Computer Hardware Availability Nuttery..
Ghosty12
Posts: 2,065
You know this computer hardware shortage is nuts, when I go into my local computer shop to see if I can get a new videocard.. I ask the sales person if I can get a 3070 or a 3060, they then go away and to see if I can, they then come back a few moments later with news that they can only get one 3070, and that it will cost $2099 AUD..
At hearing and seeing it my jaw hits the floor, and I go yeah no thanks, they then say to get a 3060 I have to buy a new system, I got neither that day.. All can say is that I really regret not buying a 2070 Super or 2080ti when they were the current hardware of the day.. 
And on seeing this video I am now hulk mad that this sort of thing is happening.. No title on the video thumbanil unfortunately but that image is of 72 3060ti's in one lot being sold secondhand on ebay.. And one wonders why there are no video cards around or if they are, they are at very exorbitant prices..
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Be patient, the madness will subside and it will all settle down eventually.
I was looking on Amazon UK one day and there was a RTX3090 for over £4K from Lithuania, I passed...
Steve.
Yikes that is nuts, that is the sort of pricing one expects from Quadro cards..
Yep, the shortage is nuts and I watched a vid from Jayztwocents chip shortages are likely to extend til 2022.
There's some YouTube in-stock alert channels, you might want to try that or go with a prebuilt system.
Not really desperate, was just hoping to get another card to put in my system for rendering.. Looks like it will be either 2022 or 2023 now.. lol
Unfortunately as long as the price of Etherium is high enough to remain profitable for GPU mining, most of the avalible cards will be snatched up by minig farms as they come out of the factories... Just like what happened when ETH climbed to $1200 from Nov2017-Jan2018, the GTX 10 series cards doubled in price. Luckily for us by late 2018 it was back down to around $100 and the market flooded with used cards. (lucky me bought a GTX 1080 ti at retal price less than a month before that crazyness)
Cross your fingers and hope Elon Musk keeps opening his mouth... Every time he seems to say something that knocks a few thousand off the price of Bitcoin, then all the other cryptos follow suit and drop a simmilar percentage. (Here's hoping for a crypto crash by the end of the year... That way I can snatch up a bunch while it's cheap)
I only hope my 980Ti lives that long.
It's terrible! I am having trouble with my computer overheating while playing games. I need a better CPU cooler and more fans, but since I'm not physically able to install these things myself, I'll have to pay someone to do it. However, since I don't know how long the PSU and other components will last, I'd almost rather buy a new computer with all new hardware, including a 3090 to replace my 1080ti. The prices for these new systems even seem twice as high as they should be. What would be a fair price to look for these days?
Hi everyone! Yeah...the GPU blues is still in effect but there are very maticulous ways to go about buying one at the normal price. I'll just paste this here, gl!
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/483181/need-an-rtx-card#latest
You think that's nuttery, you should see the price of lumber in the U.S.... it's more than a 250% increase in the past three months.
At least you can blame GPU prices on cryptominers, nobody likes them anymore... with building supplies it's more complicated.
...breaking down the cost, each of those 3060Tis were around 1,129 USD which is a 670 USD markup.
...and that's for only 8 GB of VRAM .
...indeed, you could get an RTX A6000 with 48 GB of VRAM for that.
...yeah when I was an art major back in college I used to make my own stretcher frames for my canvases as it was cheaper to buy the raw lumber (usually 1 x 2s but occasionally 2 x 4s for my really large canvases that were upwards of 6' x 8') cut and assemble it myself than purchasing pre made stretcher frames or pre-stretched and prepared canvas at an art store. Had a nice sharp saw, a mitre box, and knew how to brace it properly to keep it from twisting or deforming when stretching, tackling on, and preparing the canvas with gesso (which made it more taut).
I blame the trees. Have you tried shouting at them to grow faster? If not then the blame is harder to place.
Fingers crossed. Consumers should be able to buy a damn videocard, an essential piece of hardware, without it costing their whole paycheck just because of some flippin cryptominers.
...basically I look at it as little more than just another [try to] "get rich" quick scam scheme.
What annoys me is, I noticed a few weeks ago that the website I usually buy PC hardware from only allows you to buy a new videocard in a package with MB, RAM and CPU.
Not sure how many site are doing this now...
Apparently it's actually what the distributers are doing to retailers, they only sell videocards to the retailers so long as the they also buy a crap tonne of garbage parts with it.
The massive price inflation in Australia is supposedly the result of the distributers profiteering, not the retailers.
---
oh and I really hate bitcoin etc, I think governments around the world need to ban it.
Yeah, that is really bad too. My girlfriend wants to buy a wheelchair accessible house for us but the hot housing market here and the cost of building supplies is driving prices up too much.
I am starting to wonder whether this might work against the GPU manufacturers. Perhaps some genius will come up with a a render engine with a completely new algorithm and which will run fast in a CPU.When I look at render speeds in console games I wonder if we are too far from that? Not that I have any knowledge of rendering engines but a software solution which bypasses the demand for more and more Cuda cores would be very welcome.
The whole purpose of graphics cards is already to take the load of CPU's in the most optimalized way possible, there's no way to simulate that through software. While render algorithms do get better and faster all the time, it's because the GPU to give them access on all those tricks and shortcuts. And CPU's are able to run high quality processess, but both games, 3D software and cryptos consumers will always go for the highest possible speeds, so GPU's.
It's not just cryptominers, but they are of course a slice of the demand pie. It's largely because most people are sitting at home. Parents and adults are working from home or sitting on their butts at home not working. And they couldn't, can't, or won't go outside - so they have lots of time to play games. Kids are learning virtually from home - vastly increasing the demand. Those networks like Zoom need lots of servers to operate as well.
Playstation 5's and Xbox X's are sold out too... people aren't mining with them.
I doubt someone who is staying home only due to the pandemic would all of a sudden become interested in top-tier computer equipment. Those 3060's, 3080's, and 3090's are being gobbled up by cryptominers.
You must not be aware that gamers everywhere are complaining that they can't get video cards or consoles?
melissastjames said:
I'm a gamer...I know. But I was a gamer before the pandemic, and I was buying top tier computer components before the pandemic. Someone who is all of a sudden working from home or schooling from home who never really identified as much of a gamer before the pandemic likely won't all of a sudden be like OMG I NEED TO SPEND $1500 ON THAT SEXY AS HELL 3090. They'll just get whatever they can pick up at Best Buy off the shelf on a Friday night. The pandemic, and any rise in gaming, is not what is driving the lack of availability of top tier equipment. Gaming consoles? I can see. Entry-level computer components sure...but not the stuff we're talking about.
Not to mention the fact that a lot new remotes (white collar workers) are issued company equipment. And company equipment is not sporting (again) top-tier equipment. Not unless your job was in the digital arts industry to begin with. I work for a huge insurance company who sent ~15,000 workers home in March of 2020...all on company equipment. I'd already been a part of the company's remote workforce for twelve years, I was already home, so it was no change for me, but the rest of my team is all navigating the ropes of remote life for the first time. Believe me, they're no more savvy on tech equipment now than they were before the pandemic. They've found they like working from home, sure, but they're not out there buying the 3090 I covet.
Steamcharts.com records how many people are playing a given Steam game at a given time - and as Steam is the main PC gaming platform, and Counter Strike Global Offensive has had a long and consistent user count, I'd say that's a fairly good metric. Since between mid-2015 and the end of 2019, the user count didn't drifted too far from an average of a little over 350,000 online. Since the pandemic really hit, the average has been over 700,000. There is a massive increase in the number of people spending their time gaming rather than doing other things, so we can expect a large increase in the demand for computer hardware.
We can also look at the Steam hardware survey. The most popular GPU is the GTX 1060... and while a lot of people aren't going to upgrade every generation, a lot will upgrade every second generation. If we drill down into the detailed stats, about 20% of users who had a GTX 1060 replaced it between December and April (11.36% to 9.27%). And 20% of users of the most popular graphics card replacing their hardware in a five month window is a *lot*. Given that Steam has 120 million monthly users, even that 2% of users (ignoring anyone who was upgrading anything other than a 1060) changing their hardware is a matter of two and a half million graphics cards.
The statistics support that the gaming community is the source of quite a lot of the demand.
The GTX 1060 had a ~$250 price point. The RTX 3090 has a ~$1500 price point (when not being scalped). That's like comparing apples to coconuts. Someone who would spend $250 on a GPU would certainly upgrade eventually, but they'd likely upgrade to something within the same price scale...not jump from the Corolla to the Ferrari. Not unless they won the lotto...and let's face it, money is toit for a lot of people these days. So who is buying up all the Ferraris?
Even before I got into 3D, I was buying flagship cards for gaming, but not all casual gamers would be down for that. Most are happy with a Corolla or a Camry. I just don't buy that the increase in gaming is a huge attributor to the lack of top tier cards.
I think you're looking at it wrong. It probably isn't a few people making a big jump, but lots of people making small jumps.
People who had the 1060 (between $199 and $299 depending on variant) might go for the 3060 ($329) or the 3060 Ti ($399). People who had the 1050 Ti or 1650 don't currently have an option to go lower than the 3060 if they want to upgrade to the current generation, as the 3050 and 3050 Ti aren't out yet. That eats up the supply of the lower end 30 series cards.
People who might then have considered the 3060 and 3060 Ti on the lower end of their price scale now have to buy the 3070, eating up that supply. People who might have bought either the 3070 or 3080 are then forced to go for the 3080... lots of knock-on effects where lots of people end up going one model higher than they might otherwise have.
EDIT: I'd also add that old cards are reselling often for more than they were new, so if they can get a new card at MRSP or close to it a lot of people might be willing to buy higher, knowing they can recoup the costs by reselling the old card.
Yes but my point is that if you were using top tier cards before the pandemic, then you would be using top tier cards now. Those who had no use for a top tier card before or couldn't afford one, likely wouldn't now...so I don't see how the pandemic would change that. If someone were to become a gamer due to being home over the past year, unless they had money to burn and a lot of people don't because of layoffs etc, then they wouldn't be buying $1500 graphics cards. They'd be buying entry-level stuff. So in that respect, yes I can see a jump in gaming having more than a blip of an effect on card availability at the low end. But I still have a hard time seeing gaming as being a large slice of reason for the shortage on 3080's and 3090's. I still think that's mostly on cryptomining.
A good point on many people upgrade every other generation Matt.
Another big issue with the demand is that Nvidia's 2000 generation bumped the price a lot with RTX. The cost to performance ratio was high, and the first implementation of RTX DLSS was less than stellar - most games couldn't run 60 FPS with it on most of the 2000 series cards. So there was a weak reception with 2000 series cards, and lots of people holding off to the next generation or buying a 1000 series card to hold them over for the next gen.
Then the 3000 series cards came out with a much better price performance ratio, and a much better DLSS 2.0 - that alone equated to a huge increase in demand.
You're forgetting people have credit cards, and LOTS of people don't make sound financial decisions with them.
People are paying stupid prices on Ebay for these cards. And every year when these new consoles come out, there's lots of people paying 2x-3x retail on them. Someone who's willing to pay $800 for a 3060 on Ebay is darn sure willing to buy a 3070 or 3080 at retail price if they can get it.
There's also another huge thing you missed - the latest gen consoles are sold out everywhere too. Going price on Ebay for a Playstation 5 looks to be about 900 dollars!!! (Which you can't mine on).