You know maybe you haven't noticed what's been going on the past few months because
you just aren't interested in upgrading your pc right now you have a system that you think is
fine why is there dust floating everywhere and you're just you're content with what you have
honestly couldn't be better timing right now the graphics card market is so freaking screwed up
that um it it's deterring a lot of people from wanting to build right now and i'm going to talk
about some of the reasons why this is the case now obviously we've had the issue with ampere
scalpers bots and scripts being used to buy these up in bulk flip them on Ebay for double MSRP right
that's been happening since the 30 70 30 80 30 90 30 60 ti and now the 30 60 have launched
but there's more to the story we also have tariffs which a lot of the waivers that were awarded to
chinese exporters have expired now they expired January 1st of their about 2021 that was literally
two months ago at some time of filming and that means that we are being forced to pay more now
for those imports tariffs affect the people who are buying the goods from other countries and that
has affected graphics for prices there's also the effect of mining which i feel like has gone under
the radar quite a bit i know pedro over at PCMR is talking about how not many people were talking
about mining a month ago even though bitcoin and other cryptocurrency prices were skyrocketing
that is a serious issue all that's compounding into the perfect storm for graphics card prices
it is bad for the general consumer it is getting so bad to the point where again
people are just giving up they're giving up they're losing hope that or they're spending
three times MSRP and i'm not exaggerating with that number three times MSRP to get a brand new
card it's insane we're gonna talk about some of those trends we see right now stay with me ultra
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warranty you can find them in 256 and 512 gig capacities via the link below so we're gonna start
off with pc part bigger price trends and i'll link this down below if you want to check it out
yourself but this specifically is for the video card category we're going to skip over Turing
because these aren't necessarily relevant to the new market anymore we're gonna start first off the
RTX-3060 ti one of the more popular ampere cards that were launched this year this is you see a
little bump right there this bump is an indication of tariffs now being kind of implemented into the
prices here so remember this affects the consumer not necessarily the the distributor the exporter
and as a result we're paying more so you can see how this trend is exhibited in multiple SKUs not
just the 360 ti this is the the more recent launch so you can see this was pretty abrupt
right in the beginning uh but even RTX 37 this is MSRP here this is not like third-party scalping
prices so if you look at the left side this is between four and six hundred bucks that's fair
that's what Nvidia said these should be sold for but this bump right here is a result of
the tariff waivers now ending same goes for the 3080 right here and same goes for the 30 90 more
or less now another interesting note is that pc part picker price trends also keeps track of rx
570 prices now this is a several year old card right but it's very popular still because it's
an entry level card good for 1080p gaming you can get these in four and eight gig variants
the prices here have pretty much been consistent throughout this starts here at September 2019
ends uh February 2021 so you can see right up until about the middle of 2020
prices for 570s were relatively stable between 100 and 200 bucks this is brand new mind you
and with other cards that are much better being launched during this time slightly before this it
didn't really make much sense to buy these new uh granted considering what we're seeing now i
guess it more or less would have made sense back then because they are selling for twice or three
times what they were selling for six months ago so the price slowly started increasing here and then
right here you see another little bump okay it kind of dip down closer toward Christmas
then you have the new year prices resurge and then you have this huge spike right here after February
this right here folks is what i want to talk about a little later in the video
but i've been keeping track of a plethora of graphics card prices throughout 2020 and 2021
just trying to see how covet and other things were affecting these markets people want graphics cards
they're in high demand they have it in high demand but they have never been in more demand i think
than now especially with so many people stuck at home with nothing else to do no screw it i'll
build a gaming pc i'll stream from my house i need a good graphics card to do that so
i'll go ahead and buy a graphics card there you go that kind of demand is what uh
kept graphics cards not only fairly expensive but also fairly difficult to obtain especially
in later 2020 but this bump right here is one of these that you don't see too often and i'm hoping
that it corrects itself soon the problem is people are still buying these cards
for upwards of 350 400 it's insane and then check this out this is the rx 580 now if this
doesn't tell you that mining has taken off again i don't know what will prices were pretty stable
again around 200 bucks 580s and 570s there's not a huge difference there again apart from the V-ram
disparity between the 4g and 8gig excuse but then we see this huge spike look at that and it's still
going projections have this going up quite a bit more this card is already above it
it's at least in but it's probably above 500 territory by this point in mid to late February
that that is crazy but the this is happening okay i want to make this clear this this is happening
not because this is what sellers like are trying to make them worth they are worth this because
they are selling for this this is simple supply and demand folks if these cards were not selling
for five or six hundred bucks they wouldn't be listed for five or six hundred bucks i guarantee
you if we hopped on over to ebay we'd see that these cards are selling and mass for at least
double what they were six months ago and then just to glance quickly at the RX 6800 another rd and a2
cards you see right when it launched prices were slowly increasing then we have this huge spike
when the tariffs are implemented who knows what mining is doing to this market now uh this one
was even more uh notice we can see right when the tariffs were implemented just after the new year
boom prices shoot up by oh this is at least 20 25 actually more than that closer to 30 35
from about 750 bucks to a thousand dollars that's pretty substantial they've leveled off at around
a thousand bucks slightly above that according to uh this source and then a thousand bucks here for
the 6900 xt upwards of 1500 bucks today now for those interested in historical sale prices for
pretty much anything on ebay i'm going to show you how to do that very quickly i was searching for RX
580s but you want to hop on over to this advanced button on the top right and then you can type in
your search words keywords here item numbers and then you want to click this box right here sold
listings and then click search and it will show you what these cards recently sold for and these
are the dates of the sale so February 28th that's today at the time of filming 300. this 580 4 gig
just sold for plus 23 dollars and 60 cents in shipping look at this an RX 580 8 gig sold for 450
from Portugal today plus 10 shipping and these mind you are used cards these are not brand
new so remember those pc part picker prices we were looking at earlier those were for
new cards so rx 580s new were selling for over 500 bucks and used they're selling for something some
of these eight gig variants are selling for almost five hundred dollars now there are of course other
cards to consider on the used market one that i've been preaching for years has been the GTX
1070 even the 1080 for about 200 bucks for a 1070 300 bucks or so for a 1080 at least right before
ampere launched these cards were pretty high and there were plenty of them available because people
were slowly upgrading to either touring or what would eventually be ampere so they were selling
these in anticipation of those cards little did they know that those cards would be extremely
difficult to obtain so rip them but anyway um these cards now are double if not more than that
than what they used to be so 460 bucks this is a was a 1070 ti but uh that's that's freaking
expensive that's 150 more than what these cards were these cards usually went for about 260 to 280
sometimes even 300 bucks depending on the aib this right here is a regular old 1070 1070 vanilla
it's an ASUS card but still 440 bucks that's double what i would have paid six months ago
i still wouldn't pay this today i mean i know what market conditions are telling us that this is the
the new equilibrium price for these cards because they're in such high demand on again the backs of
mining the tariffs and the new markets you know trickling their way down to the used market
um these sellers are smart they they they realize when cards are selling quickly um that they need
to raise prices to account for that otherwise i mean just you know you're just gonna completely
burn through inventory you're not gonna have anything left to sell so you raise your prices
to account for that additional demand uh again on the back of largely mining at this point but
uh like 400 bucks for gtx 1070 this is a cheaper ASUS variant and it's it's selling for 400 bucks
right 15 shipping tacked onto that it's crazy a lot of these are broken and they're still selling
for 168 bucks who is buying broken gtx 1070s for almost 200 this is what they were selling for used
in working conditions six months ago and people want to buy these for parts for the same price
today and this stuff just pisses me off and the problem is there's no one to really blame
this is just natural market reaction to the plethora of circumstances that compounded
themselves in early 2021 what can you do i mean you can't blame sellers for this right sellers
are just they're just extracting as much value as they can out of used components you or i would
do the same it's not our place to judge them for that because at the end of the day they're trying
to maximize value just like we are on the buyer's side right i mean if if someone sees the utility
in 460 gtx 1070s let them buy them for 460 bucks you know there's nothing you can do and this one
by the way did sell for 460 bucks these are all in green prices in green indicate that they had
sold for these prices um it's you know it's one of those things where you kind of just have to
sit and sulk because there's there's there's nothing we can do except wait wait for market
conditions to change because right now again with mining as as amped as it is so many people want to
mine for whatever reason they are just they're driving up the prices in both the new and used
markets thankfully this doesn't trickle down to other pc components but the graphics card is
an it's a it's a i mean it's a staple you can't not game with a graphic too unless you have an
APU i mean godspeed there i mean 1080p medium to low settings there aren't APUs out there that
are consumer grade that are capable of you know high frame rate high resolution gaming
and and that's why we use discrete cards like these these are designed specifically for
things like gaming not just gaming people like to think these cards are you know gamers own these
cards we own this market these are ours that's not true um and regardless of whatever these
are advertised as these cards are great at many things and that's why miners buy them that's why
content creators buy them that's why you know studios buy them in bulk because these cards
do a plethora of things they're good at not just gaming but multiple things and we are experiencing
the climax of demand right now i mean we've got 1080 ti selling for more than MSRP at this point
it just does not make somebody spent 1159 bucks on a GTX 1080 ti for the win3
does that does that compute with anybody and if someone's looking for an rx 5600 xt
what do we have here 630 bucks 640 bucks 640 600 600 650 750 730 ah good luck come on so
if you've been wondering why graphics cards have suddenly shot up in value in mid to late february
this is all why um i can only show you why things are happening the way they are i can only show you
why the market is reacting the way that it is i cannot do anything about it none of us can do
it someone messaged me on twitter and was like why are gtx 1070s 500 can you please help like
i don't know what you want me to do i mean i i've i've already upgraded so many viewers uh
pcs in the pcdc playlist i have given away so many graphics cards i don't have anything left to give
away i mean if i give away all my inventory i have nothing to test i have nothing to build
with that's kind of like what i do on this channel i feel bad for those who are stuck with you know
really expensive platforms but no viable graphics card someone said he had like a 9900k
or a 10 900k and paired it with a gtx 1650 i mean that's clearly a graphic card bottleneck
99 of the time in game but what there's nothing i can do about it ultimately the only way to quickly
correct these prices when i say correct i mean again this is market equilibrium there's nothing
wrong with these prices in that sense they're being priced at what they are selling for
that is by definition equilibrium so you can't say that the prices are all out of whack the
economics are broken whatever sellers are just selling them for what they can sell them for
and you can't again fault them for that but the only real way to correct this quickly
is to not buy any of these cards for these prices if you tell the seller that this is
not worth this and when i say if you tell them i mean like the the market if you as the buyer base
consumer base tell the market that these are not worth this then prices will come down problem is
you're not going to be able to rally every human on earth to not spend what these people are
spending on these cards they're gonna people are gonna see value in this especially if you can make
10 20 30 bucks a day mining whatever you happen to be mining they don't really care about the initial
cost and what they'll do is they'll sell all of these cards in their mining farms again five or
six months from now or whenever and they'll recoup a lot of their initial investments so they're
not necessarily looking at this like a sunk cost because they're going to resell these cards later
sure they might take a hit on the resale value but at least they're getting some of that but they're
recovering some of their initial investment at the end of the day and that's enough for them so
the upfront price is not a big deal people who are serious about mining aren't looking at msrp
or whatever these cards are selling for now and thinking wow this is an awful deal i mean i'm sure
it's crossing their mind these are a bit high but they're looking at the end game they're looking at
the long-term investment when it comes to mining and that's why prices are so expensive because
they just don't care at the end of the day a gamer buys one graphics card and it sits in
a system for a year or two right that's a pretty big cost for uri because gaming for the most part
doesn't make us any money unless you're streaming or your professional esports player what have you
you're not going to make any money with your graphics card just sitting there miners are
they see again this is an investment opportunity and that's why they're okay spending more for
these cards especially when they're in such high demand and ethereum and every
other cryptocurrency it seems like in the crypto market is skyrocketing right now they they don't
they they don't care about this relatively small upfront cost that's why it's affecting pretty
much the entire grand spare market any card that's somewhat viable for mining that on top of the fact
that there's a worldwide chip shortage i mean what can you do it's just it's just a freaking cluster
uh but at least now after watching this video you hopefully understand why prices are the way
they are and why they've gotten so much worse as of February 2021 if you guys enjoyed this video
give it a thumbs up leave a comment down below expressing your dissatisfaction with the current
state of affairs and i will catch you in the next one my name is greg thanks for venting with me!