Wang Sicong's Million-Yuan 'God PC' Rose 26% in 5 Years:
Busting the 'Electronics Always Depreciate' Myth

Appreciate or Depreciate —
It's Not "Is It a Computer", It's "Which Parts"

Weibo tech blogger "大老客大大" itemised every component of Wang Sicong's rig, and the result was starkly two-sided: some parts soared, others cratered.

The biggest riser was 32 sticks of 64GB 3200 enterprise RAM — bought at RMB 73,600, now trading around RMB 249,600, up about 239%. Next came 16 Samsung 30TB hard drives, from RMB 544,000 to RMB 752,000, up 38.2%.

But other parts of the very same machine bled badly: two AMD EPYC 7763 CPUs went from RMB 130,000 to RMB 26,000 — an 80% drop — while three RTX 3090 GPUs fell from RMB 48,000 to RMB 27,000, down 44%. The Intel Optane system drives, the 15TB drives and the Dell server all shrank too.

One computer, half its parts up and half down — "electronics always depreciate" is far too crude a slogan. What actually decides the direction isn't "is it electronic", but "is it being pushed along by demand".

The Real Driver: Scarcity × Demand,
Not "Physical vs Virtual"

Why did enterprise RAM and ultra-large hard drives rise? Because AI compute and storage demand has surged over the past two years — enterprise RAM and ultra-large drives are in short supply, so second-hand prices keep climbing. CPUs and consumer GPUs, by contrast, iterate fast: as soon as a new generation drops, the old one keeps falling. Ample supply, no scarcity — so they depreciate.

This is the heart of the matter: whether an asset appreciates has nothing to do with it being "physical". It comes down to real demand and whether supply can keep up. Demand plus tight supply pushes prices up; no demand or oversupply pushes them down. Computers, gold, property, stocks — all obey the same logic.

Only 4.8% Annualised —
It Appreciated, but Don't Overhype It

RMB 1.02 million to RMB 1.29 million sounds impressive, but averaged out it's about 26% total over five years — roughly 4.8% annualised, similar to today's high-rate fixed deposits. So the real lesson here isn't "building PCs is an investment". It's that even a consumer good, if it rides a genuine demand wave, can appreciate.

Flip it around: the phones, consoles and ordinary PCs you replace every year — why do they always depreciate? Because they're all oversupplied, fast-iterating products. No scarcity, no upside. Knowing "which things are scarce and which aren't" is a hundred times more useful than memorising "electronics always depreciate".

The Same Story,
a Different Game in the Stock Market

One more contrast worth noting: the same "memory chip demand surge" wave, in the second-hand hardware market, slowly pushed up RAM and drive prices — which is why Wang Sicong's rig appreciated. But in the stock market, that theme turned into speculation. Recent media reports describe someone betting on memory chip stocks who lost tens of millions in a margin call, and who publicly blamed the well-known economist who recommended the trade.

Physical demand and stock speculation are two completely different games. Real demand can steadily support an asset's value, but the moment it turns into "speculation", it's a different kind of risk. Same theme — you can earn "demand money" in the hardware market and lose "speculation money" in the stock market.

Look at Your Own Stuff
Through a Compound-Interest Lens

The assets in your hands — cash, fixed deposits, stocks, property, even your computer — which will appreciate and which will depreciate? The answer isn't a feeling; it's "scarcity × demand trend". Once you've made that call, use a compound interest calculator to project it: if something compounds at a given annual rate, what is it worth in 5, 10 or 20 years? Only then do you know whether it's worth holding.

Want to understand how compounding works? → Compound Interest: The Eighth Wonder