NVIDIA may be slowing down its chip orders at TSMC, according to a new report from Taiwan's Commercial Times. The outlet cites unnamed supply chain sources but doesn't name a product, node, size, or timeline. Neither NVIDIA nor TSMC have commented so far, and the claims are single-sourced for now. The report frames this as NVIDIA being squeezed from inside and out. On the inside, there's Jensen Huang's November 8 email to staff, in which he apologized for an extramarital affair, and the board's independent investigation into reports that he was targeted by a foreign intelligence effort. The board has said it has no reason to believe national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised.

The outside pressure mostly comes down to export controls. The report points to tighter export reviews and H200 chips reportedly stockpiled in Hong Kong, both of which it says raise the risk of NVIDIA scaling back orders. It also cites foreign media reports suggesting that some firms approved to handle H200 could be shell companies, which feeds concerns that chips might reach China through fronts like these or middlemen in other countries. The report presents that as a suspicion rather than a finding, and if cuts do happen, upstream suppliers such as TSMC and ASE are the most exposed.

Sony is adding built-in storage to a new PlayStation Portal model for Japan and South Korea, though it hasn't said how much storage it has or what it will be used for. The PlayStation Portal Player Midnight Black goes on sale December 10 for ¥39,980 in Japan and ₩378,000 in South Korea, the same price the current model sells for after this year's price hikes. Preorders open November 13, and each unit ships with one month of PlayStation Plus Premium. Like the Japan-only Midnight Black PS5, both versions are locked to the local language and only work with PlayStation accounts registered in that country. Sony's Japanese post only says the storage is there for future features, with details to follow once those are decided.

Interestingly, the Korean post calls it expanded internal storage instead of new storage, which makes sense since the Portal needs some flash just to run its OS. The "Remote" part of the name is also gone, so the device is now simply the PlayStation Portal Player, as it can stream games from the cloud without a PS5 these days. Everything else carries over, including the 8-inch 1080p 60 FPS LCD, haptic feedback, adaptive triggers, and 3D Audio. That also means no OLED panel, which leaker KeplerL2 claimed back in January would come with a refreshed Portal sometime in 2026. Offline play or local downloads would be the obvious guess for the storage, though Sony hasn't confirmed anything along those lines. There's also no word on a wider release, so buyers elsewhere shouldn't hold out for this model just yet.

AMD CEO Lisa Su now calls AMD a "data center first" company, two days after AMD reported a 40% drop in gaming revenue. Speaking to Yahoo Finance's Brian Sozzi on November 5, Su said AMD's data center business should grow 50% sequentially from Q3 to Q4, and suggested it could more than double next year. Here's how she put it:

Dr. Lisa Su, AMD CEOWe are a data center first company, that is our profile, and you know, people need more computing to power all these applications.

Data Center brought in a record $8.5 billion in Q3, up 97%, and now makes up 64% of AMD's $13.4 billion total, up from 47% a year ago. Gaming fell to $773 million, or under 6% of revenue. AMD blames it mostly on lower semi-custom sales, meaning the console chips it makes for Sony and Microsoft, along with weaker graphics demand. Gaming was flat against Q2, though, and last year's Q3 was boosted by a 181% console-driven jump to $1.3 billion. Su used the same "data center first" line back in 2024, when data center was just over half of revenue.

Nintendo isn't considering another price increase for the Switch 2, at least for now. Speaking at the company's financial results briefing on November 5, president Shuntaro Furukawa said there hasn't been any major change in the memory situation and that Nintendo is still able to secure "sufficient quantities," according to Reuters. That's welcome news for anyone still on the fence, since the console has already gone up once this year. Nintendo announced a $50 price hike back in May, which took the US price from $449.99 to $499.99 on September 1, while the Japanese model went from ¥49,980 to ¥59,980 and the European My Nintendo Store price climbed from €469.99 to €499.99.

The comments seem to arrive as Switch 2 hardware sales are slowing down. Nintendo shipped 2.67 million units between July and September, down 41% from a year earlier, though the console has now reached 26.35 million units overall and is still ahead of where the original Switch was at the same point. Nintendo has kept its forecast of 16.5 million Switch 2 units for the fiscal year ending March 2027. Of course, "not considering" isn't the same as a promise, so it's best not to treat this as a price freeze. Sony said much the same thing this week, noting that it has already agreed on memory volumes with suppliers for its next fiscal year. Elsewhere, hardware keeps getting pricier, with NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 50-series reportedly set for price hikes of up to $500, but at least Nintendo is staying put for now.

Sony has started nudging some PlayStation owners in the US to sell their PS5, with a PlayStation app notification shared on ResetEra offering "up to $400" for a standard console. The trade-in itself runs through Back Market, which inspects the hardware and then sends cash straight to the owner's bank account instead of offering store credit. That $400 figure comes with some fine print, though. It is based on quotes for a standard PS5 in Grade 0 condition, which is basically flawless, with two or more controllers included, collected between August 23 and September 22. PS5 Pro owners aren't part of this one. The timing certainly looks pretty convenient, with GTA 6 launching on November 19 and pre-load starting on November 10.

Coincidentally, Microsoft also started emailing inactive Xbox owners last month, offering up to $375 for a Series X traded in at Best Buy. Sony's offer looks a little better on paper, since Microsoft pays out in Best Buy eGift Cards rather than cash. A couple of users who ran the online trade-in estimate got a little over $400 for a base PS5, so the headline number seems realistic for consoles in good shape. A new PS5 now costs $649.99 after Sony's April price hike, while the $899.99 PS5 Pro is hard to find at list price, and GameStop is reportedly asking $1,399.99 for used units. With retailers already expecting console shortages around the GTA 6 launch, used PS5s will probably sell fast. Owners with an idle console are advised to compare Back Market's quote with local resale prices before shipping it off.

In a big surprise to no one, graphics card prices went up again in October. TechSpot's latest survey across 10 countries shows GPU prices rising 11% month over month, following a 15% jump in August and 7% in September, or roughly 35% over three months. On average, cards now sell for 44% above MSRP, climbing to 58% in the US and Canada. Keep in mind these numbers track the lowest in-stock price in each region, so most models cost even more. Moreover, there is another GeForce RTX 50-series price hike on the horizon, so these numbers will rise again pretty soon.

The GeForce RTX 5090 is in a league of its own. It got 32% pricier in a month, and its normalized global price of $7,240 sits a staggering 262% above its $1,999 MSRP, almost double the 136% figure from early September. In the US, the cheapest in-stock model now costs $9,400, or 370% over MSRP, and most models now sit above $11,000 comfortably. The RTX 5080 is following a similar path, up 22% in a month to $2,200 in the US, while Newegg had none of its own in stock when the data was collected. TechSpot argues the GDDR7 memory crisis can't explain a jump that big, and some retail sources apparently told them wholesale RTX 5080 costs have gone up recently too.

NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 50-Series "Blackwell" gaming graphics cards are expected to see significant price adjustments this week. According to Chinese ChannelGate, add-in card (AIC) partners have confirmed that price hikes are scheduled due to the ongoing demand for these GPUs outstripping supply. Some major AIC partners, like Colorful and Galax, have reportedly already started sharing information about these price increases. The most significant example is expected to be for SKUs based on NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5090 DV2, which will see an increase of up to 3,300 RMB, translating to nearly $500. Even entry-level GPUs are not exempt, as the GeForce RTX 5060 is expected to see around a $30 price increase on existing models. These changes are anticipated to be implemented this week for retail partners, meaning that consumer prices might take a week or two to reflect the new listing prices.Below is the list of price hikes in China, expected to be the norm.

Raspberry Pi has raised prices again, and this time the 16 GB Raspberry Pi 5 takes the hit. CEO Eben Upton announced in a blog post that the 16 GB model goes up by $80 to $385, more than triple the $120 it launched at in January 2025. The 16 GB Compute Module 5 variants are also going up by $40, with updated prices listed in the product brief on the Compute Module 5 page. This follows the October 1 increase, when the 2 GB Pi 4 and Pi 5 each went up by $12.50. Compared to today's hike, that one was minor. Upton blames a lack of alternative supply for 16 GB DRAM, made worse by other ongoing component shortages.

Upton encouraged customers to make sure they are not paying for more memory than they need. He pointed out that lower-density variants or older Raspberry Pi models could be a solution. Also, underlined developers to optimize memory use in their applications. He closes the post by saying the current memory situation is difficult but temporary. Raspberry Pi Foundation intends to roll the increases back once memory costs start to decrease.

AMD is reportedly getting ready to raise prices on its Radeon GPU and GDDR6 memory kits again in November. According to a new post from Board Channels, the increase would follow an earlier adjustment in October, when AMD apparently started charging its board partners more for GDDR6 from October 1. The exact scope of the November hike isn't known yet. The main reason seems to be memory, since GDDR6 prices reportedly went up by around 8 to 10% in the third quarter. Board Channels also claims AMD now reviews its kit pricing every quarter to keep up with rising GPU and memory costs. AMD sells its GPUs to add-in board partners bundled with memory, so any increase there usually ends up in the price of the finished card.

This would add to a long list of reported increases this year. A 10% hike on Radeon GPU kits was reported for July, another 10% increase across GPUs, chipsets, and possibly CPUs followed in September, and AMD's suggested Radeon prices in China went up in early October. Retail prices are already moving, too. According to Hardware Unboxed's latest pricing survey, cited by Videocardz, the RX 9060 XT 16 GB costs 17% more than it did in September, while the RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT are up 12%. Of course, AMD hasn't officially confirmed any of this. How much the November change affects store prices will depend on board partner pricing and existing inventory, so buyers who were already planning on a Radeon RX 9000 card might want to buy sooner rather than later.

Microsoft's gaming business shrank again in the first quarter of its 2027 fiscal year, which ended on September 30. Xbox revenue came in at $5.38 billion, down 2% from $5.51 billion a year ago, while Microsoft as a whole grew revenue by 19% to $92.3 billion. Content and services revenue fell 2%, and hardware dropped a bigger 14% on a lower volume of consoles sold. CFO Amy Hood said the overall Xbox decline was driven by third-party content and Xbox Game Pass, partly offset by growth in first-party games.

Microsoft Gaming CEO Asha Sharma, however, put a positive spin on the numbers in a post on X. She pointed out that the 2% decline is much smaller than the 10% drop a quarter earlier, and that margins improved. She also listed record results for Minecraft and World of Warcraft Forever, called Modern Warfare 4 Call of Duty's most acclaimed release in over a decade, and said PC platform revenue grew by double digits. As for hardware, Sharma claims console sales are being held back by supply, with demand currently outpacing the number of consoles available. She added that Xbox is working to get more units out to players, partly through an expanded refurbishment program.

Printed circuit boards (PCBs) are the foundation of every PC component, as they mount everything and connect the entire system using electrical components, wiring, and more. However, we are about to enter another phase of consumer electronics price hikes, as these PCBs are now experiencing severe component shortages projected to last until 2030. According to Nikkei Asia, an unnamed executive from an American PC maker told the publication that PCB manufacturers are confirming this situation, with some predicting that orders placed today may not be fulfilled until late 2028.

American PC Maker for Nikkei AsiaEven though PC shipments could decline again next year, we are still struggling to secure enough PCB supplies to meet our needs.

Rumors of the RTX 5080 16 GB being discontinued are picking up steam, and the effects are starting to show. RTX 5080 16 GB wholesale prices in China have jumped by around 2,000 yuan (roughly $300), according to new information from Board Channels. The card previously traded at 12,700 to 13,500 yuan (~$1,900 to $2,020) and now sits at 14,500 to 15,000 yuan (~$2,170 to $2,240). Board Channels blames tighter upstream supply and the reported discontinuation of the 16 GB model. A leaker recently claimed that NVIDIA has set January discontinuation dates for the card, though NVIDIA hasn't confirmed anything.

Along with the RTX 5080 16 GB, the RTX 5070 Ti, which uses the same 16 GB of GDDR7, is also facing price hikes. It is now going for 9,650 to 9,850 yuan (~$1,440 to $1,470), compared to 9,000 to 9,150 yuan (~$1,350 to $1,370) before, a roughly $100 bump. Board partners are adjusting too. ASUS has reportedly added 1,000 yuan (~$150) to all of its RTX 5080 16 GB models and 200 yuan (~$30) to the RTX 5070 Ti, RTX 5070, and RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB cards. Gigabyte went further, with 1,200 yuan (~$180) on its RTX 5080 cards and 200 yuan (~$30) on the RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5070. Cheaper RTX 5060-class cards from both brands saw smaller bumps of 200 yuan (~$30) or less, and ASUS reportedly raised prices on its Radeon cards as well, between $15 and $50.

Microsoft's next-gen Xbox console could cost a lot more than anyone hoped. A new Fortune profile of Xbox CEO Asha Sharma says the Project Helix console has internally been projected to cost consumers between $1,200 and $1,800, unless Microsoft decides to subsidize it. For reference, the current Xbox Series X with a disc drive sells for $799.99, and that is after the recent price hikes. The report also says Sharma plans to release a next-gen handheld by the 2027 holiday season, followed by the console in time for the 2028 holidays. Apparently, Helix engineering deadlines have been moved up by at least several months, according to people familiar with the matter, which is putting extra pressure on development teams.

The handheld has also caused some friction inside Microsoft. Windows leaders reportedly wanted it to run a trimmed-down version of Windows Home, while Sharma's team wanted its own software for better gaming performance. It got heated enough that a senior Xbox executive reportedly threatened to scrap the handheld rather than ship the Windows build, though Xbox now seems to be steering the OS. Sharma, for her part, says the teams still work together, noting, "We can't build Helix on our own." Microsoft hasn't confirmed any pricing, and a subsidy could bring the final number down a bit. However, Fortune puts Xbox's profit margin at around 3%, which probably doesn't leave much room for one. Elsewhere, memory makers expect supply to get even tighter in 2027 and 2028, while rival Sony also struggles with rising costs, so a cheap next-gen console looks unlikely from either side.

Microsoft is reportedly emailing Xbox Series X|S owners who haven't touched their consoles in a while, nudging them to trade those consoles in at Best Buy. The email, first shared by Nintendeal on X, opens with "Haven't played on your console in a while?" and tells owners who have moved to other platforms that they can get "up to $375 back." Per Gizmodo, Xbox has confirmed the email is genuine. That $375 applies to a Series X in good condition with its cables and controller, while a Series S apparently tops out at $200. Payment comes as a Best Buy eGift Card, and the campaign seems limited to the US for now.

It looks like this is the trade-in program Microsoft promised in June, when it announced another round of price hikes and said traded-in consoles would be resold at lower prices. Those hikes pushed the 1 TB Series X with a disc drive to $799.99, and the 512 GB Series S to $499.99. Unsurprisingly, Circana data later showed US Xbox hardware sales hit an all-time low through August. Stock is the other problem, as new units are reportedly scarce in mainland Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and South America, while GTA 6's November launch is expected to drain shelves even further. Owners thinking about trading in should note that used Series X consoles have recently sold for over $500 on eBay, so Best Buy's offer is more about convenience than value.

Dell's monitor division has reportedly issued an internal notice raising shipping prices on its displays, with the change taking effect this month. The leak comes from ChannelGate and was first reported by IT Home, and it points to an increase of around 3% to 5% for most affected models. Mid-range and high-end monitors take the hit, and some of the pricier models could go up by more than that, while entry-level models are reportedly left alone for now. Dell hasn't confirmed anything, and there's no word on specific models or regions. Apparently, costs first went up back in July, and Dell chose to absorb them at the time instead of passing them on to buyers. This looks like the first time those costs are being moved downstream, and the source expects more price revisions if costs keep climbing.

The report doesn't name a specific cause, though TrendForce's early October panel update notes that upstream component costs are rising sharply, leaving monitor panel makers little room to cut prices even as demand weakens. Keep in mind this is a shipping price, so how much of it reaches store shelves will depend on distributors and retailers. The timing also isn't great for Dell. The company already raised PC prices by 15% to 20% late last year as memory costs climbed, and more recently, PC shipments dropped 20.1% in Q3 2026, with HP and Dell reportedly taking the biggest hits. A 3% to 5% bump is small in comparison, but readers planning to pick up a Dell monitor are advised to keep an eye on current listings before the new pricing trickles down to retail.

The second-generation Lenovo Legion Go handheld devices have already received a substantial price increase after their initial launch, with the entry-level Legion Go S jumping from $899.99 and $649.99 to $1,579.99 and $989.99, for the Z1 Extreme and Z2 Go models, respectively. This was after Lenovo already increased the price on the AMD Ryzen Z2 Extreme-powered Legion Go 2 from $1,349.99 to $1,999.99. Now, the same Legion Go 2 with 32 GB of RAM and 2 TB of storage that previously jumped to $2,849 can now be found on the Lenovo US online store for $3,081.99.

This is a $233 price jump that corresponds to around 8% of the total previous price, although the Legion Go 2 with 1 TB of storage can still be found at Best Buy for $1,999.99. The latest price increase for the Legion Go 2 comes as the gaming handheld continues to be out of stock at Lenovo, despite partner stores, like Best Buy, having stock of the handhelds. Lenovo hasn't yet announced the price hike for the Legion Go, but it seems reasonable to assume the price increase is linked to the ongoing RAMpocalypse that has repeatedly affected pricing across various PC hardware segments—but most severely RAM and DRAM.

Intel is reportedly preparing for a significant price increase across its silicon designs, according to supply chain sources cited by Commercial Times Taiwan. The first to experience this price hike is the latest "Panther Lake" processor generation, built on the Intel 18A node, with an increase ranging from 15% to 20% depending on the SKU. Intel reportedly made these adjustments on September 1, but consumer price increases have not yet been observed, or it may take a few more weeks for the old supply to clear. This supply-side price hike doesn't mean that Intel is directly changing its consumer pricing, but rather adjusting the pricing for major laptop OEMs such as Acer, ASUS, Lenovo, Dell, and HP. With a potential 20% price hike, this could translate to a few dozen US dollars more for the OEMs. Laptop manufacturers are likely to pass these increased costs onto consumers, especially given the current challenges with memory and storage pricing, which are already squeezing margins.

The reported price hikes don't stop there. The "Meteor Lake" and "Arrow Lake" processor families are also expected to see price increases, with reports indicating a 5% to 10% hike for these two generations, depending on the SKU. Intel sources silicon from both TSMC and its internal foundry, but the demand for silicon in the form of CPUs is skyrocketing in the age of AI, making price increases likely. Consumer demand remains, but much of the available CPU manufacturing capacity, both internally and externally, is being absorbed by agentic AI workloads, which are pushing server configurations to a 50:50 ratio of CPUs to GPUs.

Xbox and PlayStation console sales in the US are having a rough 2026, according to new Circana data that analyst Mat Piscatella shared on Bluesky. For the year 2026 through August, Xbox hardware unit sales are down 33% year over year, while PlayStation units are 25% lower. That puts Xbox at an all-time low and PlayStation at its lowest point since 2013. As one might expect, it looks like pricing is the main culprit. Buyers paid an average of $529 for a new Xbox console this year, 26% more than a year ago, and $597 for a PlayStation, up 20%. Both are record highs for the US, and Piscatella says price sensitivity is becoming a real problem.

The decline follows a string of price hikes tied to the memory and storage shortage. Sony raised the PS5 Pro to $899.99 in April, Microsoft pushed the Xbox Series X to $799.99 on August 1, and Nintendo moved the Switch 2 to $499.99 in September, a hike analysts had warned about back in January. August itself was weak, with total hardware unit sales falling 15% to 559,000, the lowest August total since 2013. The Switch 2, however, remains the best-selling console of 2026 in both units and dollars. Piscatella said the US hardware market hasn't been "in a more precarious position since the early 80s." He thinks GTA 6's big launch might ease some of these declines, although that depends on console availability and pricing.

Worldwide PC shipments fell a steep 20.1% year over year in Q3 2026 to 62.7 million units, according to preliminary data from IDC, down from 78.5 million in the same quarter last year. It is the second straight quarterly decline, and a much deeper one than Q2, which IDC now lists as a 3.8% drop. Shipments also slipped 9.1% compared to Q2, even though Q3 is normally the bigger quarter. IDC puts this down to the first half of the year, when vendors and channels stocked up ahead of memory-driven price hikes. That pulled volume out of the second half, and with supply still constrained and prices high, Q3 apparently had little demand left to work with.

The three largest vendors took the hardest hits. HP shipments dropped 30.9% to 10.3 million units, Dell fell 25% to 7.6 million, and Lenovo, still first with a 23.8% share, was down 22.6% to 14.9 million. Together they gave up 4.2 points of market share. Apple and ASUS also shipped fewer PCs, down 11.3% and 8.6%. However, both fell slower than the market and ended up with a larger share, at 9.5% and 8.7%.

As if GPU prices weren't high enough, thanks to the ongoing RAMpocalypse driving up BOM costs continuously for what seems like the last year, the trend is clear. According to recent reports, it now seems as though AMD GPUs are slated to get even more price hikes in the near future. As reported by VideoCardz, based on a source on Board Channels, AMD has increased GPU vendor pricing by as much as $104 in China.

Reportedly, the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX6500 XT pricing will remain unchanged, but the RX 9070 will get a price hike equivalent to $104, being the steepest price increase on the list, while the RX 9060 XT 8 GB will get the smallest price increase, at $45. It is said that these price hikes are motivated by higher memory prices and manufacturing costs, and that, while they are seemingly local to China for the time being, international board partners have also been informed of the upcoming changes.

Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton has announced today in a blog post a $12.50 price increase for the 2 GB variants of both the Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi 5. Starting today, the 2 GB Pi 4 costs $67.50, and the 2 GB Pi 5 hits $77.50. Back in April, Raspberry Pi was able to keep the 1 GB and 2 GB pricing unchanged while raising costs on higher-density models. However, that approach has now become unsustainable. For the moment, prices for 1 GB variants of both boards, and the 2 GB Compute Module 4 and Compute Module 5, remain unchanged. Upton also pointed users to consider whether older models like the Pi 3B, 3A+, or 3B+ might be a better fit for their needs given the current pricing environment.

The future is yet to bring that tiny light at the end of the tunnel, at least for consumers. Yesterday, Sanjay Mehrotra, Micron's CEO, said during the company's fiscal Q4 2026 earnings call that memory and storage supply will likely be even tighter in 2027 and 2028 than it was this year. Moreover, according to TrendForce's latest research, conventional DRAM prices are on track to rise another 10-15% quarter over quarter, as suppliers continue to prioritize advanced-process capacity for high-performance server products over mainstream consumer memory.

XMG has announced on Reddit another round of laptop price increases, with most affected models going up €100 to €150. The new prices took effect on September 18 through the company's bestware store. Memory remains the biggest factor as DDR5 SO-DIMM prices for laptops have risen nearly sixfold compared to mid-2025. Also, desktop DDR5 modules and SSDs prices have followed a similar trajectory. XMG says that now it's no longer just the memory. GPU chips, GDDR7 video memory, Intel and AMD laptop CPUs, and PCBs are all costing more. Due to the conflict in the Middle East and rising fuel prices, air freight costs are higher, while sea freight through the Red Sea and Suez Canal now comes with higher insurance costs.

The XMG APEX 16, CORE 15, CORE 16, FUSION 16, NEO 16, and several PRO models are up €100. The APEX 16 MAX, APEX 17, FOCUS 17, and FUSION 15 went up €150. The SCHENKER KEY 18 Pro saw the largest single adjustment at €300. The RTX 5090 Laptop GPU upgrade is now €120 more expensive across the NEO 16 and SCHENKER KEY 18 Pro. A couple of RTX 5070 upgrade prices were trimmed slightly, though XMG notes the overall system cost is still higher than before. XMG EVO, SCHENKER CONNECT, ELEMENT, and SCHENKER WORK models are not affected this round. The company says the price adjustments are a direct result of rising costs, not a margin expansion, and commits to lowering prices again if component costs drop.

AMD is preparing for a series of price hikes in response to rising costs of acquiring silicon from its supply chain. According to ChannelGate, AMD is working on a 10% price increase across its products due to the upstream supply chain squeeze. Since most of AMD's silicon is manufactured by Taiwanese semiconductor giant TSMC, any change in wafer pricing forces AMD to pass these costs onto customers. Reportedly, TSMC is increasing the pricing of its silicon wafers, and as a result, AMD must raise its product costs to maintain margins and keep the business afloat. The price increases will affect almost every product AMD offers, including GPUs, possibly CPUs, and even motherboard chipsets.

For CPUs and GPUs, AMD has already implemented price hikes in the past, driven by a combination of demand and high DRAM pricing. However, this is one of the first instances where AMD is increasing the pricing of its motherboard chipsets, which will require motherboard makers to adjust their pricing accordingly. If TSMC implements a 10% price hike across its nodes, from 2 nm N2 to some older mature nodes, AMD will have to pass these costs onto partners and consumers, who will ultimately bear the difference. As a fabless chip designer, AMD cannot dictate or negotiate for lower rates for wafers from TSMC.

Valve has opened reservations for the Steam Frame, its standalone VR headset, with pricing starting at $1,059 for the 256 GB model and going up to $1,299 for the 1 TB version. We had already reported back in July that Qualcomm's own chip price hikes were pushing Steam Frame costs upward well before today's reveal. In an interview with Tom's Hardware, Valve engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais walked through why the final price landed where it did. Here's what he said:

"I think as far as memory prices and those kinds of conditions, we're really in it like everyone else. It's an unfortunate situation all around. We wish that gaming hardware was cheaper, but we're definitely trying to be on the cheapest side that we can get despite all those conditions. Even just things like motherboards, copper, anything, even shipping anything worldwide right now is way more expensive than it was last year and two years ago. So every part of the sticker price is affected there."

GeForce RTX 5090 prices in Germany have now pushed past €5,000, with the cheapest listed model on Geizhals coming in at €5,242.94 for the INNO3D iCHILL Frostbite Pro. Hardwareluxx, which first flagged the price increase, reports that there isn't a single RTX 5090 currently listed below €5,200 in the German market, and several mainstream models are edging toward €5,500. The same card was going for around €3,029 back in January, so that's roughly a 73% jump in eight months. NVIDIA's Founders Edition RTX 5090, when it's actually in stock, is still priced at €2,099, meaning custom cards now cost well over double that.

Germany isn't alone in this crisis. RTX 5090 pricing in the US recently crossed $5,000 too, and NVIDIA hasn't addressed either situation publicly. Instead, the company appears to be leaning on event-based promotions, like the one it ran at PAX West, to hand out occasional MSRP units rather than dealing with the overall pricing problem. The rising cost of GDDR7 memory tied to AI demand appears to be the main driver, and board partners have apparently been passing those costs straight to consumers for months.