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Ive been waiting to upgrade my potato PC for a really long time, but because I never managed my budget properly, I kept putting it off. So Ive been using the same decade old PC for gaming all these years, trying not to stress it too much.

Recently, my UPS battery finally died, so I had to start using the PC directly from the wall outlet. Then the power fluctuations started happening. Im not completely sure if that is what caused the problem, but somehow my SATA ports seem to have gotten damaged.

My new SSD started giving me errors, and at first I thought the SSD itself was the problem. But then I connected my HDD to the same SATA port just to test it, and that confirmed the issue was with the motherboard. Now all four SATA ports are giving me bad block errors.

Since the PC is already really old, I thought I would just buy a cheap motherboard and keep using it for a while longer. But of course, finding a decent LGA 1150 motherboard these days is basically impossible.

So I finally decided to bite the bullet and upgrade the whole PC, at least the platform. I can keep using my existing GPU and SSD for now.

And then I ran into the next problem. RAM PRICES ARE FREAKIN INSANE!!!!

My plan was to build an AM5 system this time because I wanted something that would last me for a long time. I really dont want to make the same mistake I made with my previous build, where I ended up being stuck with the same platform for almost two decades.

But now Im wondering if I should just give up on AM5 for now and build a cheaper AM4 system instead. I could get some cheap RAM, use it for the next couple of years, and maybe upgrade once RAM prices come down.

The problem is that I would basically be locking myself into an outdated platform again, with very little room for proper upgrades in the future.

So now Im stuck between spending more than I really want to on AM5 and expensive RAM, or going with AM4 and potentially regretting it a few years down the line.

Honestly, I have no idea what the sensible move is anymore.