The cryptocurrency boom has taken the world by storm. It has inadvertently affected many industries, investments, and also something which is very dear to gamers; GPUs. Yes, GPU prices have seen a surge, and on top of this, Nvidia reports that GPU prices aren’t expected to go down or even stay normal anytime soon. They would continue to increase even through the third quarter of this year.
People have started to mine cryptocurrencies at home, and the mining requires powerful hardware. This powerful hardware is in the form of dedicated Graphical Processing Unit (GPUs) which are able to perform complex algorithms on their own. Thus, crypto miners benefit from GPUs since the currencies which can be mined through GPUs are a source of cash for them or even a future investment. This has created a demand for GPUs all over the world, and as economists know better, this has caused the prices to go up exponentially as well.
The buying manager at Massdrop known by the name of B.Hutch reported that “While NVIDIA was here they also let us know that the pricing in the market will continue to go up through Q3 of this year most likely before we start seeing any type of relief. So, unfortunately, the end to this is not right around the corner and we have not seen the worst of it yet.”
Therefore, if you were planning to build a custom Gaming PC, you will have to spend much extra to get the GPU you wanted. According to Massdrop, Nvidia reported to them, that GPU prices are expected to go higher than even what they are already. Therefore, if you were thinking of buying a good GPU for an inexpensive price, then you are in hard luck since that is not going to be possible anytime soon.
To add more fuel to the fire, not only has crypto mining caused a surge in prices of GPUs, but it is also because there is a shortage of vRAM. This was mentioned by the Nvidia green team as well. This is because, usually the most high-end GPUs are purchased by the miners before the gamers can get their hands on one, since miners know, high-end GPUs are expected to yield more profit in the long run, even if the investment is large.
On the contrary, this won’t stop Apple and Samsung from buying memory module that is used to power up their smartphones. With the large number of resources both of these companies have, they won’t mind spending extra to get their hands on the memory modules used in their respective smartphones. Since there aren’t any specialized production lines for the graphics card, most companies have factories which produce both graphics card as well as memory modules.
Therefore, with a certain shift of attention towards graphics cards, even a memory shortage is created too. This is likely to hamper big names like MSI, Gigabyte, Asus, and EVGA who are to make the graphics cards.
To sum up, with such demand for GPUs, it is the ideal time to buy a GPU or build a custom gaming PC right now, because the prices are only going to soar up further. Though of course, if you don’t really need one, then you should be wise enough to spend your hard earned money elsewhere.