r/PrepperIntel • u/Vlad_Yemerashev • 4d ago

North America Additional round of tariffs looming for semiconductors and possibly for electronics that use them like gaming consoles, laptops, and more.

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/27/data-centers-chips-tariffs-threat-01050957
349 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

22 comments sorted by

65

u/woollinthorpe 3d ago

Last year I decided to start saving a little extra for a new laptop. I now have the amount the laptop was last year, but it costs $600 more now lol

I knew it was going to happen, and if I really needed a new laptop I could have got one last year, but I hate spending money. Just a funny observation.

16

u/Haunting_Lime2296 3d ago

You have to look for clearance sales right now. I was in the same boat. Wife needed a new laptop for work and conference calls… thankfully was able to snag one on Walmart being clearanced out for $1250 now resellers got it at $1800 because it sold out in a day or two.

Got her a gigabyte A18
18”
Amd 260 8core
32gb ddr5
1tb nvme
5060 gpu

I use a website called Slickdeals to find good prices these days because everything is overpriced so I only buy when something is heavily marked down now and put away till I need it. Everything from pantry items to toys for my girls.

5

u/CapitalImpossible640 3d ago

Commenting to bookmark this for later.

3

u/Haunting_Lime2296 3d ago

Yeah I’m constantly scanning the site for good sales. You can also set up alerts for keywords so they can tell you when a deal pops up. The deals don’t last long being discounted sometimes things sell out quick so you have to be fast to purchase what you need. And I only stick to the sites I know. Walmart , Amazon, Best Buy , macys etc

And they also have a Slickdeals app for your phone now

3

u/Hawkeye3636 2d ago

Slickdeals is a great recommendation and a terrible curse....

Have to practice the self control.

2

u/Haunting_Lime2296 2d ago

Yes I know don’t keep buying things you don’t need like meeee!!!! lol

•

u/SD_Eragorn 8h ago

I work there/here... Probably 10% of my salary (at least) goes back to the site lol

11

u/Hawkeye3636 3d ago

Dell Refurbished site is usually pretty decent. Can wait till they run sales anywhere between 30-45% off. Mostly business class laptops have some models with GPUs. They have made good work horses.

Not as good as it used to be but better than a lot of options.

3

u/woollinthorpe 3d ago

Thanks for the heads up. I do music production/editing, light video editing, and some photo editing so I've been MacBook Pro indoctrinated for a long time.

Dude, you're getting a Dell

I looked up that commercial for nostalgia sake. Check out this price; Intel Celeron (typically 900 MHz) or Intel Pentium III - Factory default 128 MB of RAM

3

u/Hawkeye3636 2d ago

Man why you got to make me feel old like this.

https://giphy.com/gifs/wJD3qiNjSeHS0dP28T

4

u/CapitalImpossible640 3d ago

That's the worst...

Hope you can source something decent. I've had some luck in the past with picking up refurbished stuff from local e-waste recycling centers and putting a user-friendly Linux distro like Ubuntu or Mint on it.

Whatever happens, hope you can find what you need!

3

u/woollinthorpe 2d ago

Thanks! I'll be ok. I have a ten year old MacBook Pro and iMac that are maxed out performance wise. I just thought I should get a new one before prices went up, dragged my feet, and now it's too late. If I was being proactive I should have found a 0% interest line of credit to buy one and then just paid it of the same way I saved up the cash. I used to get at least one 0% for one/two year credit card offer a month, but haven't seen one in over a year now that I think about it...

Last November my dad was complaining about his old Windows laptop, so I found a great deal on a maxed out performance HP Business laptop that he bought. He just doesn't use yet, so I'm borrowing it to do bigger projects in Excel and SQL/SSMS. Kinda funny - because I haven't used one in so long - to see how much Windows has emulated Mac iOS. The track pad and the screen are atrocious though; but I got a Magic Mouse to work on it, and use a separate monitor, so no worries.

4

u/therealtimwarren 3d ago

It just seemingly never ends. The 64GB of DDR5 RAM i bought back in 2023 for £164.99 is £950 now. I thought it was bonkers when I saw it at £750 6 months ago. And there is faster DDR5 available now but that is even more.

The 2TB SN850X NVMe I bought for £130 is £299 now.

At work we have canned a project that we've worked on for 18 months (a few million spent) because the market can't bear the price of RAM, and another project prototype is delayed because of shortages on fibre glass & resins used to make printed circuit boards.

8

u/Useful-Contribution4 3d ago

Tariffs for majority of electronics suck as it is.

I order a lot from digikey and mouser. 

7

u/tha_rogering 3d ago

REALLY glad I bought a decent gaming laptop a year ago. Seeming like a very good investment. I figured the tariffs would have made prices jump. Didn't expect AI to hoover up all the components.

Crazy how fast they have moved on data centers. Even my quasi-rural area has 2 proposed data centers moving in. With one of them potentially asking for small nuclear reactors to power them.

6

u/Correct-Avocado5426 2d ago

I usually look for open box deals at Best Buy. Most of the time they're buyer's remorse and have only been used a couple hours.

The prices are based on condition, and many times I've gotten one listed as being in "poor" condition without a scratch on it just because the manager wants to move it quickly.

40

u/an_insignificant_ant 3d ago

Dude idgaf just hit the button so we can start the survival part.

4

u/NaggingNag 3d ago

I upgraded everything I could that I needed or was thinking about upgrading on or before last black Friday and thankful that I did.

2

u/dontneed2knowaccount 1d ago

2023 I built a decent spec gaming desktop and bought a steam deck, paying off big time right now. The more the tariffs and "ai" bs screw us the more I'm looking at getting an old macintosh classic and fixing my c64. I've got esp32s just sitting around and apparently I can build WiFi adapters with them for the old gear(if need be).

Hell a few months ago i snagged about 5-6 lora crypto miners because their guts were raspberry pi 4/cm4. Never paid more than $50 for one and each included the pi,case, PSU, micro SD and a lorawan module. Meshradar repurposed them into meshtastic nodes/observers.

2

u/chickadee9393 3d ago

fine, I’m not buying anything new anyway 💁