Here’s What’s Driving Up Prices For High-Capacity PSUs

[olehburko]

Being a PC gamer keeps getting harder and harder. And at the point where everything is inflating in prices i am ready to buy and adapter for an ps4/Xbox plug in a keyboard and a mouse and play with 30fps and low to medium settings

 

[Giroro]

Crypto has ruined the whole custom PC market.

I think we would be suffering from the NAND, DDR, and HDD 'shortages', regardless of crypto mining. Something smells amiss in the memory industry right now... Well maybe not in HDDs, since those only regained popularity when NAND supply suspiciously dropped and prices skyrocketed.

Lets all take a deep breath and wait for awhile. You should still try to avoid building a PC until hardware fixes for spectre/meltdown are implemented, and that will most likely take a year.

 

[InvalidError]

Something smells amiss in the memory industry right now...

Nothing amiss, just simultaneously skyrocketing demand for memory chips of all sorts: SSDs need memory chips (3D-NAND + DRAM), phones and tablets need eMMC + DRAM with the mainstream being in the neighborhood of 3GB RAM + 32GB storage, game consoles require eMMC/SSD + DRAM, GPUs require large amounts of GDDR5/6 or HBM2, datacenters require tons of SSDs + GPUs + DRAM, crypto-mining requires tons of GPUs, etc. and there is no sign that this demand will die down in the foreseeable future.

There are also shortages on the blank wafer manufacturing side of things, that will need resolving as well. That's a lot of multi-year factory builds before the supply issues can be smoothed out.

 

[kyotokid]

Crypto has ruined the whole custom PC market.

...I wouldn't shed a tear if it augured into the ground at Mach 10 tomorrow.

 

[kyotokid]

Hopefully some time in the next few years the extra business will drive some innovations that will do us some good. Just a hope.

For now, crypto is beginning to cause energy crysis in some countries due to power companies having trouble coping with the increased demand. In Iceland, crypto-mining uses more power than all domestic use combined and the government is wary of building up power generation to accommodate use that provides very little benefit to its economy, little to no benefit to its society and would leave it stranded with that much under-used production capacity when the crypto-mining bubble bursts.

Crypto-mining simply isn't environmentally sustainable. Global warming was already bad enough. Wasting tons of energy on it shouldn't be encouraged.

...what is worse, large mining farms in China are putting an increasing demand on China's power generation facilities, a majority of which burn coal.

 

[zodiacfml]

I found that there are good quality Chinese branded PSUs and there seems no shortage as the price has remained almost the same with a noticeable increase in January.

 

[Gastec]

Yes, in other words it's GREED that's driving prices up. But I also feel a bit tricked by all these computer tech online magazines that have always told us to WAIT, not buy on release day, WAIT a few months FOR PRICES TO DECREASE! So, when will them prices decrease? In 2019, 2022? They will NEVER decrease and always increase, because there is sooo much "demand" in the World.

 

[bit_user]

I also feel a bit tricked by all these computer tech online magazines that have always told us to WAIT, not buy on release day, WAIT a few months FOR PRICES TO DECREASE!

For a long time, it was a reasonable strategy. I actually prefer to wait so I get later steppings & revs of chips & boards. I guess it's been a while since we've seen a big-time HW bug (SATA controller in Sandybridge chipsets is the last that comes to mind... but there must've been something more recent).

With GPUs, I think later cards tend to have higher clocks, as well.

So, when will them prices decrease? In 2019, 2022? They will NEVER decrease and always increase, because there is sooo much "demand" in the World.

Eh, maybe a little trade war will pop the economic bubble and bring demand down within the realm of current supply.

 

[King_V]

Agreed in that normally, waiting was a VERY sound strategy. The existing market and issues with pricing are a pretty radical aberration.

As to the trade war - nah, that'll just make things more expensive, exacerbating the already insane situation.

 

[bit_user]

As to the trade war - nah, that'll just make things more expensive, exacerbating the already insane situation.

In a trade war, (nearly) everybody loses. So, my assumption is that once the world rediscovers this, things will go back to pretty much how they've been (but not before the economy takes a major hit).

I hope it doesn't come to that, but it's looking plausible. The only people who really benefit from a trade war are the ones whose industries are being protected. But that's a small subset of the workers and businesses, in a modern economy. The downstream industries lose, and so do consumers and most investors.

 

[InvalidError]

In a trade war, (nearly) everybody loses. So, my assumption is that once the world rediscovers this, things will go back to pretty much how they've been (but not before the economy takes a major hit).

I think most people outside the Trump alt-verse already know this without repeating the exercise. If the US economy goes into a tailspin thanks to Trump's policies, he'll likely overreact trying to fix his mess and make it even worse until corporate reps/dems and their wealthy donor overlords decide that he's become too much of a liability and must be impeached immediately.

 

[bit_user]

If the US economy goes into a tailspin thanks to Trump's policies, he'll likely overreact trying to fix his mess and make it even worse until corporate reps/dems and their wealthy donor overlords decide that he's become too much of a liability and must be impeached immediately.

Not to get all political, but the Republican congress is clearly protecting Trump. They know how vindictive he is, and dare not cross him for fear of him vetoing every bill they put in front of him, not to him mention trash talking them and trying to engineer primary challengers.

The Dems cannot do anything about him, right now. You know they wish they could. But, if he single-handedly tanks the economy in a midterm election year, Ryan and McConell might finally throw him to the wolves.

 

[velocityg4]

It's surprising we aren't yet seeing the opposite in other higher end parts in the custom market. Miners aren't buying high end CPU, motherboards, high capacity RAM and CPU coolers. One would think the gamers planning a new build would hold off due to the GPU prices. Therefore there should be a surplus of these parts. Perhaps if this keeps up. Prices for these components will drop.

Microcenter is taking this seriously. They only allow one GPU sale per customer now. They require you to show ID. If you bought any GPU in the last several weeks. They won't sell you another one. They also frequently have Rx 580 and GTX 1060 for sale at much lower prices than everyone else. Still higher than they were last year.

 

[InvalidError]

The Dems cannot do anything about him, right now. You know they wish they could.

Most dems are corporate-owned stooges who won't vote against their overlords' interests as that's the only way they know how to campaign, which is why they backed down on DACA, backed down on medicare/medicaid and caved in on the ~20G$ for Trump's wall... total abdication at a time where they could have done the exact opposite: require DACA and all entitlements be accounted for before agreeing to any other spending. Before any real change can happen, corporate-owned congress/house-critters need to get kicked out.

 

[bit_user]

...

I'm not really partisan, but I think you're being too provocative. That's all I'm going to say.

 

[InvalidError]

I'm not really partisan, but I think you're being too provocative. That's all I'm going to say.

No need to be partisan (or even a US citizen - I live in Canada) to find the rampant legalized bribery most US politics runs on to be particularly repulsive.

 

[bit_user]

No need to be partisan (or even a US citizen - I live in Canada) to find the rampant legalized bribery most US politics runs on to be particularly repulsive.

I'm not being defensive - simply concerned about stoking a political flame war.

The only reason I brought up trade wars is that it was one of the few things on the horizon that could impact the economy and thus component pricing. Tangential, but topical. I wasn't trying to get overtly political. Nothing good will come of it.

Anyway, let's hope the trade war is averted. The economy will eventually soften, even without it.