Demand for PCs and associated components has slowed and companies/resellers are over-inventoried, hence prices are falling.
The question is - for the bargain shoppers, have prices
bottomed yet?
IT guys, what do you think?
I decided to top up the DRAM in my current system, picked up 2 x 16GB of DDR4-3200 ECC (takes me from 40GB to 64GB) for $96 at Crucial.com. Okay, that seemed cheap.
However, when I looked at upgrading to a new system (the current one would be a better backup than what I currently have) the prices - well, better than last year, but didn't totally wow me. Here's what I spec'd at Lenovo:
Model: P620
CPU: AMD Threadripper PRO 5945WX (12 core 4.10 GHz)
DRAM: 8 GB (I'll add 64GB at Crucial.com, instead of paying Lenovo prices)
Graphics: nVIDIA T1000 x 2
Storage: M.2 SSD 512GB x 2 (RAID 0), SATA HDD 2TB x 2 (RAID 0)
O/S: Win 11 64 PRO
Other: DVD, keyboard, mouse, etc
Support: 3 year on-site
This is about $3,670 with the current promotion. I may be able to get it a little cheaper through a friend's IBM discount. Maybe $3,200?
Is this so cheap that I should pull the trigger?
I don't "need" a new workstation "right now", the purchase would be more about taking advantage of a price crash and having a better backup. Yes, the 5945 beats my current Xeon E-2224G in benchmarks and would speed up some tasks a little.
https://cpu-benchmark.org/compare/intel-xeon-e-2224g/amd-ryzen-threadripper-pro-5945wx/ I keep PCs/workstations for at least 5 years (The family Macs, we run until they drop).