After having saved for and researched laptops for most of December, my wife and I talked and decided it would probably be better for me to just build a new desktop. This build would be totally new as I literally sold EVERYTHING in 2016. I even need a mousepad.

I’ve spent the past couple weeks looking into building a computer, and I cant remember such a poor time to build.

1) DRAM shortage (or price fixing) has led to $10/GB at the minimum for DDR4

2) This shortage coupled with the bitcoin boom has also meant incredible scarcity and highly inflated prices for graphics cards (I have to hunt around just to try to get a 1070 at $100 over MSRP)

3) The bitcoin boom also means scarcity and increased prices for other parts (Coffee Lake still above MSRP)

4) We’re in the shadow of next-Gen nVidia (Volta/Ampere) which could come out in March if not September or next year

5) Nobody knows what the hell Intel is doing (10nm where? when?)

Everything is hella expensive unless you’re after basic parts. If I’m trying to run a 144Hz G-Sync build that won’t be near-obsolete within 6 months, I couldn’t wipe my ass for less than $1700.

Anyone else feeling me on this?

This post was edited by Interesting on Jan 9 2018 12:39pm

Well the RAM prices went up about a year ago. The vid card prices just skyrocketed in the last few days.

I would just wait till like the 3rd week of February.

Do you think I should look for sales on the keyboard, mouse, monitor, case, Windows 10, and PSU between now and then, buy what is good and goes on sale, and then buy the main components at that time?

The video card prices are insane, they like doubled. Just when my old computer finally died. Ugh wait 4-6 weeks to buy is going to suck

Prices are ridiculous.

I've bought my PC for 1743 USD on 31st of July 2016 - now the same basket costs... 1794 USD.

This is what happens when you have low competition on the market... basically it's almost Monopoly (in their own segments, Nvidia in GPU, and Intel in CPU market) of Nvidia and Intel, since Radeon and AMD still got a lot to learn from them.

This post was edited by Elrodiii on Jan 11 2018 11:48am

not sure where you been but has nothing to do with that right now

50 bucks isn't insane.. I was expecting the new basket to be 1900 or 2000 for "ridiculous" lol

Bought the monitor and RAM. Dell S2417DG was on special Newegg sale for $350.. couldn’t pass it up. RAM was a weekly-ad special, too.

I plan on buying everything but the GFX card over the next few weeks. I can use the 8600K’s onboard GFX for setting the computer up beforehand.

But take into consideration the fact that 1.5 year in the world of electronics is a lot of time. For instance have a look at mobile phone industry, something that has been priced at 1,000 USD, 2 years ago, now is not even worth 500 USD, this is due to evergrowing competition which leads to price reduction and continuous improvement of technology.

My point is that because Nvidia and Intel do not have real competition, they can milk as much money from us as they want.

Yeah, if you find other parts on sale, by all means get them.
There's no way to know how long this vid card/mining craze will last, but in general, last two weeks of February things have the best prices. But the vid card prices may last longer than that. :/


Like this vid card is approx. normal price...

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/pbL7YJ/evga-geforce-gtx-1060-6gb-gaming-video-card-06g-p4-6161-kr


But then all the other EVGA 1060 6GB cards are about 40% overpriced...

https://pcpartpicker.com/products/video-card/#c=373&m=14&sort=price&page=1