Why Building a Gaming PC Right Now Is a Bad Idea, Part 2 Insane Graphics Card Prices
0Why Building a Gaming PC Right Now Is a Bad Idea, Part 2 Insane Graphics Card Prices.
We're hardly two weeks into 2018 and it's been a wild ride for the tech industry already (CES notwithstanding). Just as we thought graphics card pricing was starting to settle down late last year, it has skyrocketed higher than ever as a result of increasing demand from cryptocurrency miners and Chinese gamers, in addition to equally inflated memory prices. Altogether, this scenario has provided the perfect storm of reasons for holding off on your next GPU upgrade.
The surging profitability of cryptocurrencies is likely the biggest contributing factor to the sudden hike in GPU pricing. The price of Ethereum has skyrocketed from ~$450 to well over $1,000 in the last month. At the time of writing, the value had hit just over $1,200, or a 170% increase in about a month and a half, so it's no wonder miners are snapping up every last GPU they can get.
Ethereum is just one example, but there are other "up and coming" cryptocurrencies that have miners excited. So, while we hoped for cryptocurrency mining to start cooling off in 2018, so far the opposite has occurred.
As discussed in Part 1 about DDR4 memory, which has been also been driven up in cost due to a lack of supply during a time of high demand -- or price fixing (?) -- the same is happening with GDDR5 memory and it's expected that this RAM shortage will increase the cost of mid-range graphics cards such as the GTX 1060 and RX 580 by anywhere from $5 to $20.