This is what it will take to get PC prices back to normal...

might as well be holding gold right now nzxt's starter pc series now starts at 699 and gives you everything you need to get into the world of pc available in multiple configurations the starter pc can be tailored to meet your budget and needs and are the perfect way to build a work or learn from home setup while still being capable of 1080p 60fps gaming and popular titles like fortnite rainbow six siege and league of legends all of nzxt pcs come back with a 2 year warranty on parts labor and ram overclocking helping to guarantee the best gaming possible for your build to see the full list of specs and pricing on the nzxt starter pc series click the link in the description below hey listen up this is going to be a talking head video and if you don't want to cj's face you might want to just minimize this video all right thanks all right so following social media i get off of social media a lot lately and then i kind of get on and like what are people talking about and i'm noticing that um there's kind of two things happening here so i thought maybe it's important to do a state of pc gaming video to more or less inform the people that are new to this space going what the heck has it always been this crazy with computers um to sort of give you some information on what's happening here because there's there's multiple fronts happening uh when it comes to the pricing of computers so let's go ahead and rewind back to the beginning of 2020. you know it's like the 20 series was already well into its life cycle ryzen 3000 series was already out we were waiting on zen 2. and so it's one of those things where a lot of people were in this sort of a holding pattern kind of going oh i know new stuff's coming i want to wait in fact we've preached it all the time if you're a certain amount of time into a refresh cycle or a family of gpu or cpu you kind of get an idea of what's coming next and when it's coming there's patterns that have really just held up for decades now on how long this stuff sort of sticks around and so a lot of people waited in 2020 to kind of build their rigs of their systems because they know that the beginning of the year is usually kind of the the worst time to buy stuff because we know that right around summer time slash beginning of fall is when the newest announcements happen so a lot of people waited well obviously with the pandemic a lot of people were forced to upgrade or buy their computers early because of being forced at work from home learn from home type of situations and so we saw a massive growth in purchasing at that point which put a strain on demand tsmc for a while they had to kind of shut down production and sort of pull back because they also were under quarantine orders and such um which you know there's the mining of the raw materials all of that slowed down so you kind of had this increased demand happening at the same time production was at its lowest that we probably ever seen because of the way the pandemic affected all of that as a system so once stuff started to come out once we started to see an increase in production we saw the release of the 30 series gpus which had the biggest price to performance uh increase excuse me performance to price increase that we had seen since prior to pascal so that also increased demand because people were like wow we're actually going to get great graphics cards at a price that makes sense well because of the fact that the demand was up the production was down we saw them sell out immediately that then invites scalpers to say hey there's profit here profiteering on going okay we'll send out our you know believe it or not there's groups of people that coordinate where they go how many people go where who gets what and then they all kind of collectively pool their stuff together they scalp them as a group and then they divide all of the uh profits amongst them there's just entire groups dedicated to doing this and they follow trends it was the biggest thing with shoes we saw a lot of those scalping bots created because of these shoes and apparel market with limited edition runs on like yeezys and things like that well those groups will follow wherever the money is and right now that is our circle we're kind of used to being off on the side and people going oh you pc nerds we don't care about you guys well they've realized there's a lot of profit over here that is kind of the two major things that led to where we are today but there's something happening now that's something that we haven't seen in about five years and that is the cryptocurrency mining boom happening once again the last time we saw this was when the 10 series and the 400 series graphics cards from radeon and 10 series from nvidia the rx 480 being the mining monster because it was affordable and it had a massive hash rate which made it a great money making tool it was inexpensive to create these farms these render or not render farms but mining farms out of just dozens and dozens of rtx no not rtx rx 480s uh and then we saw the 500 series after that but rx 480s were just the best bang for the buck when it came to mining now a lot of people might be going well wait a minute if the mining craze happened and then it crashed and now we're seeing it happen again didn't people make asics that were way better at mining than graphics cards that is absolutely true but one of the things that we saw with the mining crash back in 2016 2017 was that people stopped manufacturing the a6 because they were no longer profitable because people weren't mining so much and therefore the asics were no longer being updated and optimized for the various algorithms and math that's having to happen when it comes to bitcoin now ethereum at the time was just starting to kind of pick up and it never took off like bitcoin in fact back then when bitcoin hit 17 000 per coin which is absolutely outrageous at that time because they were hovering around two or three hundred dollars for the longest time per coin that led people to wanting to get into mining once again and the cheapest way to get in into it without paying the outrageous price of asics which were designed specifically for whatever coin it was that they were mining was through graphics cards well people are doing it once again and they're finding that the 2070 was actually a an amazing card when it came to its hash rate the 3060 ti also being an amazing card when it comes to hash rate you've got scalpers you've got low qual or not low quality you got great quality cards but you got low quantity high demand because you've got multiple people wanting the cards for different reasons but one of the biggest reasons that we're seeing graphics cards be as expensive as they are is not because of their uh their low demand or their their low quantity versus demand or supply and demand which is very true it's the fact that it's not just gamers that are saying i want my graphics card now i want a game see as a gamer this is the way it kind of works you're building your one or your two systems maybe for your kids or your wife and you and maybe one or two at a time some people may be buying three they get their graphics card they put it in they're no longer demand they're off the table and the reason why we haven't seen graphics card pricing normalized is because gamers are not the demand right now we as gamers like to think hey there's a gaming graphics card it's for us this is we're the demand but you're really not not right now because what's happening is miners are always going i want another one i want another one i want another one because every time you add another card to your rig it's another money making tool because it's a money making tool is why you're seeing the price be outrageous and stay outrageous because anything designed to make money costs money and that is a scale at which how much money can this tool make you this tool can make you a ton of money this tool is going to cost you a ton of money so you're not going to see pricing start to normalize again until we see the cryptocurrency boom that we're in right now burst once again and mark my words it will burst once again because what's happening right now is you're having the major mining farms that are popping up all over the world china you'll see you'll see mining farms there where giant warehouses are nothing but thousands of graphics cards mining which is creating another situation right now in the world which we've seen before which is the increased demand of electricity now depending on whether what your stance is on the environment you know electricity is often generated by burning coal and a lot of coal burning factories which generate the electricity so now you're seeing increased pollution because of mining and you know you and i taking our you know one or two graphics cards that you may have and mining that in a in a small microform is not creating a huge demand or increase of environmental pollution but you know you have you know two million extra people now mining that is an increase of electricity costs just like electric cars have increased electricity costs electric cars have increased demand on the factories you know you kind of take the demand and you whack a mole right okay we're now fossil fuel but now electricity is up the same thing is kind of happening right now with graphics cards and mining where it's increased probability of making money with it has increased the cost now what will probably happen again we'll probably see asics start to make their way into the market again because right now at the time of making this video bitcoin is about 70 000 per coin i said earlier 17 000 was absolutely astronomical just to even consider that people were losing their minds because they were like oh my god i sold when it was at 3 000 i could have made so much money if you sold your your wallet and you had two or three coins in there at a thousand dollars because on the 17 000 when it came back down a lot of people sold it a thousand dollars because as it crossed that mark they're looking at that as going lost opportunity man if you just held on to that right now imagine what that would be worth because nearly seventy thousand i might have actually crossed seventy thousand as of today it's monday as i'm filming this video and weird things happen with the markets on monday i think we're going to see asics make their way back into the market once again but that's going to be hard because how do you create the asic when you have a semiconductor shortage worldwide remember cars are smarter now you've got brands like tesla you've got porsche now making electric vehicles you've got chevy has been making electric vehicles you've got nissan that's making electric vehicles or nissan depending on where you are you've got electric vehicles making their way into the more audi the e-tron all these vehicles use computers to control their body functions like lights and door locks and you've got the ecu's which control engines but now you've got these fully computer controlled vehicles where every asset of them or every facet of them is controlled through a computer the demand through semiconductors has been high in fact the news this morning is that chevrolet actually just shut down in lansing michigan uh the production plant that makes the camaro and and a few other models like the chevy malibu and a few of the cadillac uh like um ats models and eight uh ct not the the ct5 and ct4 i think those are still being produced but they've shut down like four or five models on top of the models they've already shut down in other plants simply because they have the entire car being held up by the fact that the computers that control them are unavailable so when you can see the automotive market being affected by the same shortage that's affecting the ramping up of production of the graphics cards it's going to be difficult for asic builders to also get the components they need to build the asic which will relieve at least the demand on graphics cards when they're going to want to increase their hash rate which will take time to happen so you're not going to see things normalized for a long time simply for the fact that you have now this kind of a perpetuating circle of shortages happening which is putting a demand on everything csmc is ramping up as fast as they possibly can but the problem is there is there's actually a silicon shortage going on as well for them to have the raw materials to manufacture the things they need to make the alleviation happen so you can see the sort of a snowball effect why am i making this video is it to be a debbie downer no it's to let you know what's actually happening and to give you an idea that if you are sitting there waiting uh hoping that things are going to normalize this year i'm not so convinced we're going to see things normalized this year i'm really not in fact i think we might see 30 series and 6000 series for radeon have its longest life cycle that we've seen of any generation of graphics card because we are now six months into the lifespan of 30 series and you still have to rely on either various um discord groups that have bots to tell you when certain things are in stock uh you've got the waiting list like ebj's doing with their queue i wish i had better news for you okay jay everything you've explained is with graphics cards so why are cpus uh really hard to buy and still out of stock well that's for the first reason that i mentioned people building their at-home offices and in classrooms and computers or gaming rigs because they're finally doing it because now they're stuck at home and they want the entertainment those are just never produced in the same quantity of something like a graphics card and of course with the same shortages you need for the silicon to build your graphics card are also applying to cpus cpus are not important when it comes to mining it's all done on the gpu the cpu just needs to be able to operate the motherboard in the operating system that you then get those specialized motherboards that can have like 17 graphics cards attached to them through like 1x or 4x plugs cpus are just shortage because of the fact that they are under the same supply and demand issue that raw materials and silicon is for for tsmc it's one of those things where um we like to think that our our little our little corner of the world over here with our gaming rigs are are untouched by a lot of these world events but unfortunately that's not the case i've said it once before gaming rigs make amazing workstations because they're often very overbuilt versus what you need for a standard workstation unfortunately gaming rigs also make great mining rigs and the world has figured that out again and with the amount of people now looking for creative ways to create income in a world that's very unorthodox now when you find out you've got a gaming rig sitting there with a graphics card that's capable of potentially making you a couple hundred extra bucks a month just by doing nothing but sitting there when you're not using it it's making people go i should build a rig just to do that so you've got the huge mining farms and the little guys like us all buying up graphics cards for multiple uses because they are very dynamic in what they're capable of doing so 2021 is probably going to be a shittier year than 2020 was when it comes to availability and that's the real state of pc right now if you've got some input on this topic put it down the comments below um if you guys have your best practices in terms of trying to get a graphics card for as close to msrp as possible what we're recommending right now for anyone that's looking at building a computer it might make sense to just get it pre-built right now i know that might sound very against the grain for the way we operate around here but the reality is if you just want a computer at this point and you don't care whether you build it or not you just have it sis or system integrators are still getting parts for as close to msrp as possible in fact a lot of companies like nzxt right now origin pc they're actually not marking up the parts hardly at all because of the fact that they would rather sell you the entire system because they still get them direct through the manufacturer at their msrps actually at their their um wholesale rate which they've had agreements with for a long time so you can i actually did the math i tried to see if you could buy an si for the graphics card and part out the rest of the system is it worth it well yeah it is if it's costing you you know seven eight hundred a thousand dollars for a 1060 right now which is insane there's also a waiting list for getting computers from sis right now and everyone we've talked to whether it be like i said origin pc or nzxt um or even like cyber power i buy power right now they have orders literally just exploding out the windows and doors of their warehouses because of the fact that they cannot build them fast enough for the people that are now demanding them our recommendation believe it or not right now is if you need a computer talk to your sis and see how long it takes to get one through them because you won't necessarily pay through the teeth to get it anyway guys thanks for watching i hope this video has entertained you no this video just made you sad it's really just a sad topic but it is what it is sometimes the state of affairs is uh not a good one and that's where we currently are we'll keep you updated as things change we can we can all kind of hope for the crypto boom to to just burst right now and then the bubble to pop it's not going to happen anytime soon i don't think so anyway as long as that price keeps going up i mean if it goes from 70 000. back to 30 000. i mean is that really a bubble burst or are you still winning at 30 000 a coin which is absolutely ridiculous fake currency backed by ones and zeros and no gold or silver behind it is just crazy to me but um i still don't mind on any of my stuff out of a matter of principle in my opinion and that's just my principle speaking of principle i've been called the principal's office a lot in the past so that has that's a different different spelling principle versus principle turn off the heater nick well you have to put the temp down too no stop just push the down arrow on temp on the top one there there that's fine just hit done push it harder but that was also kind of like i don't remember what sentence my words

Channel: JayzTwoCents

Views: 986,838

Keywords: pc prices, gpu prices, video card prices, cpu prices, processor prices, why are gpus so expensive, why are video cards so expensive, why are computers so expensive, why are pcs so expensive, why are gaming pcs so expensive, when will crypto currency end, video cards, video card, gpu, nvidia, amd, intel, how to build a pc in 2021

Id: BEQMfF-DKr8

Length: 16min 10sec (970 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 21 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/TaintedSquirrel]

I would rather take advice from random people on Reddit than Jay.

[u/krista]

capacity and demand were always pretty close, as capacity is bloody expensive to add⁵, and capacity sitting unused isn't just not making money, it's actively costing money as it requires a massive amount of water, power, and other resources just to maintain a clean environment. like texas is finding out, once the clean is not maintained, even for a few hours, it takes months to get everything back up and running, get the cleanrooms clean, verify all the tools work and are calibrated, verify your room is actually clean... and then do that for your water and the rest of your supplies.

so we have added a bit of a spike in total demand... but our total capacity has been reduced. between the global plague, an actual shortage of 200mm & 300mm blank wafers¹, and the usa banning chips from several chinese companies², our global capacity shrank, what, like 4-8%? which is pretty huge, considering our demand spiked and set off a cascade of effects like dominos.

keep in mind, when all your shit is taped out and ready to go, you have mask sets, you have your tooling and production lines set to go, and your testing, binning and packaging set to go... once the order is placed it'll take something like 3-6 months before you get chips ready to populate pcbs.

so you end up with a traffic jam slinky spring effect. what happened 4-6 months ago is being felt now.

anyway you look at it, it's a lot more complicated than jay's video, and even if a cryptobubble cryptopops, it'll take months before the effects reverberate through the industry, and not all the effects will be in phase. for example, if we have the cryptocalypse, gpus will get cheap, quick, because the used market with flood with all the ”entrepreneurs³” trying to not default and break their maxed out credit, they won't be contesting for new cards, and people buying new used cards won't be buying new new cards. therefore, all the 3rd party vendors are going to have to drop their insane prices because not much differentiates gpus these days besides bling⁴. however, this isn't going to unscrew playstation and xbox, nor unclog the automotive pipeline, nor anything else... they'll have to wait for the 3-6 month slinky like effect to hit them.

for you usa'ers out there, a good example of this is what y'all went through with toilet paper last year, and how it took time for the shelves to fill up again, and how it happened in waves.

anyhoo, that's krista's 10¢ :)

---

1: i forget what it was that happened in 2018-9 that kicked the wafer shortage off, but it wouldn't have been too bad if there wasn't a spike in demand due to plague.

2: and the resulting zomgwtfbbq of everyone trying to find out how to shuffle their production around.

3: we need a new takes on ”the emperor's new clothes” for a modern era. maybe ”the entrepreneurs new hobby”, or ”the n-peror's new nft” or some such.

4: let's face it: the days of buying a higher end gpu with better cooling and getting a better overclock and better fps are over. probably about the same with cpus. intel, nvidia, and amd are all binning harder and using decades of overclocker's experience to make their auto turbos run really damn close to optimal for the specific copy of the chip, not just the model.

good cooling is still important for noise, how long you can burst/turbo/whatchamacallit (to an extent), and even a bit of how well your burst/turbo/whatever works, but after a decent cooling rig, everything is going to be within a couple few percent. the days of 150% (or even 20%) overclocks are over :(

5: as well as taking a very long time and a lot of planning. plus, the people like asml and zeiss optical that make the tools for these new fabs are themselves usually running very close to capacity. right now, there's more demand then they can handle, and it's been that way since a bit before all this plague stuff. heck, old fabs are running at capacity, and because the older processes are affordable, well understood, and very mature, 200mm fabs that make mixed mode chips or small batches or sensors... or a lot of things, are booming and that segment is growing, too!. adding capacity is part of out slinky spring model of supply, capacity, and demand, too, but it's a long wave. think a couple of years, minimum, to get a new, not state-of-the-art, fab from idea to paper.

--= warning: sleep deprived digression follows. enjoy (or not) at your own risk.

asml is the company making euv and high na euv equipment. these are perhaps rhe most astoundingly advanced, complex, precise, and accurate machines made by humans... ever. if you want to be amazed, look up ”how does an euv laser light source work”. each euv machine costs around $100 megabucks, and takes months to make. asml can only make a couple dozen per year, if that. they make some modules at their clean factories, and ship the modules to the customer, along with the engineers, technicians, electricians, plumbers, and scientist that it requires to finish making it. although they don't ship those guys, they fly them, of course! maybe even first class.

then these ninjas go into the customer's iso class 1 cleanroom (< 10 particles per cubic meter, < 200nm particles), which is mind-boggling itself, and assemble the $100 megabuck machine on site and calibrate it. hell, getting the parts it in to the cleanroom with a crane and keeping the room clean is... amazing.

fabs are among the most intense science and technology humans can do. they're at the edge, and pushing it. adding capacity at new nodes is... well, there's 2.5 companies doing it right now, out of the entire world.

so because of all of that, and because certain types of chips don't benefit from cutting edge lithography, and because they work and are paid off, older processes that aren't on the edge of possibility are still popular and even gaining in popularity! the price of used chip lithography equipment and 200mm wafer equipment (state-of-the-art is 300mm wafers, possibly 400mm in 2 generations) is on par with what it originally sold for. the price of old chip making tools, like old gpus, is spiking, too. it's to the point where companies are designing new generations of ”old” process machines.

the ”old” processes, 65nm-130nm (iirc, could be wrong, but i'm close) are well understood, have great yields, and cheap to make chips on, and can make small batches of chips easier and faster. the resulting chips are usually more robust because the gates are larger, and can handle more power easier. they're not as fast, and in a lot of cases not as efficient, but even ”old” processes still being used are being refined for desired characteristics, such as low gate leakage, or very precise and repeatable current control. it's these older processes that are leading to chips popular in the iot space and popular with the maker movement. it's these older processes and fabs that use them that are getting small runs of chips on a sub 100nm process into the tens-of-kilobucks price range, and allowing loads of fabless chip design companies to make new and exciting things. like triad semiconductor and valve's vr lighthouse 6dof tracking that uses triad's light-to-digital mixed signal ics.

[u/wickedplayer494]

TL;DW: Another cryptocurrency bubble burst would be a major downward driver, because as it is right now, much of the demand today is not from gamers. But it might be a really long while with just how much backup there is in other industries like automotive and K12 education also wanting a slice of TSMC wafers, and there are just simply not enough wafers to go around.

[u/HoldMyPitchfork]

Its never going to happen. Everyone has already shown AMD and Nvidia that they'll pay outrageous prices for graphics cards.

Every time miners go wild we always ask these same questions and everyone always says it'll get better after miners are finished but instead AMD and Nvidia raise their MSRP every generation.

The only question is whats the highest they'll get to.