Remember when you thought COVID lockdowns were bad for hardware prices? Sweet summer child. First the pandemic turned GPU shopping into a battle royale where scalpers ruled supreme and mining rigs ate everything in sight. RAM prices went bonkers, and suddenly your "budget build" cost more than a used car. Then just when supply chains started recovering and you could finally afford that upgrade, the AI boom showed up like a final boss with unlimited HP. Now every tech giant is hoarding GPUs like they're infinity stones, and Nvidia can't print H100s fast enough. Your dream of a reasonably priced RTX 4090? Cute. Those are going to data centers now, buddy. The real tragedy? We survived the crypto mining apocalypse, clawed through the pandemic shortage, only to get absolutely demolished by ChatGPT's older siblings demanding entire warehouses of compute. At this rate, you'll need a mortgage to build a gaming PC by 2025.