GPU Prices Skyrocket, Breaking the Entire DIY PC Market

[HoffY]

you mean spend billions to build new fabs? rather than borking the cards so they cant do mining?

Its funny (not funny har har) that this hasn't happened already. I mean... GeForce cards instead of a Quadra? nVIDIA and AMD didn't hesitate for a second to gimp those and force you to spend 4x as much for a quadro that does exactly the same thing as its 4x cheaper GeForce.
o

 

[Susquehannock]

Have you guys been checking your local Micro Center? Mine gets their stock in on Wednesday and is NOT raising their msrp prices on cards.

Yes, they sell out in a day or two, but they aren't jacking their price up.

This is true. Also seems they are making an effort to curtail scalping by limiting higher end cards to only two per household. Those are RX 580 behind the sign by the way. They also had 1080 and 1080-ti in stock.

 

[/dev/null]

This is true. Also seems they are making an effort to curtail scalping by limiting higher end cards to only two per household. Those are RX 580 behind the sign by the way. They also had 1080 and 1080-ti in stock.

Apparently they have plenty of apostrophes

 

[Twisted Kidney]

Its not just GPUs it seems like components as a whole have gone up.

Right down to fans, keyboards, cases, even the mouse. It's across the board it seems.

The only place I've seen online that has had stuff at close to SRP is Amazon, and their prices are up and down like a Yo Yo on speedballs.

Fortunately I have a local guy who runs his own repair company that gets me stuff for the appropriate price, none of the SRPs have changed, it's retailers doing most of this price fixing.

Except GPUs. He can't get 'em.

 

[rgraze911]

Hmm if the crypto currencies do crash think of how flooded the market will be with cards.

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

Its funny (not funny har har) that this hasn't happened already. I mean... GeForce cards instead of a Quadra? nVIDIA and AMD didn't hesitate for a second to gimp those and force you to spend 4x as much for a quadro that does exactly the same thing as its 4x cheaper GeForce.
o

I wonder this too, why they haven't borked some models for minining already. Normally companies like these aren't slow to pick up on places they could exploit for more profit. Then they could riding the "we did this for the gamers out there"-marketing and become some heroes!

WIN-WIN!

 

[faugusztin]

Have you guys been checking your local Micro Center? Mine gets their stock in on Wednesday and is NOT raising their msrp prices on cards.

Yes, they sell out in a day or two, but they aren't jacking their price up.

Ok, that solves few US locations. What about the rest of the world ?

Top GTX NVIDIA available at biggest local computer eshop in central Europe is 1050Ti. Last week they had 1 piece of 1080 Ti. One. After 3 weeks of shortage. 1050Ti's sell for 210-250 euros, 1050's sell for 135-205 euros.
Caseking.de has some stock - at high prices.

 

[bl4C3y3]

I know nobody gives a rats ass, but Isn't long term mining going to cause serious problems for the environment ontop of everything else that is already ? I read somewhere that coin mining currently ( already as a tech in it's infancy ) uses the same power output as a country the size of New Zealand. Lets speculate this growth continues , 20, 30, 40 years down the road with a massive uptick in users and larger farms .. what then ? An output the size of the UK, France .. half of North America ?

Power prices go through the roof for everyone, non miners included ?
The government places huge energy taxes on miners. ?
The world will look like Mad Max (but at least we will be able to drive our cars ) ?

Doesn't it seem like all the energy saving appliances, bulbs, and cars that have been developed over the last few decades are a waste if we just replace it with GPU mining instead ?

BTW i know nobody cares, and no i don't want to get into a climate debate about aerosols.. especially not hairosols used in hotel rooms.

good point, and for this reason, I don't mine nor trade bitcoins ... mining uses so many resources, but they are only used to generate money ?
I mean, are these mining calculations used for something beneficial or contribute to anything ? ... medicine, chemicals, physics, simulations
or even something that defines their worth (collateral), except from the electricity resources they use ?
... mining is probably invented by the electricity providers to offset all the energy saving tactics

let's say the mining business grows exponentially, then in some years, it will use so much energy that non-mining districts will have blackouts or curfew ...
or everybody will be mining and sitting on a pile of money ... but there is nothing left to use the money for

that sound a little like ... The Lorax ?

 

[tetris42]

good point, and for this reason, I don't mine nor trade bitcoins ... mining uses so many resources, but they are only used to generate money ?
I mean, are these mining calculations used for something beneficial or contribute to anything ? ... medicine, chemicals, physics, simulations
or even something that defines their worth (collateral), except from the electricity resources they use ?
... mining is probably invented by the electricity providers to offset all the energy saving tactics

let's say the mining business grows exponentially, then in some years, it will use so much energy that non-mining districts will have blackouts or curfew ...
or everybody will be mining and sitting on a pile of money ... but there is nothing left to use the money for

that sound a little like ... The Lorax ?

No, they're used to generate alternative currencies, most of which will be useless in the long term. It started out as just a fun enthusiast hobby, yet has been propelled to stratospheric heights due to how poorly we're handing our traditional currencies. If we had a stable economic system that worked for everyone, cryptocurrency would be almost worthless, thus here we are.

As for the Lorax, we shot him and buried him out in a ditch a LONG time ago. His replacement is selling cars now:

 

[StoleMyOwnCar]

I've stated this a long time ago during the last mining boom but... lol the thing that I'm wondering is why Nvidia/AMD hasn't just stopped pumping out GPU's almost entirely to consumers. I mean wtf is the point right now, when apparently a majority of them are using them to supposedly print money?

I would just
- halt all consumer focused production and then
- start pumping out whatever the next generation in line that I have on the roadmap
- start setting up GPU farms (which they already have in place, for distributed computing--ie machine learning and complex matrices and such--anyway, iirc)
- mine the heck out of the cards (actually why do they even need cards? They can just make custom PCB for just using the chips... well that costs R&D and isn't sellable afterwards I suppose), using intelligent hold and sell strategies that they already have GPU farms providing the machine learning knowhow to accomplish.
- if/when a crash happens, just put them all back up on market, after "refurbishing" them with new parts. They can run these at peak efficiency and know everything about the architecture and hardware, so all of them will be fine after continued use (if not, just repair them). They're still going to end up making more money off of the process than the raw parts (and if they're clearly labeled as refurbs, who the heck can really complain, outside from the sheer quantity)
- Any excess production, just sell it for icing on top, at enough quantity that the coin will remain competitive and provide them optimal flows.

I'm sure at least some of this is in a (understatement of the year) ethically grey area but... who cares? It's their product, and they're still functioning well within their boundaries. If they start becoming such a big player in the market that none of the individual consumer level miners can compete, maybe these stupid GPU prices will finally stabilize back to the point where they're only used for gaming. It's ass backwards, but maybe it would work. I mean if all of these coins and alt coins are NOT some weird bubble or tulip or whatever type of currency, then Nvidia shouldn't have to fear much unexpected happening at any point and should just essentially be able to keep expanding operations based on them... right....

Eh probably holes here and there just some shower thought that I had.

 

[Blakestr]

I've stated this a long time ago during the last mining boom but... lol the thing that I'm wondering is why Nvidia/AMD hasn't just stopped pumping out GPU's almost entirely to consumers. I mean wtf is the point right now, when apparently a majority of them are using them to supposedly print money?

I would just
- halt all consumer focused production and then
- start pumping out whatever the next generation in line that I have on the roadmap
- start setting up GPU farms (which they already have in place, for distributed computing--ie machine learning and complex matrices and such--anyway, iirc)
- mine the heck out of the cards (actually why do they even need cards? They can just make custom PCB for just using the chips... well that costs R&D and isn't sellable afterwards I suppose), using intelligent hold and sell strategies that they already have GPU farms providing the machine learning knowhow to accomplish.
- if/when a crash happens, just put them all back up on market, after "refurbishing" them with new parts. They can run these at peak efficiency and know everything about the architecture and hardware, so all of them will be fine after continued use (if not, just repair them). They're still going to end up making more money off of the process than the raw parts
- Any excess production, just sell it for icing on top.

I'm sure at least some of this is in a (understatement of the year) ethically grey area but... who cares? It's their product, and they're still functioning well within their boundaries. If they start becoming such a big player in the market that none of the individual consumer level miners can compete, maybe these stupid GPU prices will finally stabilize back to the point where they're only used for gaming. It's ass backwards, but maybe it would work. I mean if all of these coins and alt coins are NOT some weird bubble or tulip or whatever type of currency, then Nvidia shouldn't have to fear much unexpected happening at any point and should just essentially be able to keep expanding operations based on them... right....

Eh probably holes here and there just some shower thought that I had.

They probably are doing some of what you are suggesting. They would never publicly announce it but they could have a few subsidiaries and resellers "buy up" a good portion of their available stock. However, they are like any company that, I think on some level knows there is a shit ton of money to be made on Bitcoin but that unlike other currencies, there's no physical country backing it. If it were to fail, it would fail completely.

 

[StoleMyOwnCar]

They probably are doing some of what you are suggesting. They would never publicly announce it but they could have a few subsidiaries and resellers "buy up" a good portion of their available stock. However, they are like any company that, I think on some level knows there is a shit ton of money to be made on Bitcoin but that unlike other currencies, there's no physical country backing it. If it were to fail, it would fail completely.

That's why my last sentence in that second to last paragraph was made with a bit of speculative (ie possible) sarcasm.

 

[Susquehannock]

Seems to me much of the shortage right now is caused by card makers switching portion of production over to "mining edition" cards. With no bling-bling, and usually lacking video ports, bigger profit margin for them.

 

[Hooksalot]

My son and I finished hi rig in December. Got a 6GB Geforce 1060 for 285. That same card is now 499 so basically almost double in 5 weeks or so. This is nuts.