
GPUs Experience Massive Price Increase As Tariff Exclusion Ends After The Holidays
If you’re one of the hundreds of thousands of gamers that are desperate to get their mitts on the newest GPUs coming from Nvidia and AMD, yet are still finding yourself fighting tooth and nail against bots offered by companies, then here is your bad news of the day.
Tariff exclusions for the GPUs have officially ended, and prices have skyrocketed to reflect the additional taxes exerted on the companies. Economics 101 this isn’t, but this is the companies pushing that tariff towards the consumers: the party that is supposed to somehow benefit from tariffs depending on which side of the aisle you ask.
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For you non tech BBs who are very confused about computer parts here is something you should know:
NVIDIA 2070-3090 series of Graphics Cards (GPU) are in very high demand and there is a shortage of them. There are scalpers selling them for extremely inflated prices. Be careful.
— しらら🥟Shirara🥟VTuber (@dumplingshirara) December 29, 2020
The stock situation never fully recovered before the tariffs restarted, either, meaning that now people that have suffered from low stocks, cryptocurrency mining, and a plethora of bots are now going to take a higher price right on the chin.
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If you’re within the United States, it shouldn’t affect you exponentially; conversely, if you’re outside of the US, your next build just became exponentially higher in a market that already frankly struggles to keep a modicum of sanity during pricing. South Africa had the rare 3080’s that sold at least at double the MSRP of $699 in their currency, as India has similarly suffered.
GPU, Motherboard Prices Will Jump Thanks to US-China Trade War https://t.co/PeGt9bdm1c pic.twitter.com/Lo0r4vkdYb
— ExtremeTech (@ExtremeTech) January 6, 2021
The companies controlling the export and sale of the GPUs aren’t necessarily looking at leaving an additional few hundred dollars on the table, and the sheer demand in tandem with the supply during a pandemic has wreaked havoc across PC building communities entirely.
It isn’t looking to get any better, either, as cryptocurrency farming looks to once again be on the rise, inflating the costs of components until miners are arguably fighting against themselves for hardware.
Right now is a terrible time to build one because the GPU prices are insane (for a number of reasons), but after that if you build yourself and buy second hand you can build a pc that was top of the line 2 years ago for 6-800€ in my experience
— 👟 Florian Brühl 👟 (@_bruehl) January 2, 2021
The good news is that, if you aren’t hard-pressed to have the bleeding-edge of technology, there is absolutely no harm in waiting for everything to settle before upgrading your PC; drop the settings a little bit and continue to enjoy brand new titles that aren’t locked to specific hardware pieces.
If you’re struggling to render more modern titles, however, some are proposing that opting into the console war isn’t entirely without reason.
AMD all day! GPU prices are still out of control so waiting wouldn't be the worst thing, but if you can snag a 30 series GPU for a good price I would!
— Octavo4G (@Octavo4G) January 3, 2021
Although they are similarly plagued by scalpers, although that situation has slowly been rectifying itself – very slowly.
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Thanks to indie developers being the ones that are frankly pushing the industry as a whole into new mechanics, you should have zero problems using an underpowered PC for the next few years: when’s the last time a triple-A title came out that was actually good?