Some of you might not agree with me, but I believe we don't need more powerful products. The current crop of PC hardware is plenty powerful for whatever one wishes to do with their PC. Every successive generation of CPUs and GPUs should aim for bigger numbers, but that doesn't need to be the priority anymore. The PC hardware industry has far bigger kinks to iron out — unfinished products, an unhealthy focus on AI, runaway pricing, and paper launches. We don't want record-breaking GPUs or faster CPUs; for once, give us lasting products that most of us can realistically own.

Innovation that was promised years ago

What happened to DirectStorage?

Many of us have forgotten the promises made by the industry in the form of revolutionary technologies like DirectStorage. Poised to disrupt the traditional pipeline of asset decompression bottlenecked by the CPU, it sought to connect the storage directly to the GPU for radically improved loading times and performance. However, years after that promised reality, only a handful of games support DirectStorage, and fewer still implement it the right way. In many instances, gamers have seen better performance without DirectStorage in games that seemingly support the feature.

Even ray tracing, championed by Nvidia back in 2018, still carries a prohibitive performance penalty on all but the most powerful graphics cards. Anyone hoping to experience the stellar visuals associated with the latest ray-traced games needs to choose between subpar performance and overpriced hardware. We have more powerful graphics cards than ever, but ray tracing remains elusive for the majority of gamers. When will we see a game-changing shift that will make ray tracing easier to run on mainstream hardware?

More rigorous QA

Is it too much to ask for functioning hardware?

The last few years have been detrimental to the reputation of most PC hardware giants when it comes to quality assurance. Intel's overvolted 13th and 14th Gen CPUs were just part of the equation; Nvidia and AMD didn't want to feel left out either. Many RTX 50 series GPUs shipped with missing ROPs, the updated 12V-2x6 connector continued to exhibit reliability issues, and AMD's Ryzen X3D CPUs were seemingly dying inside the motherboard sockets. Even the otherwise excellent Intel Battlemage GPUs shipped with an unexplained performance overhead when paired with older and budget CPUs.

The standards of testing and RMA practices have dipped to a new low in the industry, and consumers are left holding the bag. In the race to be the first to market, manufacturers are slacking off in the reliability department. Users don't have too many options, and are forced to buy whatever's available. However, something needs to change soon if more companies don't want to risk lasting damage to their brand.

Real performance gains instead of AI dependency

Where are the gains?

The latest generation of graphics cards seems to have taken AI-powered performance a bit too seriously. Instead of offering hardware-driven performance gains to consumers, both Nvidia and AMD have put all their eggs in the AI basket, shamelessly marketing sky-high FPS numbers powered by frame generation. Despite what the FPS counter says, AI-generated frames aren't equivalent to rendered frames — the perceived smoothness of the game suffers to a degree that most people can spot.

Nvidia even claimed that its RTX 5070 packed RTX 4090 levels of performance, which obviously proved false when third-party benchmarks compared the rasterized performance of the two GPUs. AMD's RX 9000 series didn't offer a huge performance jump over the RX 7000 series either. If this is a sign of things to come, consumers will be forced to rethink PC upgrades in terms of value and longevity.

Components that we can actually buy

At realistic MSRPs

What use are the best CPUs and GPUs when most people can't even buy them for months after launch? That's exactly what's been happening during every major launch for the last five years. Whether it's due to a crypto boom, the pandemic, scalpers, or strained supply chains, it's been a nightmare for consumers to even get an opportunity to buy overpriced PC parts. The string of paper launches continues, and MSRPs don't mean a thing anymore. Street prices keep climbing in the face of insufficient supply, and only those with deep pockets can stomach jacked-up prices at storefronts or third-party platforms.

Manufacturers ought to work on improving stock levels or avoid marketing fictitious MSRPs. Instead, they continue to operate with the knowledge that their products will continue to sell no matter what. There are enough consumers who will pay anything to own the latest hardware. This keeps the vicious cycle alive, preventing lasting changes to the supply chain or marketing trends. I would love to see in-stock products at announced prices the next time Nvidia, AMD, or Intel launches a new CPU or GPU lineup.

Digestible prices for mainstream components

It's too late already

Inflated prices aside, the MSRPs themselves are climbing faster than the consumers can keep up with. Buoyed by the post-pandemic demand and an AI bubble that continues to grow, manufacturers have made hay at the expense of the consumer. Even if you ignore the flagship products that have always carried premium pricing, today's mainstream hardware fails to justify the asking price. Graphics cards like the RTX 5060 Ti, CPUs like the Ryzen 7 9700X, Gen5 SSDs, and several B850 motherboards are priced way beyond their worth.

Even budget components don't have budget prices now; the price creep is real. Sub-$300 GPUs rarely sell at those prices anyway, and $300–$500 barely offer a worthy gaming experience, at least nothing that justifies the current prices. Shrinkflation is already making GPUs worse every year; rising prices are killing the value from the other end. It's a double whammy for the consumers who can do nothing but watch the chaos unfold. It's high time we saw a dramatic correction in prices that more closely resemble the value of these so-called "affordable" components.

Peak performance is here; it's time to fix everything else

Instead of producing halo products priced like luxury products, PC hardware companies should pivot to fixing the underlying problems plaguing the industry. Poor stock levels, overpriced components, AI dependency, and pathetic QA standards should be on the radar instead of achieving higher benchmark numbers. We have enough performance already; all we need is a comprehensive overhaul of everything else.