GPUs & CPUs & Enthusiast hardware: Questions, Discussion and fanboy slap-fights - Nvidia & AMD & Intel - Separe but Equal. Intel rides in the back of the bus.

It is legit getting bad out there to build a pc. I think this is worse than the miner rush from years ago. Scalpers, low supply, low yields, renewed mining, tarrifs... its fucking crazy.
It's way worse than the last time. That time the GTX 10 series was at least available to buy for some time. Then and now is almost like swine flu and corona.
 
Is there any hope on the horizon or is this just business as usual from now on? Will I have to wait until the next crypto-crash to scoop up parts again? My current rig is going on about 10 years and still does the trick but is frankly starting to show its age and is due for a total refresh.
I have no idea. I didn't wait to pick up a 3090 and now they're going for like 3 fucking grand. There's no Ryzen 5000 any available. They're saying by April it should be normal but the last time they said it was Jan 2021 so I don't really know.
 
Speaking of Ryzen 5000, I intended to post this a couple of days ago.
ryzen5000.jpg

The company reports that they get at least 3-5 X570 & B550 motherboards every week which end up being DOA. It is yet to be figured out whether this is a production issue or something else. There are still a lot of people who are running their AMD Ryzen 5000 PC builds without any issues ever since it launched but given the high failure rate that is reported here, this is definitely something that's worth investigating. Others have reported issues where the USB 3 lanes on Ryzen 5000 CPUs were all but dead and giving weird stability issues.

Whenever you hear about dead CPUs it's because the user fucked something up so imagine the despair of a first time builder thinking they broke something.
 
Speaking of Ryzen 5000, I intended to post this a couple of days ago.
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Whenever you hear about dead CPUs it's because the user fucked something up so imagine the despair of a first time builder thinking they broke something.
Well, another thing to remember is that there are no motherboards that currently support the 5000 series right out of the box. So you have to flash the BIOS on them, which can be iffy. I had to return a Gigabyte X570 because it wouldn't work with my 5600X. The MSI B550 I got instead worked just fine.

I had similar issues with a power supply I bought. The EVGA Supernova GA had issues with the 3000X series of cards so I had to buy another. New tech is always going to suffer some problems like this. The 5000 series is still the best on the market right now.

afaik ram sticks and storage drives are still accessible and easily priced, it wouldn't be hyperbolizing to say that this is the absolute fucking worst the pc hardware market has been in over a decade, bar none

is there a rough estimate on when the next crypto crash could be? not saying that i think crypto in itself is a bad thing but something's gotta give eventually
Truth. RAM and Storage are nice if you're just doing a straight upgrade, but if you want to do a fresh build like I did, you're going to have to pay out your asshole for it.

The real problem was Etherium 2.0 launched around December, and its really one of the only GPU profitable coins left. Bitcoin can no longer be mined with GPUs. There's also the scalper problem, you have bots just buying everything up in 30 seconds from every site too. The Ryzen situation is fucking crazy, I can't find a 5000 series almost anywhere for normal prices. I found a 5600X on Walmart, but some asshole was making you pay $60 shipping on a $390 price, so it'd run you $450 for just a 5600X. The problem this time around is the situation is not improving fast enough at all, when the 10 series came out I was easily able to secure a 1080 and that was the last nutty mining craze. But this, between all the tariffs, scalpers, miners, shortages, like, you're going to be spending at least 1.5-2x what you normally would. With the tariffs, I paid about $200 more MSRP for the 3090, since retail and everywhere is now upping prices.

Its still not worth it to buy scalped processors though. The prices they want for the AMD processors are fucking insane. $450-500 for a 5600X or $800-900 for a 5900X. Get the fuck out of here. Cards maybe, because of the tariffs. If you're going to spend an extra 10%, may as well. Though I'd only do it through amazon stores, I'd never do ebay. Too risky.

Maybe the processor situation will get better when Intel releases their new ones. Though scalpers will probably grab them up too.
 
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I shouldn't post stupid mining pictures but this was an interesting wrinkle. "When people can’t meet at Internet Cafes due to local restrictions meant to limit the spread of a virus, (now empty) businesses are transforming into cryptocurrency mining cafes. "

It only mentions one internet cafe in Vietnam, pictured below, owned by a computer parts reseller that had the hookup, but they can't possibly be the only ones entering into crypto because of the mining boom and corona restrictions. Apparently they make more now than they did before corona.
Internet_Cafe_als_Mining_Farm_mit_Nvidia_Geforce_RTX_3080_1_92eff7a31436.jpg Internet_Cafe_als_Mining_Farm_mit_Nvidia_Geforce_RTX_3080_3_11ba76c23889.jpg Internet_Cafe_als_Mining_Farm_mit_Nvidia_Geforce_RTX_3080_299.jpg
 
https://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-5000-zen-3-desktop-cpus-x570-motherboards-high-failure-rates/
Whenever you hear about dead CPUs it's because the user fucked something up so imagine the despair of a first time builder thinking they broke something.

This. If my 3080 had been buggered out the box (and I was genuinely worried I might have buggered it given the hassle it was to crowbar it into my SFF case) I may actually have cried.

As it happens, it's just fine. And it runs really, really cold. I've got a custom fan curve (I keep the fans right up because I usually have the music or sound in game cranked; years of heavy metal have buggered my hearing) and even when maxing CP77 with ray tracing on (the most intensive game I have) it doesn't go above 60 C. Idle it's as low as 18 C. That may be an intrinsic advantage of having your card mounted vertically, to be fair; the hot air comes out the fin stack at the top and bottom and can thus rise out the case while with its horizontally mounted with the fans pointing downwards it gets trapped under the PCB.
 
It is legit getting bad out there to build a pc. I think this is worse than the miner rush from years ago. Scalpers, low supply, low yields, renewed mining, tarrifs... its fucking crazy.

Everyone was saying 'wait wait wait'll get better' and it just gets worse.

Its every part too, not just cpus and GPUs. Ram, motherboards and power supplies. I think the only thing not affected are literally PC cases.
By Allah, these bitcoin fags should be strung up and stoned to death in Minecraft.

Here's hoping my aging midrange machine can last another year. Thankfully, there's no sign of any wear and tear yet, but I'll definitely be set back a lot if I needed to replace it for whatever reason.
 
By Allah, these bitcoin fags should be strung up and stoned to death in Minecraft.

Here's hoping my aging midrange machine can last another year. Thankfully, there's no sign of any wear and tear yet, but I'll definitely be set back a lot if I needed to replace it for whatever reason.
That's what terrifies me. If something fundamental goes I'm fucked. Thank Christ for backup laptops and stuff that aren't horrible by any stretch but I'd be heartbroken.
 
It is legit getting bad out there to build a pc. I think this is worse than the miner rush from years ago. Scalpers, low supply, low yields, renewed mining, tarrifs... its fucking crazy.

Everyone was saying 'wait wait wait'll get better' and it just gets worse.

Its every part too, not just cpus and GPUs. Ram, motherboards and power supplies. I think the only thing not affected are literally PC cases.
Maybe if we're lucky this'll finally be the tech impetus for people to realize that it really isn't better to end than to mend.
 
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Maybe if we're lucky this'll finally be the tech impetus for people to realize that it really isn't better to end than to mend.
My big hope is that the increased prices will bring hardware production back to the West. There is already talk about building new fabs in the US and Germany. And once there is some competition, and the economy of scale kicks in, prices might go down again.
Never mind that things were much worse in the past. I still remember when $4000 was a perfectly reasonable price for a PC. And when there were no used or budget options that would come even close to the performance of new computers.
 
Good luck with that. Scalpers and bots are here to stay.

Demand is up, supply is down. AMD is making millions of console chips, GPUs, CPUs all on TSMC's 7nm. The consoles won't get a die shrink to 5nm anytime soon so that's a huge supply constraint alleviated for Zen 4. Intel has no trouble supplying lots of CPUs and just increased its desktop market share. The GPU situation will fix itself as yields improve, supply increases, and used mining GPUs flood the market.

If retailers care, they can do more to stop bots. Physical retailers can restrict items to in-store purchases, but they probably won't do it during a pandemic. When is it officially over, 2024?

Americans will continue to get way more of these products than the UK, Europe, etc. no matter how bad things are. US EZ mode.
 
If retailers care, they can do more to stop bots. Physical retailers can restrict items to in-store purchases, but they probably won't do it during a pandemic. When is it officially over, 2024?
Yeah, keep in mind retailers that have a physical storefront are losing money per location, so they have to at least slow the bleeding
 
I really wonder how effective driver based limitations are going to be, and I do wonder if it will have unintended effects considering they are targeting specific mathematical calculations for the slowdown.

From the article it mentions the resell value will be lowered on the crypto cards. Who the heck buys used crypto-GPUs, or used high-end GPUs anyway? They've either been left on 24/7 for years, or stuck in some 1337 gamr case with no airflow/overclocked.

Edit: That's a great thumbnail too lol.
Edit edit: That video does make the point that video cards did go on sale for ~1/6th the original asking price, so I can see that as a reasonable purchase.
 
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