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

[Prosercunus]

Gaming laptops are looking better all the time.

This. I briefly considered a gaming laptop not long ago and I used to be vehemently opposed to such hardware.

 

[Tribalcheetah]

Jokes on me.

I‘d like an upgrade in gpu and cpu, since a new build is already out of the question with pricing right now, and pricing is all over the place. I don’t do anything but 1080 gaming anyway.

Guess I’ll just wait until this fall. Pricing always drops in the fall anyway.

 

[TomSEA]

Typically this is the time when I do a complete rebuild - once every 3-4 years. Looks like it's going to be once every 5 years with these kinds of prices. No biggee, I'm still playing games at pretty much max level with my current rig and I don't see any games coming down the pike that's going to change that.

 

[Tangent441]

Strange ! Here in Norway, the prizes for any hardware are normally 25-40% higer than in the US due to the ridiculous import taxes.
Right now, the cheapest 1080Ti costs 977 USD and the most expensive 1397 USD (Kingpin Ed) in one of the most popular online stores (that normally lies 5-15% over the cheapest ones)..

So maybe someone should "look to Norway" right now..

 

[Nocturne]

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.

Last I heard of Ampere would be about May/June announcement and Availability but after talking to a few people they said with the mining and such you probably won't see decent prices till 3rd quarter to 4th quarter. People apparently are now renting planes to buy factory direct to replace farming clusters, and selling off stock at prices like a 1080 Ti will be available second hand at 500$-600$ per card.
......
Most people aren't affected as they are 1080p gamers that only need 4GB-6GB of Vram max and a 1050Ti or 1060 will suit their needs perfectly until they finally update their monitors to something with a bit more pixel density.....
......
The catch will come into play when Ultrawides become the norm instead of the premium part of the market. When prices drop to 200-300$ for a decent curved ultrawide and 300-500$ for 2k with 4k still being stifled by HDMI and Display port specs, when the issues are solved and prices normalize you will see a massive upgrade boost for the community.
.......
2019/2020 will be the best upgrade time SSDs and RAM are predicted to crash, Monitors will crash due to investments in OLED and Qdot technologies, HBM2.1 Samsung fabs will have enough production to drop prices on Planar VRAM GTX cards and CPUs will both have another generational leap in performance 4k ultrawide 100fps by then will be attainable with dropped prices due to Modular Die that share RAM like a NUMA design or multiple clusters on 1 Die.

 

[seefizzle]

Goddammit this pisses me off. I was just getting myself ready to buy a mean rig for VR next month. How long do I hold off for now?

 

[Cycloid Torus]

Goddammit this pisses me off. I was just getting myself ready to buy a mean rig for VR next month. How long do I hold off for now?

6 months or so.

 

[axiomatic13]

I chose a different route other than waiting. I cranked up 3 GPU's to mine Etherium. (One RX460, a Titan X, and a 1080 Ti) It took me 3 and 1/2 weeks but that got me one Etherium coin and at the time it was worth $800 so I cashed it out immediately. That was enough to get me a new motherboard and ram even at these prices. Problem solved. (edit: Also had some CPU mining at night in the mix, forgot to add that.)

 

[Experimentongod]

People that need to upgrade soon are in a really tough spot. I got my GTX 1080 Ti 6 monts ago and I thought it was expensive. LOL

 

[LinkedKube]

Uggh, not now.

 

[Sochsun]

So I just helped my girlfriend build her first budget gaming rig over Christmas and scored some great deals on a bunch of the components. Shortly into January all the parts arrived and she's been happy ever since.

The one in particular that shocks me is the ASUS 1060 3GB we got for about $230 CAD after a small rebate and discount. After seeing this and checking the retailer we got it from, the same card is now $320 CAD with the same rebate, and its pretty much out of stock. I'm glad I pulled the trigger on it at the price point, otherwise trying to build it now would blow the budget at the same specs.

 

[noel24]

If scammers can create indefinite amount of cryptocurrencies, than We should hope that future generation of AAA PC games will be better optimized for Intel HD 630 and such GPUs. After all, that's a future of gaming if AMD and nVidia are leaving this branch of computing to die.

 

[Evernessince]

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.

Um, we were discussing price increases in single components. I have no idea why you are going on about the whole system but it's completely off topic.

Second, we were not discussing how long mining has been going on. It was about the price increase as a result of that mining. Obviously the price increases haven't been going on as long as mining has. Bitcoin's impact was reduced to zero when ASICs started coming out.

If you are going to comment on an existing discussion, please make sure to read all of the comments before jumping in. Your response was completely off topic.

 

[LeoLancaster]

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.

Which country do you live in? Might be cheaper to pay for international shipping.

 

[HyPeroxya]

Plus , I dont understand the meaning or intent of your first sentence. With gfx cards if you have the time , its possible to get mid range cards at semi -reasonable prices if you wait for sales/returns/refurbish etc etc.but high end or Amd , they have been in short supply since vega waled out. My next Gpu might be an Apu or Hades Canyon, I'm done with gaming now.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

Microcenter has a "limit 2 per visit" on their GPU cards because of coin miners. Most stores selling GPUs had to change their return/refund policies due to coin miners. Can't just take these things back when you've been running them at 110%.

So anyway, very few people actually have the cash to buy a powerful $500+ GPU and a 4K monitor to match. Gaming in 1080p is easy. It's gaming in 4K that's difficult, especially when you're trying to run multi-monitors.

 

[Bluescreendeath]

The Crypto market just crashed again...hopefully the prices will go back to normal.

 

[mctommy]

Dang! I just bought my EVGA GTX 1080 FTW in September 2017 for $550... and I thought I was balling... haha, no way I would pay $900 for that card.

 

[Lionvibez]

I have a 7970Ghz I only game at 1920x1200 so its still be adequate.

However the prices now are so insane I can't even replace it you can't get a 580 series radeon for less than $600CAD right now. Its at the point where you are almost just better off going straight to a 1080Ti since I'm getting screwed anyways on price I might aswell go straight to the top for the upgrade.

 

[ErikNZ]

Last month I ordered an EVGA GTX 1060 6GB on Amazon for $249. It was supposed to be in stock and shipped immediately.

Then they moved the shipment date by a day. Then 3 days. Then a week. A day later, the shipment date became early January. Then it was moved again to mid January.

Meanwhile I looked at the prices and within two days, the price had gone up to $280 so I figured they had no intention to ship the card out for $249. (I'm sure it was in stock but why sell something for $249 if you can get almost 50 more for it selling the same card to someone else?)

So I cancelled the order and bought a used GTX 970 locally. I know, it's not in the same league as the 1060 but at least I have a GPU that allows me to play my current games (incl. PUBG) and, coming from a GTX 760 it was an improvement nevertheless. It'll see me through until GPU pices come down again later this year. Or I'll just wait until Nvidia releases some new GPUs down the line and pick up a used 1060 or 1070.

 

[Humza]

Um, we were discussing price increases in single components. I have no idea why you are going on about the whole system but it's completely off topic.

Second, we were not discussing how long mining has been going on. It was about the price increase as a result of that mining. Obviously the price increases haven't been going on as long as mining has. Bitcoin's impact was reduced to zero when ASICs started coming out.

If you are going to comment on an existing discussion, please make sure to read all of the comments before jumping in. Your response was completely off topic.

1. Erm, because you need all the parts of a PC to make it work, unlike a console. Multiple parts with high prices difficult to buy than a single expensive console. Hope you got the idea now, cant make it simpler. Completely on topic!

2. ASICs were mainly for btc, not for alternate currencies that cropped up later, it started to affect the h/w industry and has been for the past few years. Not every miner has an ASIC. Simply cant ignore affect of mining.

3. I make sure to read all the comments, my was among the first in this thread and on topic. No need to start a war of words. When a topic gets discussed in-depth, the discussion is bound to get on the hows and whys of it.

Anyway, have a nice day.

 

[Evernessince]

1. Erm, because you need all the parts of a PC to make it work, unlike a console. Multiple parts with high prices difficult to buy than a single expensive console. Hope you got the idea now, cant make it simpler. Completely on topic!

2. ASICs were mainly for btc, not for alternate currencies that cropped up later, it started to affect the h/w industry and has been for the past few years. Not every miner has an ASIC. Simply cant ignore affect of mining.

3. I make sure to read all the comments, my was among the first in this thread and on topic. No need to start a war of words. When a topic gets discussed in-depth, the discussion is bound to get on the hows and whys of it.

Anyway, have a nice day.

Off topic still. Once again, not discussing the full breakdown of PC part prices nor are we comparing PC pricing to console. This article has nothing to do with consoles nor did our discussion. Stop trying to bring in something irrelevant to the conversation.

 

[Humza]

Off topic still. Once again, not discussing the full breakdown of PC part prices nor are we comparing PC pricing to console. This article has nothing to do with consoles nor did our discussion. Stop trying to bring in something irrelevant to the conversation.

Oh dear! the main article is essentially discussing PC Gaming h/w by parts (this is part 2 if you see). So it is a breakdown (not by price but by parts you collect to make a PC). Secondly, its centered around gaming and gamers who're currently looking to build/upgrade for 'Gaming'. A console, currently, seems a better option for 'Gaming', so does a gaming laptop (as one guy mentioned in the comments above). People have opinions.

 

[Evernessince]

Oh dear! the main article is essentially discussing PC Gaming h/w by parts (this is part 2 if you see). So it is a breakdown (not by price but by parts you collect to make a PC). Secondly, its centered around gaming and gamers who're currently looking to build/upgrade for 'Gaming'. A console, currently, seems a better option for 'Gaming', so does a gaming laptop (as one guy mentioned in the comments above). People have opinions.

No, I'm 100% sure the article centers around GPU prices. It's even in the title. Overall this article series centers around high prices caused by mining. Nowhere does it state they are going to make an article for each and every PC part.

 

[cliffordcooley]

@Humza I get what you are saying. There is no need in trying to explain yourself further.