Basically title. I’m a digital artist in the USA and not rich by any stretch. In fact, somewhat in debt. (Aren’t we all.)
I also try really hard to not be a mindless consumer. I use old equipment as long as I can, repair, refurbish, etc…
All this talk of upcoming tariffs has me worried that, rather than being able to get a day-job at newly opened US manufacturing for electronics or something, I’ll instead be paying +60% more on like everything.
I know tech is a depreciating asset, but should I try to upgrade now to hold out for the next ~5 years or so?
I was considering hunting down a motherboard/cpu/RAM combo for instance.
Are worries about tariffs overblown? Trying to figure out how to prepare as best I can with my meager resources before everything just…keeps getting worse.
I am getting paid for my digital art, it’s not living money though. My spouse has a more stable income that enables me to keep trying.
Thanks in advance. <3
EDIT: Thanks a ton for all the helpful replies! I’m glad I’m not being overly paranoid.
Some of you have asked for system specs so here they are for the curious:
System Specs:
- OS: OpenSUSE Tumbleweed
- Mobo: Z590 Aorus Elite AX
- CPU: i7-10700k @ 5.1 Ghz
- GPU: Nvidia RTX 3090
- Mem: 32GB DDR4 (forget the speed…3000?)
I want to be clear: I don’t mean to sound too panicked and I’m more than happy to be content with what I have and see my blessings for what they are.
However, as I’m trying to break into being a 3D Blender artist and gamedev professionally, I’m trying to strategize whether standards will significantly increase and leave me behind in the next 5 years or so. (Game industry, not trying to do Hollywood VFX models on my home rig or anything lol)
I don’t game so much these days unfortunately. And if I do, like 5% of my library is particularly demanding. 😂
Regardless of whether or not the tariff increases happen, Black Friday sales are going on right now, and depending on what stores are near you (namely Micro Center), you could find some good deals. Just make sure you check price history on anything you’re looking at (if you’re able) to ensure it’s actually a deal.
deleted by creator
I say upgrade. The tariffs he’s most likely to back off on are food and oil. High tech from Asia is last on the list.
if you need an upgrade, or will within that five years, yea. now is the time to get a reasonable upgrade vs waiting for 5 years for some of the trump stench to fade.
If they actually get implemented? There’s a good chance your prices from anything that touches China will increase by most of the listed tariffs. Since it will disproportionately affect China, it’s possible some stuff will eventually pull manufacturing somewhere else, but that isn’t going to happen overnight. Moving manufacturing is not fast and no one else is equipped to just flip a switch and take over for them.
Your income will likely not increase 60%.
In videocards, nV 3060 likely doubled the output nV 1060 had, and CPUs albeit slower rise in numbers too. New hardware can probably last you a good ten years or more if nothing like an entirely new demanding software happens, like if we’d start to train our AIs locally en masse. Years before the war I bought myself all new components and they are still good at digital art and video rendering, even though I know a bit more modern setup can do it 2-4x quicker. It’s just obligatory smoking breaks that I don’t really mind.
I thrift for a fair number of things so, I’m not that affected. 86% of the things in my apartment are through thrifting. The only things I know I’m going to probably wrestle with at times is groceries and newer things I would actually need like some appliance or something breaks down. It depends.
People were already complaining about thrifting being gentrified, what’s going to happen when everyone has to do it?
Where would your new purchases come from? If its Mexico or Canada (or probably China), expect prices to rise very soon and get purchases in before 1/20. If the items come from other countries, you probably can wait a bit but if you know you will need something you may want to buy it now, just in case.
I moved forward on a car purchase because modern cars contain lots of fancy electronics that could and probably will be impacted by tariffs.
I’m not saying you should buy a car that you weren’t otherwise planning to buy, but if you need something in the electronics area, moving it up a few months might not be a terrible idea.
I am not in the US, and I have no idea of how Trumps tariffs will work, but in general I would suggest that you look at what would get you the best bang for the buck now so you can power through the next four years.
Here is a bit of an unusual suggestion, if your computer fails and you are low on funds, look into getting a Raspberry pi 4, then you have a computer you can connect to a monitor, keyboard and mouse, so you can browse the internet and do some work at least.
Yeah that’s what I’m thinking, although tech is a “depreciating asset”, the work I can do with it is (potentially) valuable. I have a decent fleet of computers at the moment, old laptops with Linux, an old server, and my and my wife’s main rigs.
Thing is I’m a 3D artist, so I wonder if even the current setup I’m blessed with could see me behind the curve in a few years time :(.
I skimmed the thread to try and see if you mentioned any specs of your current machine, but didn’t find any.
If you are looking to build a new machine before the tariffs hit, there are two ways of doing it.
Go bleeding edge now or get a decent machine that you can upgrade further later.
I tend to go for the latter, as an IT guy I value stability of older components over the bleeding edge any day.
I built my computer back in August 2021, it has a Ryzen 5600x CPU Kingston DDR4 ram, a Samsung 980 Pro NVMe SSD for booting and a B550 motherboard to tie it all together.
It is a solid machine and I picked components that had been out for a year or so to try and get passed the most bugs snd lower the cost.
This is not the build I would recommend you, you should look into the current AM5 CPUs, Intel has had some reliabillity issues with the latest gen chips, so I’d go AMD at this point. The AM5 plattform supports the new DDR5 memory standard which will enable you to keep upgrading for longer.
Hey friend! Yeah I forgot that. I added it to the original post but here it is:
OS: OpenSUSE Tumbleweed Mobo: Z590 Aorus Elite AX CPU: i7-10700k @ 5.1 Ghz GPU: Nvidia RTX 3090 Mem: 32GB DDR4 (forget the speed…3000?)
I don’t wanna sound desperate or anything because I know I’m blessed here. I only upgrade like once every 5+ years.
Prospectively I’m not looking at a brand new build, just a CPU/RAM/Mobo to maybe move to DDR5.
The current setup (minus the GPU) would be moved over to my server which is still running like…an i5-4460 on 16GB of DDR3. Not terrible but it’s had to thrash on occasion. 😬 Haha.
Thanks for the heads up about Intel stability issues! I’ll have to keep an eye out about AM5s.
I probably can’t justify it before everything hits the fan, but y’know, it’s good to keep my eyes out. :)
In life it’s generally safe assumption that the vast majority of things we worry about never happen or if they do it won’t be as bad as we thought.
I do see where you’re coming from and appreciate your optimism. I have ADHD and I’m prone to catastrophism haha.
But I feel like there’s actually substance and credibility to how much the very near future is gonna suck. :( I’m trying to stay optimistic though!
The future doesn’t look too bright at the moment, but what’s the alternative? You’ve just got to play the hand you’ve been dealt. In Buddhism, they call it “the second arrow” when you’re in a bad situation but make it worse by overthinking it. Looking back on my life, I can think of countless times I worried about something that never even happened. I’d essentially tortured myself mentally for no reason - and that seems counterproductive.
I try to live in a way where I don’t contribute to making things worse, and wherever I can, I try to nudge things in the right direction. Beyond that, I avoid worrying any more than I already do, because intellectually, I know it’s probably wasted effort and a form of self-harm.
The “playing the cards you have been dealt” metaphor for life is my favourite, it helps me understand what I can control and shifts focus from blaming circumstances to what you can do to improve the situation
