Scarcity and skyrocketing prices - How to kill and industry

Tanyac

Reputable
I just wanted to share some experiences and frustrations with the Australian computer market. I'm sure my posts have been seen by many across these forums and my strong opinions are well known.

I'm feeling particularly frustrated about the exploitation by Australian retailers and distributors. But when companies like Samsung step up and say that they are going to hold back production to keep prices up my blood just boils.

Incomes here are plummeting yet prices are just skyrocketing at phenomenal rates.

When the Crypto bubble burst, graphics card prices didn't drop at all. In fact, they are now going up as retailers try to push people onto the RTX bandwagon. And those prices are anywhere up to $2500 for one card. Graphics prices are just unaffordable.

Of course, we have the DRAM issues. Prices as much as 300% higher than they were in 2016 with no relief in sight. Manufacturers keep pushing out RBG garbage that does nothing for performance at ever increasing prices with speed vs latency that shows little to no performance increase.

Then we have Samsung's flash drives shortage that is going to occur next year as Samsung strives to keep prices high. I'm sure retailers here will link HDD prices to that and keep those prices high too. Though a 10TB already costs $450 at best.

Of course, let's not forget Intel's utter incompetence and managing their own business, now creating CPU shortages, that we see everywhere is affected many businesses. Retailers refuse to sell you a CPU unless you buy a motherboard, making CPUs totally inaccessible.

Motherboard prices have also skyrocketed. Particularly AMD boards. But my current X299 board cost $750. And that is a typical price (But not the highest - I've seen prices as high as $1199 for a motherboard).

In 2016 $250 would get you decent monitor. Now they are around $500. Sure you can still get cheap rubbish, but on a quality and feature basis you can't get what you got 2 years ago for the same price. I'm looking to buy a 4K HDR monitor. Best price here $1299.

What's left? Cases - A decent case in 2016 cost $50 - $100. Now you're lucky if you can get a decent quality case for under $225. Power Supplies - increased by about 50% since 2016.

Laptops don't escape the price hikes either. A 15.6" laptop that I bought new in Jan 2018 for $1199 is now $1699. $1699 is now about average for a below-middle of the road gaming laptop.

What better way to kill the component/enthusiast industry is than to create all the artificial scarcities and force prices up. Everyone in the chain seems to be part of the problem, with the end user being ripped of for everything.

Of course, Australia has GST and import costs, but those in no way justify the absurd prices were are being charged. I could be naive and say "how do these people sleep at night", but the answer is obvious. They are in it for the money. The myth of "slim to non-existent margins" is a fallacy.

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TJ Hooker

Titan
Ambassador
Have you looked at prices recently? Just looking some arbitrary DDR4 and a 860 EVO 500 GB on PC part picker Australia, prices of RAM and SSDs have fallen substantially lately, just as they have elsewhere in the world.

GPU prices do look high, although I'd try not to get too hung up on the RTX 20 cards as they were criticised for being overpriced and offering poor value even in the US.