A thread on 5ch posed the question, “Do you really need ¥300,000 these days just to buy a decent computer?” — sparking debate over soaring prices for memory, CPUs, and even USB flash drives.
Some argued that ¥100,000-something is plenty if you’re not gaming, while others countered that ¥300,000 is the real floor if you want to run AI workloads or just want a smooth experience. The discussion ranged widely, touching on the weak yen, real-world prices at retailer Dospara, and used off-lease corporate PCs as a budget option.
What people said
1AnonymousAug 18, 2026 19:03
Kids these days just don't use PCs anymore.
3AnonymousAug 18, 2026 19:06
Prices are climbing, but ¥100,000 will still get you by.
4AnonymousAug 18, 2026 19:07
If you're not gaming, there's no need to build something expensive.
5AnonymousAug 18, 2026 19:09
Not sure where the line for 'decent' is, but if you want a laptop with high-end specs, ¥300,000 becomes the floor.
6AnonymousAug 18, 2026 19:09
If it's not for gaming, you can find one for around ¥100,000.
7AnonymousAug 18, 2026 19:09
Young people just buy Snapdragon (ARM-based) laptops instead.
8AnonymousAug 18, 2026 19:09
Smartphone-only little punks be like: 'I've used a smartphone since I was a kid so I'm basically a tech genius lol'
10AnonymousAug 18, 2026 19:11
If you don't game, a used corporate PC is plenty.
19AnonymousAug 18, 2026 19:18
Re: #10
Is the licensing on those even legit?
12AnonymousAug 18, 2026 19:13
The threshold for expensing something as a business cost without depreciating it is now up to ¥400,000, right?
13AnonymousAug 18, 2026 19:13
They kept telling us to upgrade to Win11, but Win10 support got extended by a ton.
14AnonymousAug 18, 2026 19:15
Just get by with a tablet plus a physical keyboard.
15AnonymousAug 18, 2026 19:15
Well, even before Windows 95, a PC that actually worked properly started around ¥300,000, so just think of it as going back to the old days.
16AnonymousAug 18, 2026 19:16
You need at least 8GB of RAM minimum, or your browser alone will max it out.
18AnonymousAug 18, 2026 19:17
PC prices have gotten so bad that Microsoft, on top of extending Win10 support, is also working hard to make Win11 usable with just 8GB of RAM. Fitting, since Microsoft — busy building data centers — is part of the reason semiconductor prices spiked in the first place.
20AnonymousAug 18, 2026 19:18
Re: #18
They should've just done that from the start, honestly. Why's the OS itself hogging so much memory before you've even started working?
22AnonymousAug 18, 2026 19:19
Thanks to the memory price hikes, a decent laptop that'll last you a few years now starts around ¥200,000. And that's with no GPU — just an 8-core-ish CPU, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD.
24AnonymousAug 18, 2026 19:20
These days you're probably better off with a tablet plus a keyboard and mouse.
25AnonymousAug 18, 2026 19:22
Want to replace my desktop with a BTO or custom build, but memory's roughly 3x the price now… what do I even do.
26AnonymousAug 18, 2026 19:22
Did you know USB flash drives have shot up in price too? Ones that used to be under ¥2,000 are now almost ¥6,000.
31AnonymousAug 18, 2026 19:26
If you can somehow sort out the memory with used parts, you could probably build something decent for around ¥100,000, but it really comes down to which graphics card you go with. Depends what you want to do with it.
32AnonymousAug 18, 2026 19:27
Just hop between used off-lease corporate PCs.
33AnonymousAug 18, 2026 19:27
You have to allocate memory to the integrated GPU too, so you'll want at least 16GB. Even the PS5 has 16GB. With 32GB you can do pretty much anything without stress.
35AnonymousAug 18, 2026 19:28
Back in the day you could gauge performance roughly from the Pentium number, but I have no clue with CPUs these days.
36AnonymousAug 18, 2026 19:29
There's a huge price gap between 16GB and 32GB of RAM.
37AnonymousAug 18, 2026 19:30
The DDR5 32GB kit I bought on sale for ¥6,000 about a year and a half ago is going for around ¥80,000 now.
38AnonymousAug 18, 2026 19:30
Well, I don't really use a PC for work anymore anyway, so it's fine by me — a smartphone covers most things. Still, I can't forgive whoever steered us into this excessive yen depreciation.
39AnonymousAug 18, 2026 19:32
PCs have gotten more expensive, but I don't feel like performance has actually gone up to match.
40AnonymousAug 18, 2026 19:32
If you're running AI stuff at home, you really do want a solid GPU and lots of memory, so I get why prices are up.
41AnonymousAug 18, 2026 19:32
If you're not playing the newest games, ¥100,000 should do it.
43AnonymousAug 18, 2026 19:35
Got a refurbished Let's Note off Amazon for under ¥50,000 and it runs great.
44AnonymousAug 18, 2026 19:37
At Dospara you're looking at ¥180,000 plus ¥50,000-60,000 for an external GPU, and you're set.
45AnonymousAug 18, 2026 19:38
Dospara's probably the cheapest — under ¥150,000 if 16GB of RAM is enough for you.
50AnonymousAug 18, 2026 19:42
Memory prices have calmed down a bit compared to a while back, but now everyone's started hiking CPU prices instead. You can make do on memory by going DDR4 or even DDR3 worst case, but storage prices climbing too is kind of a pain. Probably safest to grab something used from a place like PC Konfuru and just buy whatever extra performance you actually need.
52AnonymousAug 18, 2026 19:46
Re: #50
Cheap. Though I'd want a slightly better CPU.
Background and Key Points
Japan’s current PC-price anxiety sits on top of a global memory shortage: DRAM and NAND makers (Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron) have redirected fab capacity toward HBM and server memory for AI data centers — including the ones Microsoft and other hyperscalers are building — so consumer DDR5 and SSD prices have spiked worldwide over 2025. In Japan that global hike is compounded by a yen sitting in the ¥145-150+/dollar range, since most components are priced in dollars. Retailers like Dospara, a BTO (build-to-order) chain popular for custom desktops, are one of the few places where Japanese buyers can watch these swings in real yen terms rather than through a foreign retailer’s listing.
The thread’s actual disagreement wasn’t about whether prices rose — everyone agreed they did — but about where “decent” sits: posters using a PC only for browsing or office work kept insisting ¥100,000 (roughly $650) is still workable, especially via off-lease corporate PCs (used business machines cycled out after a few years’ lease, resold cheaply), while those factoring in gaming or local AI workloads pushed the floor to ¥200,000-300,000.
What’s likely to confuse non-Japanese readers: the ¥300,000/¥400,000 figure raised about business expensing refers to Japan’s small-business tax rule letting equipment purchases be written off immediately rather than depreciated over several years — a tax-code detail unrelated to hardware value. Also unmentioned: Windows 10’s official end-of-support already passed (October 2025), and Japan, like other markets, got a temporary consumer ESU reprieve, which is why several posters could shrug off upgrade pressure despite Windows 11’s higher RAM demands.
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