Is the demand really just that high for GPUs?
Is this still from scalpers and crypto miners buying all of them?
Are there that many more PCMR people out in the world now?
Is there is a resource shortage for components inside of GPUs?
It just blows my mind that the prices have been this high for this long. Can someone really break this down for me?
In: 2
Demand far exceeding supply, to the point where used GPUs from half a decade ago are still flying off secondhand markets for more than their MSRP
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Low supply and high demand.
Low supply because of how the high-density chips they use are made. There are very few facilities in the world that can make them, and their time is booked months ahead of time. A company like Nvidia can’t just decide “Let’s make more chips today”. Part of this is that there are a few more consumers for these chip factories lately, especially with autonomous cars. While you might hear people crying that things like companies putting chips in their toasters are contributing to the shortage, low-end devices like that can use chips that don’t need the same precision, so there is far more capacity to make them at other facilities.
High demand because of two reasons. First, there are generally more people getting into PC gaming in the last few years. Especially since ~March 2020 for some reason. Second, people buy high-end graphics cards and use them for Cryptocurrency mining.
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Lots of people stuck at home on lockdowns and quarantines meant more people buying computers.
The increase in popularity of PC gaming (and gaming in general) over the last while means more people buying computers.
The increase in crypto mining meant people buying up hardware in bulk.
Various shutdowns and supply issues throughout covid have caused problems with manufacturing and supply chains making it harder to get hardware out into the wild.
An increase in people purposely buying for profit/scalping products.
Any of these on their own would probably have been survivable, but all of them simultaneously or one after another has meant there is more demand than the supply chains can cope with.
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