Why Building a Gaming PC Right Now Is a Bad Idea, Part 2: Insane Graphics Card Prices

[Julio Franco]

We're hardly two weeks into 2018 and it's been a wild ride for the tech industry already. Just as we thought graphics card pricing was settling down, it has skyrocketed higher than ever. We discuss the reasons why this scenario has provided the perfect storm for holding off on your next GPU upgrade.

Read the full article here.

https://www.techspot.com/article/1562-build-a-pc-bad-idea-gpu-pricing/

 

[cliffordcooley]

More like insane graphics demand on hardware. I don't have to game at 4K, so this is less of an issue for people like myself.

 

[Humza]

The Gaming PC's inherent dependency on varied hardware is certainly costing it (and Gamers). Next I assume are SSDs? Consoles are starting to appeal more and more these days.

 

[Kotters]

The cryptoboom, along with this tail-end-of-a-generation spindown of production, is really ****ing with pricing and availability. We're probably going to get an Ampere announcement in the next three months, but unless cryptomining crashes (not just the price of the coins themselves) we're going to see sky high MSRPs.

 

[Evernessince]

The Gaming PC's inherent dependency on varied hardware is certainly costing it (and Gamers). Next I assume are SSDs? Consoles are starting to appeal more and more these days.

Nonsense, consoles have their temporary spikes in prices just the same as everything else.

 

[Humza]

The Gaming PC's inherent dependency on varied hardware is certainly costing it (and Gamers). Next I assume are SSDs? Consoles are starting to appeal more and more these days.

Nonsense, consoles have their temporary spikes in prices just the same as everything else.

If you can call it temporary. For the most part, consoles retain prices and are much more heavily discounted than PC 'parts' during sales. Their price hike isn't as stingy as PC parts.
Also, this mining craze has been going on for more than what I'd call a temporary phase. Count in other factors, SSDs, expensive monitors, RAM prices (which was featured in part 1 of this article) and its cloudy for PC Gaming.

 

[wujj123456]

Looks like I really should have held off selling my 1080 for cheap last summer. On the positive side, I got 1080 Ti at same time right before the DDR spike and another round of crypto craziness. It handles all my current gaming needs and I've been pushing off my monitor and CPU/platform upgrade for at least a year now. Hopefully this stupidness ends soon. I am not even hoping for a price crash, just MSRP or near MSRP please.

 

[wujj123456]

The Gaming PC's inherent dependency on varied hardware is certainly costing it (and Gamers). Next I assume are SSDs? Consoles are starting to appeal more and more these days.

Nonsense, consoles have their temporary spikes in prices just the same as everything else.

If you can call it temporary. For the most part, consoles retain prices and are much more heavily discounted than PC 'parts' during sales. Their price hike isn't as stingy as PC parts.
Also, this mining craze has been going on for more than what I'd call a temporary phase. Count in other factors, SSDs, expensive monitors, RAM prices (which was featured in part 1 of this article) and its cloudy for PC Gaming.

Talking about consoles, I thought PS4 and XB1 have been jail broken quite a while back and just requiring specific version of firmware? Maybe all the new systems come with new enough firmware that can't be cracked yet.

I just wonder how mining performance looks like there. It's probably not that great, but if power efficiency is close enough, maybe MS and Sony can take a few bullets for PC folks, evening out the pressure...

 

[psycros]

Gaming laptops are looking better all the time.

 

[treetops]

Wow this is nuts.. unheard of really, I had to look for myself sure enough on newegg and amazon 1070 were almost 1k. They had some for 550-600 range but they were all out of stock.On ebay new 1070s were a few hundred dollars cheaper.

 

[BSim500]

"Part 3: TBA"

Part 3 = Cr*p pay2win / MT / lootbox saturated games themselves? I'm not alone in feeling 2017 was one of the worst on record for the "quality" of AAA offerings feeling more like the worst half of the Google Play store rather than $60 "premium" games...

 

[cliffordcooley]

I'm not alone in feeling 2017 was one of the worst on record for the "quality" of AAA offerings feeling more like the worst half of the Google Play store rather than $60 "premium" games...

I'm willing to bet it will not get any better than 2017.

 

[Puiu]

The Gaming PC's inherent dependency on varied hardware is certainly costing it (and Gamers). Next I assume are SSDs? Consoles are starting to appeal more and more these days.

This is just an anomaly. Price hikes of this magnitude are not normal. Things will eventually settle down.

 

[fadingfool]

Hopefully the price bubbles will burst soon after Ryzen 2 is released as that will be when I am looking to upgrade
If not I may have to wait until 2019 for a new PC..... Any news on Threadripper 2?

 

[Evernessince]

If you can call it temporary. For the most part, consoles retain prices and are much more heavily discounted than PC 'parts' during sales. Their price hike isn't as stingy as PC parts.
Also, this mining craze has been going on for more than what I'd call a temporary phase. Count in other factors, SSDs, expensive monitors, RAM prices (which was featured in part 1 of this article) and its cloudy for PC Gaming.

Oh really? Because I seem to recall more than a handful of consoles that had periods where prices shot up. The Wii, Switch, PS1, PS2, Xbox 360, SNES, and the 3DS just to name a few.


"Also, this mining craze has been going on for more than what I'd call a temporary phase."

This mining craze hasn't affected the entire market until very recently, it was previously only AMD cards and heck if you were smart enough you could have had a Vega 56 for $380 during November. 1080 Tis were normal price until a week ago. Only paid $680 for the one in my brother's computer. So please, tell me another story.

 

[Humza]

The Gaming PC's inherent dependency on varied hardware is certainly costing it (and Gamers). Next I assume are SSDs? Consoles are starting to appeal more and more these days.

This is just an anomaly. Price hikes of this magnitude are not normal. Things will eventually settle down.

Yes, lets hope they do settle down.

 

[Humza]

If you can call it temporary. For the most part, consoles retain prices and are much more heavily discounted than PC 'parts' during sales. Their price hike isn't as stingy as PC parts.
Also, this mining craze has been going on for more than what I'd call a temporary phase. Count in other factors, SSDs, expensive monitors, RAM prices (which was featured in part 1 of this article) and its cloudy for PC Gaming.

Oh really? Because I seem to recall more than a handful of consoles that had periods where prices shot up. The Wii, Switch, PS1, PS2, Xbox 360, SNES, and the 3DS just to name a few.


"Also, this mining craze has been going on for more than what I'd call a temporary phase."

This mining craze hasn't affected the entire market until very recently, it was previously only AMD cards and heck if you were smart enough you could have had a Vega 56 for $380 during November. 1080 Tis were normal price until a week ago. Only paid $680 for the one in my brother's computer. So please, tell me another story.

To get a Gaming PC would require many components that I'll personally buy to have a stable/affordable price. This just hasn't been the case for many months now. Consoles that you mentioned did get pricey/supply-demand issue, but once you finally bought it, you had the complete package. For a PC, one component is just a piece of the puzzle. I'd have to keep my fingers crossed in the hope that I wont have to compromise on storage/display/memory etc.

Mining's been happening for years now, its not something recent. It affected AMD first, yes, 1 of the only 2 GPU vendors we have in the gaming industry. nvidia already charge a decent amount for their cards, this only fanned their fire. Its a long discussion

Lets get optimistic for 2018.

 

[Fobus]

The Gaming PC's inherent dependency on varied hardware is certainly costing it (and Gamers). Next I assume are SSDs? Consoles are starting to appeal more and more these days.

All that's changed is pricing. And if you are sensitive to 500$ increases in price, that's a deal breaker. However the rest of value proposition hasn't changed. Despite all the lootboxes, PC and gaming in general in 2017 were flooded with excellent games. PC still offers freedom no console can't match for any price. And you get a productivity machine to boot. Finally, for those of us who have several year old machines, technological advancements have crawled to a stop. Aside GPU and SSD upgrades, what is there that's too old?

 

[Humza]

All that's changed is pricing. And if you are sensitive to 500$ increases in price, that's a deal breaker. However the rest of value proposition hasn't changed. Despite all the lootboxes, PC and gaming in general in 2017 were flooded with excellent games. PC still offers freedom no console can't match for any price. And you get a productivity machine to boot. Finally, for those of us who have several year old machines, technological advancements have crawled to a stop. Aside GPU and SSD upgrades, what is there that's too old?

I'm not willing to go into the Console vs PC debate. PC's productivity/freedom and Console's ease of use are the standard (and true) argument in their favor. For new comers and people like us having machines a couple of years old, GPU and SSD are important investments and expensive purchases at this time.

Also, I'd count high refresh rate monitors an important technological advancement. High frame rate gaming (on IPS Panels) is still for people with deep pockets. I make do with a TN panel

 

[mrtraver]

I upgraded my motherboard, CPU, and RAM in 2016 but am still using my old 480 GTX. Although I would love to get a 1060, the 480 met my current needs and I could not justify spending another $190 back then. Now my fear is that the 480 will die before GPU prices return to sane levels. I would have to hope that my old 8800 GT still works, or get the cheapest 8400 GS I can find just to run my PC (no integrated graphic on my board).

 

[alabama man]

Wow this is nuts.. unheard of really, I had to look for myself sure enough on newegg and amazon 1070 were almost 1k. They had some for 550-600 range but they were all out of stock.On ebay new 1070s were a few hundred dollars cheaper.

Wow we have 1070Ti on sale for 499€. Month ago you could get 1080 for about 550€. Everything except vega seems to have plenty of stock, nice to live in a country with high taxes and high electricity cost.

 

[dirtyferret]

Not to toot my own horn...ok to toot my own horn but I posted about this back in early November in the GTX 1070ti review thread and prices have only gotten worse since my post below...plus Intel 8 series prices are still high compared to their MSRP (although not as high as launch) and we still don't have budget mobos for those Intel chips like the i3-8100 & i5-8400. Also PSU & SSD were slightly high over the summer (about $10-20 more then they should be) but they have since come back to earth for now.

https://www.techspot.com/community/topics/msi-geforce-gtx-1070-ti-gaming-review.242068/#post-1645917

Here is the problem with the card and with building a PC right now

"The GTX 1080 Gaming X currently costs $570 while the GTX 1070 Ti Gaming is priced at $490. Both are well over their MSRPs, but let's ignore that for now because GPU pricing is inflated across the board." * - This is a quote taken directly from Steve review of the GTX 1070 ti in the link above. My reply is below.

The vast majority of people reading the review can't ignore pricing

Why invest in tech that is above MSRP?

8GB of RAM cost $45 in May of 2016 (see links below) the same RAM today costs $105.


http://techreport.com/review/29977/the-tech-report-system-guide-april-2016-edition/3
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod..._DDR4_3000_(PC4_24000)-_-20-231-897-_-Product

A GTX 1060 6GB was $260 and now is $300
http://techreport.com/review/31119/the-tech-report-system-guide-december-2016-edition/4
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...chReport&cm_mmc=OTC-TechReport-_-NA-_-NA-_-NA

So building the exact same PC is going to cost you roughly $100 more then it did a year ago. Think what kind of performance increase you can have if you invest from going to an Intel 8700 from the 8500 or Nvidia GTX 1070 from the GTX 1060.

 

[andy06shake]

Wow this is nuts.. unheard of really, I had to look for myself sure enough on newegg and amazon 1070 were almost 1k. They had some for 550-600 range but they were all out of stock.On ebay new 1070s were a few hundred dollars cheaper.

About £500 on Amazon.

I paid around £330 for mine less than 2 years ago.

My understanding was the electronic products depreciate in value not increase. LoL

 

[dirtyferret]

I bought a 8GB stick of Crucial DDR4 2666 for $69 on a newegg flash sale around Thanksgiving and I went back and forth on that purchase because the exact same stick had cost me $55 in the beginning of the year at its regular non-sale price.

 

[Cryio]

I wanted an RX 580 8 GB to upgrade from my VRAM starved (yet still highly capable otherwise) GTX 560 Ti 1 GB.

But I can't afford a 580 now, so until prices come back to normal, I'll have to make do with an RX 560 4 GB.