Ars Technica System Guide, “GPUs are kind of affordable again” edition

(credit: Aurich Lawson)

It's been quite a while since we last put together a desktop PC-building guide, partly because trying to fight your way through bots and scalpers to pay twice the retail price for a graphics card was a miserable experience that we wouldn't want to inflict on anyone.

But even as 2022 has made most things more expensive, PC builders have lucked out. CPUs and motherboards are in stock and easy to buy, DDR4 memory is actually cheap, and you can head online to Amazon, Best Buy, or Newegg and find virtual shelves full of GPUs at prices that, while still somewhat inflated, would have seemed miraculous six months ago.

Overall PC demand is expected to fall quite a bit in the coming months, but if you've been waiting patiently to build your first desktop or replace an existing build, this is probably the best time to build a PC since mid-2020.

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