I was just thinking in the back of my head about how cheap LEDs have made types of lighting that would've cost way too much (both to install, and in electricity usage) no longer stupidly expensive.
For example, I noticed on Amazon some cheap furniture that has LEDs/power outlets sort of integrated right into them. Looks pretty cyberpunk-ish to my eyes. And I know years ago that sort of thing would've been marked up to high heavens.
Fancy lighting in general has changed drastically in price/design.
So...what are some things, due to changes in demand or changes in tech or changes in anything...that would've been really expensive back in the day, but which no longer seem to be, making them more frugal than they used to be?
Yep, for sure. And you can get a serviceable system for closer to $500, though you aren't going to pay high end games.
Where do you source cheap parts? Maybe its a Canada thing, but things are still not cheap in my experience
Microcenter is the gold standard for cheap PC parts, but they don't sell much online and they have very limited locations.
Beyond that, Newegg and amazon will have sales quite frequently that make a budget builds possible.
In the US $500 might get you a decent office desktop, but I would say to expect closer to $800 minimum for a PC with a dedicated gpu.
FYI, Newegg got sold to some company a few years back and is no longer the geek nirvana it once was. So YMMV if you use it. It can still be good, it's just not as central as it used to be to computer geekdom.
Yeah RIP tigerdirect and old Newegg.
B&H has been a good experience, but their pricing tends to be a bit high with only a handful of good deals.
There's no consistently great place to buy pc components online as far as I'm aware. Amazon is rife with sketchy sellers, Newegg will sell you damaged goods and blame you on the return, best buy hides/mislabels specs, and everywhere else is expensive.
Dude I'm still salty that CompUSA merged into TigerDirect right around the time TigerDirect got sketchy
For those really cheap ones, you're probably talking prefab - hard to complete with them on the low end last I looked (which, admittedly, has been some years). Things like this.