What will the specs be on a computer in 2025?

[CooperMyers]

I stumbled across an forum post from 2013 speculating the computing power and prices for computers in 2020. https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/specs-for-a-pc-in-the-year-2020.2299130/

 

Some of the predictions already came true (like 10 tb HDD for under $400) while other ideas were outlandish (like plugging a cable into your smartphone and gaming at 4K on a monitor). 

 

I wanted to try doing the the same thing except speculate for the year: 2025. 

 

What parts of the computer have hit a plateau. What parts will be needed for future games. Any new tech predictions?  

 

If you are reading this in 2025 feel free to laugh at our predictions. 

[TheGleaner]

If we have competition: we may advance, if not, probably not.

[Himommies]

Quantum PC's.

Iot being our lives

7 minutes ago, CooperMyers said:

What parts of the computer have hit a plateau

PSU

Cases

Storage

[dcgreen2k]

CPU architecture and lithography have //kinda// hit a plateau, but I've read an article about carbon nanotubes being used in CPUs. If I remember correctly, it would allow for 1nm lithography. (I'm not 100% sure about this though)

[CooperMyers]

1 minute ago, thegreengamers said:

CPU architecture and lithography have //kinda// hit a plateau, but I've read an article about carbon nanotubes being used in CPUs. If I remember correctly, it would allow for 1nm lithography. (I'm not 100% sure about this though)

It seems each new CPU generation just adds more cores.  Do you think this trend will continue in the future. Maybe 50 core cpus? 

[themctipers]

1tb ssds are now the 256gb ssds of today, meaning who the hell would get something with less capacity?

windows 10 will now take up 50gb 

intel remains god against amd until amd releases their dank new cpu lineup in 2025

titan x (maxwell) performance is now availble on a GT 2030

32gb is now the minimum most people would get with ram, and 16 is minimum for gaming/whatever else

 

 

ill still be using a covfefe lake laptop

[Chaos_Sorcerer]

Meh. I don't think any part can hit a plateau tbh. Keyboards, mice, maybe? But some idiot will figure out a way to put something ridiculous on them, like putting a screen on the side or something. 2025 is too soon for technology to have advanced significantly.

 

I think 1440p on a phone is about the maximum resolution/pixel density we need, and 8K on monitors should do a similar trick. Anywhere from 8K to 32K for TVs, depending on the size. But display technologies will continue improving in areas other than resolution, like colour accuracy, brightness, efficiency, and....I don't know much about displays. This probably won't happen by 2025. 

 

Think about how far we've come since 1080p first became a thing in the mainstream. It was only a while back that we started seeing 240Hz 1080p displays, and even now we can barely run games at that resolution and framerate without lowering the settings a ton. 

 

I do know one thing for sure, though. Everything will be clickbait. 

[Chaos_Sorcerer]

4 minutes ago, CooperMyers said:

It seems each new CPU generation just adds more cores.  Do you think this trend will continue in the future. Maybe 50 core cpus? 

IPC needs to improve. I don't understand this trend toward more cores and multi-threaded performance. 

[dcgreen2k]

4 minutes ago, CooperMyers said:

It seems each new CPU generation just adds more cores.  Do you think this trend will continue in the future. Maybe 50 core cpus? 

If we had 50 core CPUs, tdp would be a serious hindrance. You could have a heat spreader larger than threadripper's, or else, it would need to be clocked at something like 500MHz to keep itself from melting. It might not be easy to make innovations in cooling because it would come up towards the conductive limit of the metals used in the IHS and heatsink. It's just like the "10GHz CPUs". We might find some amazing workaround that we aren't thinking of.

[dcgreen2k]

Additionally, a 50 core CPU needs programs that are heavily parallelized to take advantage of it. And we haven't even thought about hyper threading and SMT! What if we had 3-thread HT?

[Guest]

• 10 core mainstream CPU's at 7-4nm should appear, with 20-30 core enthusiast CPU's a norm for both Intel and AMD;
• Complete glass cases will be a thing commonly seen (maybe even carbon fiber and , of many sizes and quite possibly modular;
• Solid state drives will adopt M.2 formats completely with proper cooling pads if needed, unless an even smaller standard is introduced;
• Hard drives could potentially get smaller right? A new technology that could make hard drives the size of SSD's would be great;
• Monitor could perhaps finally adopt OLED or MicroLED so we can finally have no light bleeding, much more colourful displays alongside a more solid HDR implementation on high-end monitors;
• Graphics cards could become single slot addons alongside motherboards (i suppose motherboard sizes wouldnt change much from what we have now, just the quality of the eletrical components and possibly new designs, alongside adding 3D printed covers or filters) with improved cooling and a transition to only DP and HDMI will probably be set.

Power supplies dont seem to need too many things to improve, aside from SFX power supplies becoming more common and more of them adopting better stability and efficiency ratings, but yeah that is my opinion only :l... i dont want to exaggerate too much after all xP.

[IAcKI]

I think a PC as we know it will not be the same anymore, will have phones that will hold all of our data (Through cloud or better storage) and have multiple workstations that we then attach it to in order to play games on larger screens

[Zodiark1593]

26 minutes ago, IAcKI said:

I think a PC as we know it will not be the same anymore, will have phones that will hold all of our data (Through cloud or better storage) and have multiple workstations that we then attach it to in order to play games on larger screens

I predict that the home desktop may keel over and be replaced by a central home server to feed all the displays in the house.

 

Between technology advances and the much greater tdp allowed by a server, real time ray tracing should become feasible.

[CooperMyers]

1 hour ago, IAcKI said:

I think a PC as we know it will not be the same anymore, will have phones that will hold all of our data (Through cloud or better storage) and have multiple workstations that we then attach it to in order to play games on larger screens

The biggest problem with mobile phones is cooling. Even if they could pack all the processing power of your computer into the size of your phone the thing would just overheat. 

[TVwazhere]

3 hours ago, Goku-sama said:

• 10 core mainstream CPU's at 7-4nm should appear, with 20-30 core enthusiast CPU's a norm for both Intel and AMD;
• Complete glass cases will be a thing commonly seen (maybe even carbon fiber and , of many sizes and quite possibly modular;
• Solid state drives will adopt M.2 formats completely with proper cooling pads if needed, unless an even smaller standard is introduced;
• Hard drives could potentially get smaller right? A new technology that could make hard drives the size of SSD's would be great;
• Monitor could perhaps finally adopt OLED or MicroLED so we can finally have no light bleeding, much more colourful displays alongside a more solid HDR implementation on high-end monitors;
• Graphics cards could become single slot addons alongside motherboards (i suppose motherboard sizes wouldnt change much from what we have now, just the quality of the eletrical components and possibly new designs, alongside adding 3D printed covers or filters) with improved cooling and a transition to only DP and HDMI will probably be set.

Power supplies dont seem to need too many things to improve, aside from SFX power supplies becoming more common and more of them adopting better stability and efficiency ratings, but yeah that is my opinion only :l... i dont want to exaggerate too much after all xP.

• Not likely. Look how long it took Intel to release a six core mainstream chip (quad core has been the form for like ten years) the 7nm process architecture is very possible though
• I feel like glass will eventually fall out of favor, like 5.25" bays did (Cooler master Storm Stryker) and carbon fiber might be used as exterior but not for the frame. 
• Could definitely see m.2 being the dominant form factor
• You mean....... like..... 2.5" HDD's??? (lol)
• Possible. Hopefully in eight years the monitor landscape will mature. Dont expect to see these on budget monitors though, these will still be high end.
• You wont see  med-high end GPU's go single slot, probably ever. Law of thermal dynamics dictates this, unless cards of the future only generate like 50w TDP (I seriously doubt that)

Power supplies can always improve! Efficiency and quality of internal components

[IAcKI]

21 minutes ago, CooperMyers said:

The biggest problem with mobile phones is cooling. Even if they could pack all the processing power of your computer into the size of your phone the thing would just overheat. 

Processing power won't be such an issue I think, that may well soon be external, the key is things like Thunderbolt three becoming faster and more widely adopted.

[TacoSenpai]

In 2025 we will finally maybe be able to play 4K Minecraft at 60FPS on a single GPU setup.   That will be the greatest technological achievement of our time.

[NinJake]

Larger capacity SSDs for same price as now, but minimum of 1gb/s read/write times for off-brand.

Cases that allow for a new form factor of motherboards.

Motherboards that allow for a new type of cpu.

New cpu with much larger form factor to allow higher clocks and heat distribution. (Or quite the opposite, such a small cpu that is => current clocks/cores)

"Entry-level" GPU (Like the 960 or 1060) will easily reach 4k 144fps on ultra settings.

I don't see power supplies changing too much.

Ram with speeds of 4000+ mhz on potentially DDR5.

Wi-Fi cards that get internet from satellites better than ethernet connections do now.

 

But then again, I may just be daydreaming once more....

[Misanthrope]

EDIT: Shit I did most of this estimations for 2020, not for 2025.

 

Still a bit on the short terms so we probably will still have manufacturing size shrinking available but we're gonna be further along in quantum computer by that stage and distributed computing for consumers in the form of remote streaming services will be more seriously discussed but still not the norm, just like an emerging competitor to entry level gaming rigs that'd normally be in the 400 bucks range.

 

I'm thinking 4-6 cores 16gb ram on the low end, 8 cores for the mid-range with a little bit of push for 32gb ram for some use cases but not many, top of the line consumer probably 10 to 12 cores and HEDT will likely be 28 to 32 cores. Most of this cores will probably have upwards of 15 to 20% better IPC though (though that might sound optimistic at first, I think that the fact that AMD is competitive again in CPUs will help this along)

 

SSDs entry level will be 512gb but most gaming rigs will accomodate 1tb to 2tb drives with double that on high speed m.2 drives for the higher end. I really think people who really need the space will run NAS or Cloud storage but mechanicals by 2020 will be mostly forgotten for consumers. 

 

GPUs I would guess that the performance of a current day 1080 would be the entry level 150 bucks range performance and the top of the line would be the equivalent of dual 1080ti with the rest of the cards landing in the middle.

[ThatTechKid]

Umm. $80 dollar 16 core 32 thread cpu. 6.5 GHz 64 core and 128 thread CPU from AMD for $599.99 CAD. 10TB U.2 SSD for the same price as a 5TB 7200RPM HDD. 1TB of DDR7 for $499.99

That's just my estimate

[TetraSky]

Hopefully by then, we will no longer be using Lithium batteries, but one of those fancy new tech we keep hearing about but never actually reach the consumer market.

Also, Carbon Nanotubes.

[Zando_]

13 hours ago, thegreengamers said:

CPU architecture and lithography have //kinda// hit a plateau, but I've read an article about carbon nanotubes being used in CPUs. If I remember correctly, it would allow for 1nm lithography. (I'm not 100% sure about this though)

He gon be happy boy:

 

[Helix_Exton]

We're going to start using whole cpus as a single CPU. You have like four single die slots on your motherboard and you put in four 8 core dies into the motherboard. Storage will all be over the cloud and super fast via fiber optic cables to wherever keeps 10000 terabytes of m.2 ssd storage. A single graphics card will hold four gpus on it and all have 16 gb of dedicated hbm3 or ddr6x. Ram will be at an average of 32 gb minimum. Amd and intel will join forces and acquire nvidia as well.

nah, I'm kicking about that part. 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, TVwazhere said:

• Not likely. Look how long it took Intel to release a six core mainstream chip (quad core has been the form for like ten years) the 7nm process architecture is very possible though
• I feel like glass will eventually fall out of favor, like 5.25" bays did (Cooler master Storm Stryker) and carbon fiber might be used as exterior but not for the frame. 
• Could definitely see m.2 being the dominant form factor
• You mean....... like..... 2.5" HDD's??? (lol)
• Possible. Hopefully in eight years the monitor landscape will mature. Dont expect to see these on budget monitors though, these will still be high end.
• You wont see  med-high end GPU's go single slot, probably ever. Law of thermal dynamics dictates this, unless cards of the future only generate like 50w TDP (I seriously doubt that)

Power supplies can always improve! Efficiency and quality of internal components

Couldnt AMD speed the process up for Intel ? At least they will have those if they continue to increase the core count has they have done so far, i hope.

 

Arent 2.5 HDDs usually slower and less dense because they are smaller in size versus 3.5 inch ones?

 

Cant wait for the time when 50W cards more powerful than dual 1080 TI's exist, in 2032 . By the way, can you explain which part of the thermodynamics law prevents such future, i wanna know ?

 

I want JonnyGURU to show a 10/10 SFX PSU, but i have yet to see one , Silverstone had some issues even with 80+ Titanium one which barely hit the rating he said.

[TVwazhere]

10 minutes ago, Goku-sama said:

Couldnt AMD speed the process up for Intel ? At least they will have those if they continue to increase the core count has they have done so far, i hope.

 

Arent 2.5 HDDs usually slower and less dense because they are smaller in size versus 3.5 inch ones?

 

Cant wait for the time when 50W cards more powerful than dual 1080 TI's exist, in 2032 . By the way, can you explain which part of the thermodynamics law prevents such future, i wanna know ?

 

I want JonnyGURU to show a 10/10 SFX PSU, but i have yet to see one , Silverstone had some issues even with 80+ Titanium one which barely hit the rating he said.

Potentially, if they continue to compete in the CPU market

 

Yes but they still exist

 

The second law

Quote

When two initially isolated systems in separate but nearby regions of space, each in thermodynamic equilibrium with itself but not necessarily with each other, are then allowed to interact, they will eventually reach a mutual thermodynamic equilibrium

Basically two objects of different temperatures will atempt to transfer heat to become the same. Since GPU's generate their own heat though, a heat sink would heat up to capacity (determined by the thermal property of material, usually aluminum or copper) if not actively cooled by fans. A few ways to make this process more efficient are to increase the surface available for heat dissipation (adding more fins), increase the rate of airflow over the surface are (turn up fan speed), or to increase the amount of mass, which means a bigger cooler (hence why some beefy coolers are tripple slot cards)

 

There is a single slot 1070 on the market (Galax Katana, featured in this video, video starts at 2:49) that manages to be "as fast" as a founders edition but much hotter and significantly louder, hence why most cards are (and have been) two slot designs for a while, unless they're a low thermal heat output card like a 1050 or below.

 

SFX technology has a ways to go, but I have confidence in 2025 we will see much better PSU technology.