How are you all coping with increasing PC hardware and tech prices around the world?

[Vayra86]

I already made some backup plans just in case my GPU breaks down, most likely I will just grab an old used 7000 seire sub 50$ AMD card and play D2/D3 and Indie+retro games. 'still way better than being stuck with mobile gaming'

Oh yeah! Haha... I think I'll just run that stuff on an IGP tbh, but certainly, there are great ways to have fun.

I can also see myself diving into level/map editors again

 

[8BitZ80]

I already made some backup plans just in case my GPU breaks down, most likely I will just grab an old used 7000 serie sub 50$ AMD card and play D2/D3 and Indie+retro games. 'still way better than being stuck with mobile gaming'

This is when having a fully functional backup rig comes in handy. I re-purposed all the parts from my old gaming system (4670K, Z97, 16GB, R9 270X) as a secondary rig that's ready to go if I have any issues. It's even got Office 2019 installed just in case I'm on a tight schedule and need to get some productivity done if the main rig is down.

At one point a few years back I did in fact suffer a complete motherboard failure with my late Asus Z87 motherboard. I was in the middle of my honors year dissertation and had to run out and buy a H81 board to tie me over. That was before getting the Z97 board. The unfortunate thing is that the Office key is tied to the motherboard and so my copy of Office spat the dummy as well. Such a pain at a bad time.

 

[dirtyferret]

Nice. But seriously, get a decent 120hz monitor at least. It's most of the lure of PC gaming. Otherwise consoles are actually good options for most 60fps gaming.

It doesn't matter. 120hz is like minimum standard for good experience imo.

Makes everything better.

Just don't make the mistake of buying a crap panel.

You are entitled to your opinion but having both a 144hz and 75hz monitor I personally have a hard time telling the FPS difference especially with g-sync, free sync, etc., It also depends on the games you play. I personally find playing PC games on a samsung TV to be a crap experience to a good monitor but hey I'm entitled to my opinion

 

[Sithaer]

This is when having a fully functional backup rig comes in handy. I re-purposed all the parts from my old gaming system (4670K, Z97, 16GB, R9 270X) as a secondary rig that's ready to go if I have any issues. It's even got Office 2019 installed just in case I'm on a tight schedule and need to get some productivity done if the main rig is down.

At one point a few years back I did in fact suffer a complete motherboard failure with my late Asus Z87 motherboard. I was in the middle of my honors year dissertation and had to run out and buy a H81 board to tie me over. That was before getting the Z97 board. The unfortunate thing is that the Office key is tied to the motherboard and so my copy of Office spat the dummy as well. Such a pain at a bad time.

Thats not even a bad backup system tbh, could play bunch of fun games on that and good for generic daily use.
I don't have a secondary system, only my 3+ years old aging phone so yea if my PC breaks down then I have to buy something from the second hand market.

Oh yeah! Haha... I think I'll just run that stuff on an IGP tbh, but certainly, there are great ways to have fun.

I can also see myself diving into level/map editors again

Yea in such times having a whatever IGP is useful, in my case I couldn't even start up my PC.
Lately I've been checking the second hand market 'local inside my country site' to see what I can get for ~50$ or less cause I don't want to spend more on a placeholder backup card.
Crazy thing is that even those cards went up in price compared to last year, like what the hell..

 

[Splinterdog]

It hasn't changed anything for me. Inflation is just a fact of life.

Indeed, inflation is a fact of life, but is not the cause of the bloated prices and shortages in this case.
(US inflation is around 2% and in the UK it's about 1.2% PA.)
This has been brought about by a combination of scalper greed, mining and demand outstripping supply. A manufactured kind of inflation, if you will.

 

[ZoneDymo]

just not buying anything, thats all

 

[bombatomba]

I simply wait and see. A lot of news aggregators are now saying that the shortage will end in third-quarter of this year (whether or not that is true is up in the air) but if you live in the USA there is an even greater shortage (of almost everything electronic), primarily caused by the most recent financial stimulus payments send out by the government.

Of course, while I enjoy learning and talking about new PC hardware advancements, in truth I am a utilitarian when it comes to actually purchasing. I mostly get by scrounging what I can from thrift stores and marketplace deals, as well as the occasional purchase from a PC remarketer local to me. I don't require fancy RGB, water cooling, or PC cases to get by, rather an HP Z420 with a GTX 980. The spiciest thing I did as of late was to look at the pricing and performance of $1k USD gaming laptops with a kind of half-hearted longing, but a burning desire to squeeze every penny out of my aging PC hardware.

 

[neatfeatguy]

I've put off the idea of even getting a new GPU. The outrageous prices, even from retailers and the almost impossible to find inventory has put a damper on my hopes of getting anything to replace what I have.

I think what I'll end up doing once Amazon (I f'ing hate Amazon. The ship date keeps pushing out every 3-4 days.....) finally ships my thermal pads that have been in stock the past 2 weeks, but have yet to ship, is clean out my 980Ti by replacing the TIM and pads. Then I'll probably swap the 980Ti in my system with the 980Ti in my HTPC (that my kids used to use for gaming, they don't use it anymore for that....they sit on their Switch Lite or iPad for gaming needs) and let the one that's been acting up with high, random fan spin ups sit in the HTPC.

I'm getting tired of the constant fan spin ups on my 980Ti I'm currently using. Hopefully a thorough cleaning and replacing of TIM and pads will fix the issue.

 

[80-watt Hamster]

Old (and "old") parts! I kicked the 6600K "downstairs" in favor of a 9700K, and put 6-core Xeons in a couple of old X58 systems. I can't help but be annoyed, however, that the GPU craze prevented me from finding any deals on used graphics before heating season ends and it's time to shut down my folding machines.

 

[freeagent]

Summer is almost here.. Cant get that flashy GPU but have some money to burn? RC cars!

If you run enough power it can be like standing in a parking lot shredding $100 bills

But what a rush ! My hand usually has a bit of a tremble after the packs are discharged.

 

[dgianstefani]

You are entitled to your opinion but having both a 144hz and 75hz monitor I personally have a hard time telling the FPS difference especially with g-sync, free sync, etc., It also depends on the games you play. I personally find playing PC games on a samsung TV to be a crap experience to a good monitor but hey I'm entitled to my opinion

Sorry mate, but if you really do have a "hard time" telling the difference between 75hz and 144hz, you either don't have the hardware to push 144hz or there's something wrong with your eyes.

 

[dirtyferret]

Sorry mate, but if you really do have a "hard time" telling the difference between 75hz and 144hz, you either don't have the hardware to push 144hz or there's something wrong with your eyes.

nothing wrong with my eyes or counter but I also don't play fast twitch games...perhaps if you didn't have such a basic understanding of hardware and game play you would realize that.

 

[SMITHBEATZ]

i dont know, i dont have the 10700k. i have an 8600k,

i suppose if you had a 10 series intel Chip, making the switch to an 11 series would be silly, but i dont do one step upgrades, i wait for a few to pass

but when the 10700k released, it was $410, which is my point, its no more expensive than it was a year ago.
i suppose your mistake is comparing an outgoing chip, with an incoming chips price, the problem with that is every time an older generation product is about ot be replaced, its price is lowered. its common practice

All of Intel's yearly releases are pointless "upgrades" in my opinion. They keep rehashing old tech, making the names long and complicated, and keep changing the chipset every other generation making upgrades costly. I believe this is where AMD sold most everyone with all A320, B350, B450, B550, X570, etc. all being AM4. I did buy my first Intel CPU (i9-9900K) around Christmas time because it was on sale for $319.99 and I had gotten a brand new Gigabyte Z390 UD MoB in a great bundle deal for free basically.

 

[plat]

wont the 570 last the day?

Because someone is bound to snatch it up! Although, I did check Micro Center just now, and there is still one in stock for 349.99 USD. Just one.

I remember the good old days when there were 10 or more in stock of the gpu of your choice. Nowadays, I have spotted a very fine layer of dust on the shelves where the higher end AMD and NVIDIA gpus used to sit.

 

[Hachi_Roku256563]

Because someone is bound to snatch it up! Although, I did check Micro Center just now, and there is still one in stock for 349.99 USD. Just one.

I remember the good old days when there were 10 or more in stock of the gpu of your choice. Nowadays, I have spotted a very fine layer of dust on the shelves where the higher end AMD and NVIDIA gpus used to sit.

OH i though you meant it would fail in a hardware sence

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

One of the things that makes me worried about GTX 700 series and earlier, is the possibility that Nvidia will ban us from using them with Windows 10 and thus have to go back to 7.

 

[windwhirl]

One of the things that makes me worried about GTX 700 series and earlier, is the possibility that Nvidia will ban us from using them with Windows 10 and thus have to go back to 7.

You won't be able to use the latest driver, maybe. But that's pretty much it.

 

[jboydgolfer]

All of Intel's yearly releases are pointless "upgrades" in my opinion. They keep rehashing old tech, making the names long and complicated, and keep changing the chipset every other generation making upgrades costly

im not concerned so much in the CPU upgrade game that i care how often they release what, or under what name, & certainly not to the point where im bothered or annoyed, ive got more pressing things to be concerned with.

i choose to upgrade at an advantageous time for me, so i can recycle my existing PC, by passing it on to one of my kids, or my nephews, while getting a reasonable upgrade in performance for the least money i have to spend. i dont sweat naming schemes, or technology , as it doesnt matter to me, or really most users in the real world.

intel hasnt let me down in 20+ years, so i tend to buy their CPU's. the fact that they have managed to keep supply unaffected didnt hurt either. AMD released some great CPU's recently, sadly their supply chain is terrible, & id likely not have bought an AMD cpu regardless, ive seen my share of issue with amd chips & crashes & memory errors, its just not worth the risk for me. thats the beauty of having options.

 

[tabascosauz]

im not concerned so much in the CPU upgrade game that i care how often they release what, or under what name, & certainly not to the point where im bothered or annoyed, ive got more pressing things to be concerned with.

i choose to upgrade at an advantageous time for me, so i can recycle my existing PC, by passing it on to one of my kids, or my nephews, while getting a reasonable upgrade in performance for the least money i have to spend. i dont sweat naming schemes, or technology , as it doesnt matter to me, or really most users in the real world.

intel hasnt let me down in 20+ years, so i tend to buy their CPU's. the fact that they have managed to keep supply unaffected didnt hurt either. AMD released some great CPU's recently, sadly their supply chain is terrible, & id likely not have bought an AMD cpu regardless, ive seen my share of issue with amd chips & crashes & memory errors, its just not worth the risk for me. thats the beauty of having options.

Amen to that. When I first upgraded from the E3-1230V2 to the i7-4790K, it was a pointless purchase according to most. Fast forward 7 years, and it's been a backup PC, a loaner PC and I've now rebuilt it into a different system and passed the 4790K to family members. It certainly held up much better in gaming than its contemporaries, the i5-4460 and i3-4160. The 3700X I had for only 25% the length of time I've had the i7, and all I'll say is that its quality or lack thereof singlehandedly justified upgrading. Maybe I was just unlucky due to a variety of factors, but it is what it is.

I ended up with the 5900X because they finally fulfilled my preorder just barely before I was ready to jump ship to Intel. It does make me wonder though, just how valid the usual "content creation" Ryzen 9 justification is for most people; Photoshop is still single-thread bound (5900X is excellent at it though), and Premiere is wholly CUDA-accelerated and literally doesn't touch the CPU. I'm sure there are a number of scientific and other workloads out there that scale well with core count, but the popular justification is "video editing".

You'll find more Ford and Chevy owners willing to admit that the 3UR in the Tundra has its place, than PC enthusiasts willing to admit that the 11th gen CPUs still have a place in the market. Both offer "good enough" performance, have literally half the efficiency of the competition, have not innovated in 5 years, and have a reputation for simplicity and reliability. But while you won't be branded a Toyota shill, someone will probably insinuate that you're paid by Intel to sit behind a screen and advertise their products. The real Intel shills make themselves obvious enough, but it's just amusing how the mere mention of Intel is pretty much taboo by this point.

 

[SMITHBEATZ]

Amen to that. When I first upgraded from the E3-1230V2 to the i7-4790K, it was a pointless purchase according to most. Fast forward 7 years, and it's been a backup PC, a loaner PC and I've now rebuilt it into a different system and passed the 4790K to family members. It certainly held up much better in gaming than its contemporaries, the i5-4460 and i3-4160. The 3700X I had for only 25% the length of time I've had the i7, and all I'll say is that its quality or lack thereof singlehandedly justified upgrading. Maybe I was just unlucky due to a variety of factors, but it is what it is.

I ended up with the 5900X because they finally fulfilled my preorder just barely before I was ready to jump ship to Intel. It does make me wonder though, just how valid the usual "content creation" Ryzen 9 justification is for most people; Photoshop is still single-thread bound (5900X is excellent at it though), and Premiere is wholly CUDA-accelerated and literally doesn't touch the CPU. I'm sure there are a number of scientific and other workloads out there that scale well with core count, but the popular justification is "video editing".

You'll find more Ford and Chevy owners willing to admit that the 3UR in the Tundra has its place, than PC enthusiasts willing to admit that the 11th gen CPUs still have a place in the market. Both offer "good enough" performance, have literally half the efficiency of the competition, have not innovated in 5 years, and have a reputation for simplicity and reliability. But while you won't be branded a Toyota shill, someone will probably insinuate that you're paid by Intel to sit behind a screen and advertise their products. The real Intel shills make themselves obvious enough, but it's just amusing how the mere mention of Intel is pretty much taboo by this point.

I'm a Chevy guy all the way, but have been a Toyota Tech for over 7 years lol. Them Tundras aren't bad at all. As far as the 11th gen, I never said they didn't have a place in the market. I was referring to their re-hash marketing/naming of their next gen CPUs, being stuck on 14nm, selling the same chips basically as previous gens just not purposely lowering features, locking OC features and then turning around and adding a K to the sku name and selling it for more. I've always liked Intel, but I'm glad AMD is on top and forcing them to rethink some things.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

but it's just amusing how the mere mention of Intel is pretty much taboo by this point.

Taboo? That makes me think of the "Intel malaise era" (2012-2017) Starting with Ivy Bridge of course, with Ivy Bridge getting shamed for their IHS TIM. Even when Haswell has been doing well, very punny, BTW, there was still more of the boring same, still expensive for a 4/8 CPU! Same with Skylake, and Skylake became infamous for the thin PCB! But Intel was very good for gaming, even during the "Intel malaise era".
That's when "the new FX" came and results for multi-core workloads, looked promising, at least with x.264 for second-pass encoding, as the cores don't seem to even matter as much for first pass, so Intel probably won there.

 

[newtekie1]

I've taken to robbing convenience stores to keep up my hardware habit.

 

[Vayra86]

I've taken to robbing convenience stores to keep up my hardware habit.

What's the real deal for you? Hair dryers? Toasters? I'm partial to blenders myself Can at least stir things up a bit.

 

[_JP_]

Honestly, I think I missed the shot on getting an R7 2700X for around 170€, last year before black friday, plus some Crucial SSDs that became really cheap on a sale, but then again I didn't really need them.
It's that feeling of, "heh, could have had that cheap and I'd be more confident in holding on for longer". But it's not like my rig isn't fine for what I do (no serious competitive gaming).
And like many have said already, there's a backlog that keeps collecting virtual dust that I'll go to when I'm done with what I currently go for.
To be honest, the only "upgrade" that kind of is feasible is a console, with the waiting time, to get the shelf price.
But nonetheless, this...this is crazy.

Source.

 

[phill]

I had a quick look through the thread and I was just wondering what others have been experiencing, so I thought I'd chime up and let you know what I've been up to.

As most of you know I do love my hardware and to be honest, ironically, I've only really been buying GPUs whenever I have seen them at a slightly reasonable price. I do a bit of mining here and there and with all the cards I have previously bought and still own, I'm using them. They might not be the most efficient or effective when it comes to getting the best for the power used and all that jazz but they work and I'm able to help that along.

Thing is I'm dead set on prices that I will pay. I won't go stupid but that said, I was lucky/stupid to buy a MSI 3090 Gaming Trio X for £1900 from a company, not through Ebay.. First off I was very unsure on buying it, then I thought, %^£$ it and I bought it. I'm not going to lie, but it's been mining since I've had it, for sure it will help pay for itself but then I'm not going to go selling it off for another 50% on top which I believe they are currently going for either.. I'll just build something for the Mrs and throw it in. Cos you know, why not? If only she had a clue.... Still, that's another story and I digress.
I have also bought two 5700XT cards, which are the Powercolor Liquid Devil cards. These are just pure awesome and my two girls will have a rig each with one each of these in eventually They weren't so badly priced in the craziness, but I didn't pay over what I wanted to so I'm very happy with those purchases.

I've also been able to find over in the US a few cards, such as a 3080 and a 3090 Strix, my mate has also got the same cards. He's also found and had a few 5700XT's and up till recently, 6 5600XTs which he bought before it all went bat crap crazy... For the 3080s and the 3090 Strix, for me sending cash over to the US, because of the exchange rate, I actually paid about MSRP for the cards, so I'm very happy with that. The 3080s I've sold to my mate who will not pay a penny more than I have and he'll help with the import taxes as well. So all things considered, I don't believe we've done badly out of it at all.
Any card I buy will be mined on especially if its new because it's so much more efficient, plus it'll help pay for itself which I really don't believe is a bad thing.

Your cards are yours and you can do whatever you want with them. After the mining has died down, I'll set them all up to do FAH so they'll be used for that (I'm hoping for some good things!!) and can then get the CPUs crunching away as well but as I don't have those cards with me at the moment as they are still over with my mate in the US. So whenever I can, I'll get them imported over and away I go over here

I want a 3090 but i refuse to pay £2000.

Bought one for £1900 but the seller cancelled order.

Luckily got 3x 3080s by buying 3 prebuilts at £1700 that had 9600k and basic spec. Sold the prebuilts for £400 each to get the 3080s for £1300 which isn't absurd, considering they're faster than a 2080ti.

I just wished to check this that you bought a pre built rig for £1700, you sold everything but the graphics card for £400?? Surely the hardware in them was worth a heck of a lot more??

On other things I'm after, I'd like to try and get a few big SSDs for the girls, I've seen some Crucial and Samsung 2TB SSDs for £140 and £160 which I think are pretty decent as they are normally about the £200 mark each I think? Definitely thought it was worth a look but I'm trying to save up currently and have finally stopped buying GPUs, I probably will be able to