Ive been wanting to build a new PC for a few years now (my old gaming laptop bit the dust) but the video card situation has put a halt to my plans.
Yeah, the video card situation has messed everything up for sure. I usually build a new pc every few years and this gpu holdup is insane. I skipped the 2xxx series and have been sticking with nvidia through the years. I'm not against amd gpus and have flipped between Intel/amd for cpus multiple times, but even when they were made by ATI their gpu's had great hardware specs but lacked the driver support and for some games would be a headache. In this current climate though even an amd card would be fine, haha, basically if you can get the gpu the rest of the pc shouldn't be too hard to get in comparison.
Shopping for the kids: done. Wife is easy to shop for since she doesn't ask for anything and appreciates anything she gets.
This is the problem with Just in time manufacturing that is so efficient that all capacity is being used all the time. When things were shut down last year because companies cancelled/reduced orders, there was no spare capacity to catch back up when things got back to normal. I have several friend that work in semi conductor fabrication and they said the freeze and covid pretty much cost them billions of dollars in production that they can't ever make up for. All the semiconductor companies are investing hundreds of billions in new fabs but those won't be completed for years and supply constraints are slowing things down. The other issue is that the chip in cars are not as profitable as GPU's so they are in the back of the line. And Guess where half of high end GPU are used for. Crypto mining, so this crypto craze is partially to blame for all this BS.
My wife was complaining about all the toys being double what they were last year. Everything everywhere is limited or out of stock. It’s wild.
Oh no, people crying about not being able to buy dumb stuff they don't need. Put the money into crypto and go get a pet from the shelter.
A big part of the supply crunch is labor shortage. Short-sighted employers letting their skilled labors go during the pandemic to save a dime instead of just tightening their belts and weathering the storm as a team. Those employees moved on to other industries and now the companies have to start from scratch. Experience is king and when you add in institutional and industry knowledge, it takes years to get a new employee back to where the veterans were. Capitalism has yet to factor these things in. You pay your good people well or you will pay for it later. Oh and regarding the video cards, I never got a response from my contacts so I just bit the bullet and bought a pre-built system at CyberPowerPC. Got a nice gaming rig for my oldest with a RTX 3070 for $1800. The aftermarket price on that card is around $1200 so it was a no-brainer.
I've been looking to build a new PC for about a year, I think, but the deranged video card prices have stopped me. In many cases, you may have a better shot at buying a pre-built and either living with it or ripping it apart for the video card and building your own. The only reason I haven't gone this route is that a lot of pre-built systems have the card you want, but the rest of the components are basic or straight garbage. I may still break down eventually and buy one. I wanted a RTX 3080, but then said I'd be ok with a 6800 XT or 6900 XT, but those things' prices are like triple their MSRP. The next-gen GPUs are supposed to be out next fall, I think, and these prices don't look like they're coming down for a while, so now it's getting to be "should I just wait"? Right now, I'm just going to grin and bear it until I finally get sick of my 5 or 6 year old GTX 1080.
Yup. I saw that. CyberPowerPC and a couple of others are on my list to look at. My problem is I want to get what I want rather than settle for whatever's out there. Like I want a 3080 and an AMD CPU with a good mobo that won't die within a year or two. I want the memory to be expandable without chunking existing sticks or something. I want a good power supply. I want the mobo to use one of a few specific chipsets. I want a machine that doesn't look the Vegas Strip at night when you turn it on (or at least be able to turn the stupid RGB garbage off). I'd prefer no glass panels and a quiet case that has room for expansion and is easy to work in. That's why I'd rather just build the thing on my own. The other issue people seem to have online is that they get non-functioning rigs or something breaks and when having to send it back for an RMA, get put on a wait list that's a month or two out at least or they get the run-around on repairs which would suck. Right now I've talked myself into just waiting for now.
