There has been a long argument to which is better, Consoles or the PC Master Race. And at this point in time, its Consoles, and here is why...
If you are planning on building a custom PC for gaming, then I wish you the best of luck to you unless you are rich, in which case you should share the wealth and throw some spondoolies my way. The cost of parts right now is stupid when compared to prices at the start of 2017. the only way you can have a decent gaming rig now is if you pay way over the odds, that is if you can actually find the parts you want that are in stock.
Here is 5 reasons why you should not build a gaming PC now.
5 – GPU Pricing.
During 2017, there was a steady increase in the price of mid to high end graphics cards, this was due to miners snapping them all up as soon as they were in stock, and the stores were increasing the value of them as they knew they would sell. This also led to the problem of supply, the suppliers couldn't keep up with the demand which also contributed to the price rise. But towards the end of 2017 the demand dropped and supply was normalising which in turn led to the GPU prices returning to normal.
Then Ethereum happened and so did the Chinese gaming community. At the end/start of 2017/18 the value of Ethereum tippled. This led to many new miners investing in the equipment to mine as it was one of the most profitable algorithms to mine, and still is. So all the RX 570's/580's, Vega 56, Vega 64, GTX 1060's, 1070's, 1070 Ti's, 1080's and 1080 ti's were bought up and many stores sold out with back orders for more. High demand and low supply ramped the prices back up.
Also at the start of this year, the Chinese gaming community has exploded with millions of new gamers. This has had the adverse effect of mid to high level cards finding there way to these new gamers. If you look at the Steam survey you will see that the GTX 1060 is now the most popular card used. When only a few months ago the 1060 was the 18th popular card used by only 2.5% of users with the GTX 750 Ti at the top with over 12%. now the 1060 is at the top of the list with over 14.5% of users using it.
So when these two issues with GPU's are combined, the prices are now higher than ever before.
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4 – Waiting for Volta.
HA!
I think it is kinda cute that some gamers are saying that they are waiting for Volta to come out before they build a new PC. You will be waiting for quite a while.
Nvidia's new platform Volta has already proved that it has record breaking mining potential with the highest hash rate of any other GPU. And because of this, Nvidia has already sold out of the Titan V cards, these are $3000 cards and they are all gone! Miners everywhere know this fact and are waiting eagerly for the next load of Titan V's to come back into stock and when the Volta based gaming cards are released they will all be gone in seconds with miners buying every single one.
It would not matter how profitable mining is at the time of the release of these new cards, the shear power of them is unmatched and the return on investment will be so much quicker than any other card available today.
Yes you may get lucky and get one for your next gaming build, but that is dependant on the fact that shops haven't pre sold there entire stock supply when it arrives. This is a common problem as most big companies are now making pre orders available to there customers, and this is one of the reasons why there is a supply problem.
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3 – Memory/Ram Prices.
The prices of RAM has been increasing steadily over the last 14 months. ECC, non-ECC, DDR3, DDR4, Desktop, Laptop, even DDR2 prices have increased. There is a reason as to why the prices of memory has gone up and there is a supply shortage from the manufacturers, but they have not said why. There is a lot of speculation that the materials used for making ram has gone up in value, another is that miners are at fault, which is ridiculous as they buy the cheapest 4gb sticks they can.
The real reason is the high demand for ''Nand Flash''. Because more and more people are shifting over to Solid State Drives, NVME Drives, the priority shifted to the manufacture of these components in late 2016 when companies had massive stock piles of Ram, hence why it was so cheap back then. But now that there is an even bigger demand for SSD's and NVME's, even the storage in your mobile phone, as there capacity increases, with an equal demand for DDR3/4, the supply on the RAM front is dwindling and the value of high capacity storage is not going to be dropping any time soon either.
To put it in perspective, a single stick of DDR4 8gb memory for a desktop in late 2016 was about $25-30. Now that same stick can cost from $95-120. Unless more manufacturing plants are built to cope with the demand for Nand Flash, the prices are only going to get worse.
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2 – Intel CPU refresh.
When AMD released the new and spanky Ryzen CPU's, the world rejoiced. Well, long term AMD fans did any way. But Intel on the other hand were caught off guard and rushed through their Coffee Lake processors into the market.
Because of this little fact, there was not much time for them to test and squeeze as much power from the chips as possible, leaving the Ryzen line up to look like a breath of fresh air as they did indeed spank Intel's arse. But the news is not all bad, now that Intel have all caught up with what is happening, they have had the time they needed to refresh their coffee lake chips. This will result in more speed, more performance and better power consumption.
They are set to be released in Q3 of 2018, so the problem for Intel fans or those that want an Intel chip is, do you buy one now or wait when the new ones land later this year, when the GPU and Ram prices could be much worse, but equally could be better... no one knows. So it is a tough choice regardless.
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1 - AMD Zen+
Just like Intel, AMD are planning on releasing a refresh of there awesome Zen architecture as early as April this year.
But unlike Intel, they have had plenty of time to get things sorted behind closed doors. While Intel are on a 14nm process, with the Coffee lake refresh remaining there. AMD's Ryzen will go from 14nm to 12nm, letting them squeeze more transistors onto there chips, resulting in more power, faster, better performance, lower power consumption. And then the following year, AMD are expecting to release Zen 2 with a 7nm process, while Intel's 9th Gen Cannon lake is left far behind.
Ryzen has proven to be superior to Intel's offerings over the last 8 months, and many gaming systems since its release have used AMD CPU's. Even the gaming PC I got for @Deeviras 's birthday uses a Ryzen CPU, it is that damn good.
But knowing how good AMD is right now, and knowing that the improved version is only a few short months away, do you buy now while GPU's and Ram prices are at there all time high. Or do you wait and hope that the GPU and Ram prices have fallen? This is the dilemma I had when building my better half's PC, but I bit the bullet and built her what I could afford, it wasn't what I wanted to get her, but I didn't have double the money to pay double the price.
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I suppose the conclusion from this would be, yes you can build a Gaming PC right now, but you will be paying more for the mid to high end hardware. Or you can wait and get better CPU's and Motherboards, but the prices of GPU's and Ram may increase even more.
On the other hand, when Volta consumer cards are released and miners buy them all up, you may just see some GTX 1080's or RX Vega's find there way onto the market for a reasonable price.
Just building a PC right now is more expensive than its ever been, and with the volatility of the mining market, it is hard to say what the future holds for the prices.
Thanks for reading.
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Stu @TechMojo
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PCs have always been more expensive. Doesn't mean they aren't better though :).
The best way to get a GPU at a decent price point (retail anyway) is to actually go into a physical store like Best Buy or whatever retailer you have locally that sells such things. That's how I got my GTX 1080. It's hit or miss but sometimes they are in stock.
Alternatively, buy a pre-built gaming PC. I like to build my own too but you can get reasonably priced pre-built systems with the GPU you want a lot more easily (and cheaply) than you can find those GPUs for on a regular basis.
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will be doing another post for tomorrow. ''how to build a gaming pc in the mining boom'' will cover points like the ones you mentioned.
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Better stick on gaming console for now :)
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Yeah...I'm going to stick to my trusty old PS4 :D
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prices right now are a bitch, I would have upgraded this generation, but seeing the price of ram has completely dissolved the interest of upgrading. 83 euro's for the cheapest set of 8 Gb ddr4 ram is completely ridiculous.
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very true. but in a few months it could be much worse, and there sits the dilemma of buying now or later.
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