@reddit

1996-2000!

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FrostyWalrus2@reddit

900-1000 series gtx timeframe.

4790k, 16GB RAM, 980 Ti, a couple of 500GB SSDs, and a 144hz 2k monitor was around $2100 USD. Witcher 3 hairworks was the GPU melter. Good times.

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FullHouse222@reddit

Remember when the 970 that retailed for like $300 was enough for 1080p gaming? Sure it had the whole 3.5 vs 4 VRAM thing, but for $300 who gives a shit? 1080p/60fps easy on most games and your whole PC cost like less than $1k.

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MeatMan49@reddit

I’m still rocking the 4790K to this day. Has worked for every game I’ve ever played except 2.

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lonewanderer812@reddit

I had it's little brother, the 4690k for many years in my build. It's still putting in work in my friend's daughters computer.

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punktual@reddit

4790k

I had a 4790k, that thing was the GOAT for its era. only had a 780 with it at the time but it still slapped.

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another-altaccount@reddit

I feel like the 5800x3D has become the new “4790k” for the modern era.

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Lord_Nordyx@reddit

I remember when my brother bought the AMD 6950, absolute monster for the price. That card tore through every game we threw at it. It wasn’t until 2015 that I finally upgraded to a GTX 970. Funny enough, I’m getting the same feeling with my RX 6800. I’ve had it for a few years now, and it still runs anything at 1440p.

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joeh4384@reddit

I had a 6950 and bio flashed it to a 6970.

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Shamefur_Disgrace@reddit

6950 was a great card

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Zrepsilon@reddit

I’d say late teens. The 10XX cards were amazing for the price

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Aranxi_89@reddit

It really was the golden age… you had a mix of options too, and it wasn’t the all glass and RGB aesthetics we have now.

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RAF_Buckets@reddit

I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them

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Brinstone@reddit

Dementiaposting

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Diakia@reddit

Take me back to 2014/15 when I could build a PC with 16gb of RAM, an i5-4690k, a GTX 970 or R9 290, a 1TB HDD and a 256gb SSD for $1000 AUD. Now a similarly specced PC is $2000+ 😭😂

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tall_ginger_dude@reddit

Remember when a motherboard was just a thing that connected everything? Remember when they were cheap? Even those have gone through the roof, full of RGB and gamer armor. It's hard to find one for cheap anymore. Even fans have gotten insanely expensive.

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aragorn18@reddit

You can find a bunch of very decent motherboards around the $150-200 range. Considering inflation motherboards have held really close to their old prices.

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Caleb-Wendt69@reddit

I remember a time when you could get a decent motherboard for $60-$80

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aragorn18@reddit

When was that? How much has inflation impacted overall prices since then?

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Caleb-Wendt69@reddit

Would have been mid 2010s I imagine

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Shamefur_Disgrace@reddit

They were a bit over $100 for the first half of the 2010s. For a mid range gaming mobo

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Caleb-Wendt69@reddit

Yeah I may be thinking of earlier than that. Just dug up an invoice from 2017 where I bought a Z97 for $100.

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MWink64@reddit

I remember getting a decent motherboard and CPU for under $100 a little over 10 years ago.

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lonewanderer812@reddit

16gb of RAM, an i5-4690k, a GTX 970 or R9 290, a 1TB HDD and a 256gb SSD

That's the exact computer (with a 970) that I built around Christmas of 2014. I'm still using the same case and in a way the power supply from that build. The PSU failed after about 7 years and I'm still rocking it's RMA'd replacement that I got.

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synanimate@reddit

Haha! My first build was a 4690k / GTX 970 / 16GB DDR3. I've still got the parts and recently rebuilt it into a new case as a Batocera/Emulation PC connected to my 27" CRT tv outputting perfect analogue 240p.

I just could never get rid of those parts and now it's paid off.

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WizardMoose@reddit

I'm not trying to be mean, but just about every year since 2021 has been a horrible time to do a build. It's just become the norm now. Mid tier cards for $250-$300, mid tier CPUs for $150 sometimes less, 16GB Kits for $100 max.

Just go look at some of the builds and prices from 2018, and it was a significant difference for budget builds, mid tier, and high tier PCs.

People weren't recommending used hardware nearly as much. Which only increased since 2021 due to supply and prices.

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Significant_Fill6992@reddit

Im completely happy with my 7900xtx and 7800x3d build from late 2023. It felt a little pricy but is cheap by current standards and with the diminishing returns from graphics cards I'll be good another 10 years.

I got lucky

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chretienhandshake@reddit

While you enjoy those ten years you could save a few buck per month for your next PC.

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jhenryscott@reddit

Yeah I got back into the hobby hard in 24/25, and I really scored on timing. My $3800 pc now costs north of $7k

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cubanohermano@reddit

I also spent 3800 on a pc lol

9800x3d, 5090, 32gb cl30 6000mhz and 2 4tb ssds lol

Edit: current market rate for the pc is around 4600-5200 (since I’m not sure how to charge for a 4tb server ssd )

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SunnySpot69@reddit

What I wouldn't do for those 4tb hard drives.

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cubanohermano@reddit

I got my second one recently for around 300us on hardwareswap

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jhenryscott@reddit

Yeah basically same. Few more NVMEs and more ddr5 gets it there

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Warcraft_Fan@reddit

Same. I finished my build with 5800x3D, 7800 XT, and 64 GB RAM. Before this one, I used to rock 2700k that clocked to 5GHz and ran well from 2011 until 2021 when I replaced it with 3700x AMD build, then swapped the CPU later to 5800x3D

The last exterior update is adding a couple of 22TB hard drives before the price started going up faster than Donald Trump's blood pressure at his latest dismal approval rating.

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lichtspieler@reddit

My 2700k with a 5.2GHz OC lasted till 2020, the mainboard was toast. Glad to year your system made it even further.

For me it was past SandyBridge =>3800x / AM4 / 32GB DDR4 3600 CL16-16-16 (RTX 3090-FE) and replaced it with a 9800x3D / AM5 / 64GB DDR5 6000 CL26 (RTX 4090-FE) .

But I build a secondary 7800x3D / 64GB DDR5 6000 CL30 PC (3090-FE) and two NAS with 2x64GB DDR5 5600 + 48TB SSD / 192GB HDD capacity.

The storage upgrade alone in 2023-2024 would be now \~9000€.

I got lucky with the DDR5 migration and my NAS build.

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StinkySewerPickle@reddit

Shrinkflation

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Prestigious-Pipe8198@reddit

I paid MUCH more for a mid-high tier rig(4070ti) last year than I did for a absolute top tier rig(1080ti) in 2017.

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fakeaccount572@reddit

To be fair, it's not a horrible time if you have money.

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Supernormalguy@reddit

2019, my friend and I built our PC’s using a 9900k, 32gb Ddr4, and a 2080.

Since then, I swapped out the 2080 for a 3080.

Jumping to newer gen in 2026 is suicide. I’m better off trying to go up to 64gb of DDR4 and maybe a 5070ti

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vkevlar@reddit

I have to go earlier, honestly. I mark the start of the decline at the release of the RTX20x0 series, when they start pushing raytracing as a reason to make their components more expensive and higher wattage. Everything else follows suit, some more quickly than others, and now... we have "run at lower resolution" and "use guesswork frames" being touted as advantageous.

We've moved from concrete gains every generation to ... this, and costs just kept rising. Storage and memory were a brief exception, as there was a glut on the market for a while.

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aykcak@reddit

2020 was when I planned to upgrade my PC. After a long half a year of Covid lockdown I was looking forward to the new generation of GPUs, with the money I saved.

Such a disappointment.

Everything that came after that was marginally worse. It did not recover because it will not recover, ever. This is new norm

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WizardMoose@reddit

I think RAM can still recover if AI lost most of its funding in the next 6 months. But if they last more than another 6 months, it might become the norm. As long as big corporations are willing to pay these prices for b2b and commercial sales, it'll stay this way regardless of supply.

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gangatronix@reddit

i built my pc in 2018 and ram was overpriced back then too

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dotareddit@reddit

when GTX 1080/1080tis were out, that was some far and above the best times from memory.

I did builds with i3s for family members, i helped a few friends build out new desktops.

Everything was relatively affordable and performance at each price point was enticing.

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Cerebral_Zero@reddit

Whoever got a 1080 Ti at MSRP and then stuck with it until the RTX 4090 MSRP really did good.

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MusicMedical6231@reddit

4090s came put 4 years ago and are 50% more expensive. Which is more really cause theyre all pre-owned.

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FullHouse222@reddit

Cheap ram, cheap CPU, GPU properly optimized. That era of the 900-1000 series was so good for building.

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Sakazuki27@reddit

I bought 16gb ddr4 in June 2025 for 45 euros

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Apprehensive-Ad4063@reddit

2014 was actually prime build era

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OrbitalOutlander@reddit

1996-2000 were the prime build years. Computer shows for buying parts, top of the line specs that lasted more than 3 months, actual “big-deal” upgrades. Autoexec.bat/config.sys shenanigans. Oh man, I miss those days.

Anyone miss going to computer shows and trying to bargain?

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Reutermo@reddit

How old are you OP? Because I can't grasp anyone thinking that any time after 2020 atleast have been a good time to build a PC.

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penywinkle@reddit

The last "prime" era was just before bitcoins took off.

Like when the GTX1080Ti hit the market, in the second half of 2017.

After that GPU prices were never the same, the RTX2000 series were vastly overpriced, the DLSS wasn't all there yet. The 3000 series came out right in the covid pandemic...

And yes, it all plateaued again between 2023 and the first half of 2025. But it certainly wasn't prime...

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Lawrence3s@reddit

I bought 7700x + b650 + 2x16 ddr5 for $530 on Black Friday 2024. I also bought 4tb ssd for $230 early 2024. Both in Canadian dollars pre tax.

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awfulWinner@reddit

I'd say peak was just before COVID.

When I lined up in a snowstorm trying to be one of the first 10 people in line at a computer store for the privilege of buying a 3060ti for 729cdn .. I knew computing was going to start a downward trend.

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depatrickcie87@reddit

You're very young, aren't you? There were periods in the past couple decades when a gaming PC could be built for less than that generations xbox or playstation, and it would rival it in performance and fidelity while opening up the entire PC software catalogue to you.

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waffels@reddit

OP posted his opinion, on a social platform designed for discussion, and then made zero effort to engage in any discussion. What a weird thing to do.

What was the point? Why did OP even bother if they don’t even care? Zoomer behavior for sure.

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vkevlar@reddit

More likely an engagement-bot.

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testfire10@reddit

Very young. I’m guessing 16 tops.

Having 35 years of pc gaming behind us and saying 3 years ago was the best time to build is a … take, that’s for sure

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iHaveLotsofCats94@reddit

Honestly. My last build was early 21 and i was able to build a 10700k pc for like $1200. I'm still using it today, with the only upgrades consisting of more ram, a 5070Ti, and a different case. I'm seeing dudes saying they got a screaming deal at almost 4 grand, which is nutty. 2021 wasn't even the best time back then. Just better than today

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Hollowsong@reddit

I think you're trying to gaslight us.

Prices in 2023 were absolutely atrocious

$200 for 32gb? In 2018 it was like 32gb for $50.

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SagittaryX@reddit

It was fine right up until September of last year really.

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le-battleaxe@reddit

You're looking at a very narrow window of time of post Covid pricing normalization. While you're not entirely wrong, the statement "prime build era" is objectively false. Early 2000's through mid 2010's was far superior in terms of "build era". PC builds were on par or cheaper than console prices, while being better in most cases. GPU's weren't a mortgage payment, while price to performance was better and generational jumps were far more meaningful.

This isn't a "back in my day" gripe, while it feels like it.... The market just got stupid and we had no choice but to play along.

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Soulspawn@reddit

Oh sweet summer child, the 10 series era was probably peak time to build, AMD had competitive in the CPU market, 1070 beat almost all the previous gen and was at a good price with lots of discounts, ram and SSD price down.

it will never be like that again.

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51dux@reddit

Best years to build was during the 1080 and 2080 era, everything after that was just lack of stock, scarcity and such.

Never since 2020 have I planned a build that makes sense on paper only to find out that some parts will never be in stock or at least at MSRP.

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raidensnakeezio@reddit

I remember the price for the 1080ti being considered ridiculous at the time, but it honestly offered so much value. Off the top of my head it was considerably outperforming the Maxwell (900-series) Titan for much less. From what I remember, the 3080/ti was also going to offer a similar redefinition of price/performance, or relative performance to the expectations of the day, but then Covid supply issues hit, so that was all for being ever able to come close to what the value of the 1080ti offered.

'Member when we thought PC gaming was going to get more and more cheaper over time?

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TheHawthorne@reddit

1080ti was the end of the peak for me. Card gave me 8 years of 1440p gaming across 2 builds from 2018-2026. Before that I was upgrading every 2-3 years.

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e2-woah@reddit

Gtx 970, 750 ti, 980 ti, 1060 6gb, 1070, 1080 ti was prime.

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beedunc@reddit

February 2025 was it.

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CassetteLine@reddit

Not at all. Better than now, but way worse than the last.

2011 you could get a top of the line PC for $1,500 to $2,000. Now you can’t even get the top GPU for that.

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Electronic_Welder613@reddit

Nah it was still expensive even back In 2023. A good monitor was also way more expensive back in 2023 as well. Entry level pc back then was still like 1k when you include taxes. It is def worse today obviously, but it was still prohibitive for most working people.

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Dwarf-Eater@reddit

Late 2024 or beginning of 2025 I got a 7600x, mobo, 32gb ram kit, and 1tb nvme for around $350 from a Newegg bundle, in 2024 that bundle sometimes ran for $300. The 7800xt was around $400-500 and the 4070 was too. That was a great build time in modern years before the 5000 series dropped

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Elhehir@reddit

The intel core 2 quad Q6600 was the golden era, that cpu was amazing for the price for the longest time!

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shtoops@reddit

peak

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joeh4384@reddit

My biggest regret is not loading up on decent $100 nvme pcie4 drives.

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tigerbreak@reddit

I (rarely) build PCs as a side hustle these days, but I keep my unicorn customer - parent of triplets who gets a new top spec build yearly in summer.

They usually get a top tier CPU, lots of RAM, one of the best GPUs (not the absolute best but near the top) and a good amount of storage.

I’ve got their order for this summer and I’ve already told them that it’s going to be substantially more expensive due to components.

The first year I did this for them it was about 2 grand. It’s triple now.

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kemicalkontact@reddit

Covid prices were crazy and it hasn't gotten any better since then. Maybe a period of dip when people were transitioning out from AM4 and DDR4 but the jump from 2019 to 2020 was drastic.

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Impossible-Move-2096@reddit

facts early 2023 was peak build season 🔥 cheap DDR5 + SSDs made high‑end rigs way more accessible than now. feels like we won’t see that combo again soon.

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CommanderCackle@reddit

I remember building my PC when ryzen and the 1000 Nvidia series was new, I was able to build my entire computer for about 650 Canadian and at the time it was running everything pretty well

Ryzen 1600, gtx 1050ti, 16 gigs of ram, 256 gb ssd

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tall_ginger_dude@reddit

In 2017 we had a GTX 1080 Ti with 11GB of VRAM offer performance that was almost unthinkable for it's time..... MSRP for $699...... The GTX 1070, which outperformed a 980 Ti MSRP'd for $399, and often went on sale for $350.

We had incredible budget options like the GTX 1060 6GB and the RX 580 regularly going for $199 once the crypto boom passed. Budget systems were actually still budget and using new parts. You couldn't build a gaming desktop for $600 in 2023 with all new parts.

2023 still sucked. Not as much as now, but it wasn't great.

2016-2020 was the golden era. Blame the people paying 3x MSRP for an RTX 3080 during the pandemic for the mess we have now.

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Nacroma@reddit

In addition, blame the people thinking 3090-5090s are GPUs you should get if all you do with them is gaming.

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Monotask_Servitor@reddit

GPUs already sucked in 2023. Prime years for PC builds were in the 2000s when the advances in PC component try were comfortably outpacing Moore’s law and every time you did a build you really felt like you were making a quantum leap over your last system yet actually paying less.

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TheHawthorne@reddit

Only way you think otherwise is if you came into consciousness within the last 5 years.

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festess@reddit

I remember even in 2018 buying a 1080Ti for exorbitant prices as the crypto book was well underway

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Sensei-D@reddit

Back then, it was necessary to upgrade every 3 years. Now you can probably go 8 years and your system would still run fine for most daily tasks.

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Akeshi@reddit

I ran my Q6600 for about 8 years...

Regardless, considering a build was a third of the price, I'd rather pay the same but have three PCs out of it than one creaking system.

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BrummyIVF@reddit

Ryzen 9 5950x; EVGA 3090 24GB; 16GB of DDR4 in 2021 (full build) cost me only £3,500!

Everything seems like £5K up now!

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derkapitan@reddit

1999-2005 was a great time to build pcs, prebuilts were terrible and expensive. So many great vendors and you could build a pc that absolutely stomped games for cheap

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Therunawaypp@reddit

I would say literally right up uluntil this ram trouble. Sure high end cards were hard to find, but everything else was pretty good imo.

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Warcraft_Fan@reddit

It was good up to the mid 2025, before AI started sucking up market and screwing us

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ImpossibleWarning252@reddit

The thing people are glossing over is that "prime era" depends entirely on what tier you were building. early 2023 was amazing for high-end stuff bc the 4080/4090 were actually obtainable at something close to msrp and ddr5 had just crashed in price - but if you were trying to put together a budget 1080p rig the value proposition was already pretty rough compared to even 2019 builds. the real golden era imo was that sandy bridge window in 2011-2012 when a 2500k and a 560 ti could hang with consoles that cost more than your entire tower. that was the last time building a pc felt like an outright financial win rather than just a different kind of investment

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RJsRX7@reddit

Early 2023? Ehhhh. It was only an improvement because 30-series launch coincided with crypto zomg wtf bbq.

Really, it's been a "can I get a GPU?" thing since that. And now instead of "can I get a GPU?" it's "can I get RAM and storage?", but RAM and storage thankfully aren't quite as susceptible to being sucked away by the anti-optimization vacuum as GPUs.

Plenty of 2017-2019 builds that are either still running games competently or can get a drop in chip upgrade and a better GPU and continue running games competently though.

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