Literally the worst time ever to build a new PC

You can mine bitcoin with your retail GPU especially if you're willing to join a mining pool. It’s not just bitcoin though it’s all cryptocurrency’s. People build Huge mining farms with retail gpu’s. Nvidia was even exposed for selling 175 million dollars worth of cards directly to miners. Ive even seen laptop farms and people mining on phones and gameboys. ( i assume that’s just for fun and not profit) you can mine cryptocurrency on just about anything.
 
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It's not just PC GPUs. Isn't there currently a chip shortage in general? I thought that was the reason it's nearly impossible to get your hands on a PS5 or Xbox Series X right now.
 
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It's not just PC GPUs. Isn't there currently a chip shortage in general? I thought that was the reason it's nearly impossible to get your hands on a PS5 or Xbox Series X right now.
Yes, the semiconductor manufacturers have had shortages, in part due to covid disrupting their supply chains. This means this is likely going to last until the end of the year.
 
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Yes, many automotive factories are having to curb production or shut down entirely due to the chip shortage. But that's only a small part of it: with bitcoin and ethereum at record prices (BTC just topped 60k over the weekend and continues to climb in adoption by companies as well), I don't see this going away until Nvidia releases mining-specific gpus.

I've been looking for a 3080 for a couple months now. If you don't live near a Micro Center, your best bet is, realistically, Best Buy stock drops - they are less prone to bots instantly snatching up all the stock. If you do live near a Micro Center, making the decision to camp out there for however many days it takes will likely save you time in the long run.

Of course, this is all assuming you're not in the financial position or otherwise willing to pay the 250% cost over MSRP on ebay. :wall:

Not a fun time.
 
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As I said, you cannot mine Bitcoin with an Nvidia or a AMD GPU or any retail components really. You need to buy ASIC's. If people are buying them for mining, it's not for mining Bitcoin.

They're mining Ethereum. A typical 3080 can have a 100MH/s hashrate.
 
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At least it's still possible to order decent i7 or Ryzen CPUs, NVMe disks and DDR memory, even if those stocks are probably getting depleted too. But nVidia cards are simply not there anymore (here anyway), so I believe the manufacturers have slowed down, yes, but mining or something else has increased the GPU demand significantly.

I feel really lucky to have changed my old dying PC end of January O_O

I think Nvidia were talking about that - GPU cards with no video output, just for compute purposes.

The RTX are really nice to train neural networks! It's not as efficient as FPGA or dedicated ASIC, but it's widely available on the consumer market. Or at least, it will be once it has recovered. So maybe there's that too, and a specific card without video would make sense.
 
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I was able to build a new system with an AMD 5800X which to me is just fine (I'm aware the 5900/5950 is probably more cost-effective).

But I've given up on upgrading my GPU from my current 2080 super, which is still a very viable card.

I just read that SSDs and other components are about to be scarce now, as well, so I'm pretty happy I was able to build when I did, GPU aside-- and it was right before all the price hikes.

That being said, at some point, PC gaming will suffer. If new PCs aren't circulating, current PCs can't replace their broken shit, and consoles are delayed, I'd imagine right now is a bad time to release a new game.
 
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I just got notified today that my evga 3090 is in stock. I got on the wait list on October 6th of 2020. Normally I’d never spend that much on a card but I’m tired of the current situation and am glad I’ll have a card to last years and not have to worry about it.

I’ve been pretty fortunate as a couple months ago I was able to get a 3090 from micro center but I let my son buy it from me ( couldn’t just give it to him at these prices) because he needed it more than I did. I also found 2 PS5’s one I kept and another I let my brother buy.

My fortune was hard earned though I spent months checking sites daily and following discord, twitter and you tube live streams to get them. Also got up several times at 3-4 in the morning to see if suspected drops were real.

Sad thing is that it’s not just PC stuff. I went to bestbuy to get a new refrigerator and their cupboards were bare. They said that they can’t even get enough electronics or appliances in stock to meet demand. Same when we went to buy my partner a new vehicle. I just read an article online the other day that many car manufacturers have 1000’s of partially built vehicles sitting in parking lots waiting for semiconductors to finish them. Intel and tsmc just said that they expect shortages to last into 2022 and maybe beyond.

So I’m glad I got my stuff and will just hope nothing breaks.
 
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I suppose that people being stuck at home for work must have increased the PC sales quite a lot.
As well as the gaming gear, there's just so much gardening one is willing to do ;)
 
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Funny enough I love this shortage as older parts are cheaper. Yes unlike the poster above I don't have thousands of dollars to just toss away on consoles and PC parts.

Anyway I'll settle for mid-range affordable prices over high end and to expansive.

I don't even care if someone is selling parts used I'll buy them as well. Praise Ebay and Amazon.
 
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Funny enough I love this shortage as older parts are cheaper. Yes unlike the poster above I don't have thousands of dollars to just toss away on consoles and PC parts.

Anyway I'll settle for mid-range affordable prices over high end and to expansive.

I don't even care if someone is selling parts used I'll buy them as well. Praise Ebay and Amazon.

Me and my partner have worked hard our whole lives and just sold our home we’ve lived in for 25 years for a massive profit.

So I won’t lie, life is good.
 
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Well let me jump on the bandwagon as I was looking for a few parts to update as well this month. Almost every part I want is tripled in price from last year it's price gouging.

Shit I can't even buy an AMD GPU I wanted for under $900 the rest was reasonable, but I bought a bundle so the price was dropped on Amazon. It's worse then in years past.
 
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I just want this chip shortage to end so I can get my hands on a PS5. Almost 6 months after launch, and they're still impossible to purchase at retail price without camping out.
 
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I just want this chip shortage to end so I can get my hands on a PS5. Almost 6 months after launch, and they're still impossible to purchase at retail price without camping out.

At least PS5's aren't being scalped at 3x MSRP like 3080s :lol: :S >:O :[
 
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I just wondered whether game developers will develop more conservative PC games regarding specs because of the difficulty to get components these days ?

Or will they continue to develop ultra-high looking visual games regardless of the problems to get certain graphics cards and other chips ?

This would require some kind of self-criticism - and I personally doubt that people like Kotick are able to do that, only looking at records of profits.

Ages ago I argued that editors of gaming magazines are so much ... "living in an ivory tower" ... because they always have the best of the best hardware to use for their reviews are are thus not able to see views from the standpoint of someone with lesser good hardware. It's like the driver of a formular one racing car not being able to understand why traffic in towns is so slow and why traffic jams happen - and how to deal with them while siting in an affected car ! - at all.

I fear that developers have a similar proble : Driven by the so-called "graphics whoires", they just cannot imagine the problems of people who just don't have the money or chips to get games, which require ( ! ) the ultra-finest hardware - to run. Example : The ports from console games, currently the port of Horizon Zero Dawn ...
 
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I just wondered whether game developers will develop more conservative PC games regarding specs because of the difficulty to get components these days ?

Or will they continue to develop ultra-high looking visual games regardless of the problems to get certain graphics cards and other chips ?

This would require some kind of self-criticism - and I personally doubt that people like Kotick are able to do that, only looking at records of profits.

Ages ago I argued that editors of gaming magazines are so much … "living in an ivory tower" … because they always have the best of the best hardware to use for their reviews are are thus not able to see views from the standpoint of someone with lesser good hardware. It's like the driver of a formular one racing car not being able to understand why traffic in towns is so slow and why traffic jams happen - and how to deal with them while siting in an affected car ! - at all.

I fear that developers have a similar proble : Driven by the so-called "graphics whoires", they just cannot imagine the problems of people who just don't have the money or chips to get games, which require ( ! ) the ultra-finest hardware - to run. Example : The ports from console games, currently the port of Horizon Zero Dawn …
I think it would depend on the type of games, but generally, beautiful graphics are appealing and is a marketing argument for a game, except a very few strange indies who seem to stick to old graphics.

They certainly won't consider a temporary shortage in their strategy, not for games that require several years to make anyway.

It makes little sense to make one's own engine, almost all games rely on a 3rd-party engine (sometimes, it's developed by the parent company or in a different department, like for ex. Bioware using EA's Frostbite). Many RPGs use Unity, some Unreal. So they depend for the most part on the efficiency and performance of those engines, even if they can decide whether to use such feature or not (most allow the user to turn them on/off). I have the impression they test their games on several PC configuration to make sure it's fine.

Simulators (especially flight) will always shoot for next gen when they're developing because realism is key for those games. DCS is a sucker for high-end system, always has been (unfortunately, that comes from poor engine optimization, being based on obsolete technology). They certainly don't care much for lower-end systems.

Not sure what you mean by "graphics whoires", I don't know that term.

Is that annoying? In the 90s and early 2000s it was a crazy CPU and GPU race, and hardware was quickly obsolete. But these days, you can usually keep your system for 5+ years and enjoy the games. Typically I update the GPU after 3-4 years, and I'm never buying the latest ones, so the price is reasonable. It won't cope with all options at "FULL" on flight sims like DCS, but for most other games it's fine.

I don't trust most review magazines.
 
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Not sure what you mean by "graphics whoires", I don't know that term.

The term "graphics whore" is a term to describe gamers who take emphasis on graphics in games over everything else, or at least as the most important point. Some people even use this term to describe themselves.

By the way, according to the local newspaper, Ford has stopped production in Cologne , because of the lack of chips, at the 90th anniversary of that manufactury.
 
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