Why is the computer parts market so screwed up?

[Kawsy]

As title states, what are the reasons behind why most components are out of stock everywhere and the steep price increase of every single component on the market?

[WhitetailAni]

More demand and less supply because we have a global pandemic.

[SupaKomputa]

Black friday - cyber monday - xmas  - new year + mining.

[Twolf]

Covid slowing production and manufacturing, high demand (also because of covid locking people down at home so they're bored stupid), bitcoin miners, opportunistic scalpers taking advantage of all of the above and buying out everything as it becomes available at MSRP and flipping it for 50%-150% more than MSRP. Personally have spent most the past 2 months hitting refresh buttons on various vendors trying to get parts or on waiting list for others. My current bottleneck is case fans. Really want the Lian Li uni fans but haven't been able to snatch them yet when they become available for the correct price (the MSRP for a 3 pack is around US $80, cheapest I've seen is $130 from resellers though even those now are sitting around $170). So ya, it sucks, just playing the waiting game and spamming F5 until can get them for closer to the MSRP. Don't recommend supporting the scalpers, best way to prevent them is to not buy from them so they don't have the resources to keep doing it anytime something new comes out.

[bellabichon]

A bunch of reasons, but right now the main ones are:

• Supply being lower because of COVID's effect on manufacturing.
• Demand being higher because people are stuck at home with nothing to do.
• Specifically in relation to Nvidia 3000 series, Samsung has reportedly been having issues with yields on their chips, and board partners were given less-than-average time to design their custom SKUs. 

Now that the US tariffs on electronics made in China are back, things are going to get 8-25% more expensive for a while. So overall, the market is pretty much upside-down right now. It's shaping up to be worse than the GPU mining craze of 2017-2018. 

[Kawsy]

4 minutes ago, Twolf said:

Covid slowing production and manufacturing, high demand (also because of covid locking people down at home so they're bored stupid), bitcoin miners, opportunistic scalpers taking advantage of all of the above and buying out everything as it becomes available at MSRP and flipping it for 50%-150% more than MSRP. Personally have spent most the past 2 months hitting refresh buttons on various vendors trying to get parts or on waiting list for others. My current bottleneck is case fans. Really want the Lian Li uni fans but haven't been able to snatch them yet when they become available for the correct price (the MSRP for a 3 pack is around US $80, cheapest I've seen is $130 from resellers though even those now are sitting around $170). So ya, it sucks, just playing the waiting game and spamming F5 until can get them for closer to the MSRP. Don't recommend supporting the scalpers, best way to prevent them is to not buy from them so they don't have the resources to keep doing it anytime something new comes out.

Seems like a good way to summarize it. We have the same impact here in the european markets and it has gotten so bad that there is shortage of everything from cpu,gpu, ram, motherboard and all the way to even cases, power supplies and even coolers.

[Jarsky]

I'd be happy with US "inflated prices", it's still cheaper than our regular prices. 

 

[Mark Kaine]

4 hours ago, bellabichon said:

It's shaping up to be worse than the GPU mining craze of 2017-2018. 

I know this seems like a minor thing but I've been observing the market for about 2-3 years now (since I built my pc basically) and around shortly after Xmas and the new year gpus were suddenly available at "reasonable" prices and due to prior experience from my observations I knew I had to buy one right now and there because prices would only go up again... I could even choose between models and shops...! 

 

Now, even something like a RX 570 cost 500-600 euros, double the msrp basically!  

 

So yeah I think you're spot on this and especially this year it's only getting worse... 

 

I should really sell my 1060... lol  

 

[Realm_Jumper]

COVID is destroying our population and way of life this includes for manufacturing. Everything is much slower now. Plus as more and more people start using and learning to build computers the demand goes up. Supply can't keep up. 

[papajo]

 

[Ar558a]

Everyone is stuck at home and is buying new PC's combined with new hardware that is worth the upgrade for lots of existing owners...

[Powridert]

On 1/14/2021 at 2:51 PM, Kawsy said:

As title states, what are the reasons behind why most components are out of stock everywhere and the steep price increase of every single component on the market?

I think it has to do with Covid-19. Many people were forced to do work and school from home so people are out buying and building more computers than normal. Also this year was marked with some major leaps forward in hardware capabilities and people are starting to upgrade their systems. You take all that into account combined with a interruption in the supply chain the market is going to get messed up. I was actually going to build my pc this year but ended up with a prebuilt from Microcenter because it was the only way I was going to be able to get any kind of graphics card worth having. I actually ended up with a 5th gen Ryzen processor which are hard to find. 

[papajo]

Why are you all so apologetic without actually looking into the data ?

 

I mean lets say that you are ordering something from a restaurant and it is served to you cold and most of the posts here are like: 

"Maybe the ingredients have a high heat dissipation factor and lost all the heat while the waiter was walking to my table" 

 

"Maybe I am too hot and think the plate is cold" 

 

"maybe it is supposed to be served cold" 

 

"maybe the demand for hot food cranked up and they cant serve hot plates at this point" 

 

Or MAYBE.... MAYYYYBE just maybe the kitchen did a shitty job and the waiter delayed to take your plate and that is why it is served to you cold!

 

These companies are in the GPU distribution business for about 30 years and they have entire divisions for sales projections (to know how much the demand would at a given release date) and distribution logistics (to have the know how and the channels to distribute their products globally. 

 

So you are telling yourself that accidentally BOTH companies (AMD and Nvidia) on the same time did a "boo boo" as if they were first time on the job and messed completely the availability by accident? BOTH? On the same time?  really? 

 

This is more plausible to you than e.g intentionally limiting the supply in order to profit from the pricegauge? 

 

And ok new gen has small supply (because it HAS small supply entire continents like Europe were getting like small 4 digit numbers of GPUs)  because there is no way to increase the supply supposedly. 

 

WHAT ABOUT OLD GEN? why does a RX 5600 cost now as much as a RX 5700 XT used to cost 1 year ago? those GPUs (and all the other "old" gen GPUs are widly available no supply issues there!) so why?

 

Maybe just MAYYYBE they intentionally limit the supply just because they exactly want to profiteer more from old stock by selling something double the price  that otherwise would not sell anymore or sell at half the price ??

 

 

Typical "low-hanging fruit" apologetics:

 

 

1)Covid:  There is no incident e.g in TSMC or other production lines related on covid outbrakes or anything similar why do you like to slap this card without reason? On top of that such production lines consist mostly of robots which dont get covid and from workers that dont work in close proximity to each other and go to clean rooms dressed like that

 

 

Also for the sake of argument let's not exclude covid then why is covid affecting only the new gen GPUs and AMD 5000 series?  why not intel ARM (apple cpus as well) and older GPU models as well as ryzen 3000 series? 

 

 

2) Scalpers: They sell for 30 years graphics cards each year... when did you last hear of scalpers increasing the GPU prices?? were all the people innocent all those years and just on 2020 learned about scalping? 

 

NO! Scalpers exist exactly because the supply is very small. If they increased the supply scalpers will disappear, scalpers are the side effect not the source of the problem!. 

 

3)High demand: Again: First of all the numbers and general feedback from youtubers asking around is that there isnt much of a supply.  On top of that again those companies are not farmers that go to the bazaar to sell their fruits...

 

They are teams of professionals doing this business for 30 years. You think that they did not expect on Christmas and due to covid (which existed a full year before new gen releases) they suddenly had a "Pikachu face" when seeing the demand? They are more than capable to project that demand months before the release!  they just intentionally didnt do anything about it probably because they are profiteering out of this situation. 

 

4) The supply was law because they rushed the new gen:  Nvidia had 2 years since the previous gen which is more than enough for the next gen AMD releases every year (and Nvidia used to do that too but they started to sandbag since Pascal) 

 

 

But yea it's probably covid and the noobs in BOTH amd and nvidia didnt expect nearly that demand made a pikachu face once they saw it and still went with shipping only about 5000 GPUs for the entire continent of europe (741.000.000 million people)  because they rushed their designs.. they needed 4 years this time...  (which still doesnt explain old gen pricegauges btw) and it remains a mystery to me as to why you think this series of farfetched coincidences being more plausible

[WhitetailAni]

1 minute ago, papajo said:

"maybe the demand for hot food cranked up and they cant serve hot plates at this point" 

 

Or MAYBE.... MAYYYYBE just maybe the kitchen did a shitty job and the waiter delayed to take your plate and that is why it is served to you cold!

This is the same thing.

[papajo]

1 minute ago, ragnarok0273 said:

This is the same thing.

as what? 

[WhitetailAni]

1 minute ago, papajo said:

as what? 

No - they result in the same thing.

So there is no point in separating them.

Whether there is high demand or low supply, we still end up with lack of supply.

[papajo]

1 minute ago, ragnarok0273 said:

No - they result in the same thing.

So there is no point in separating them.

Whether there is high demand or low supply, we still end up with lack of supply.

This example was an analogy to the posts I read which were being apologetic towards the situation instead of criticizing the companies. 

 

In that example the client made a ton of plausible looking but absurd excuses to transfer the problem either to him or to "natural causes" instead of criticizing the restaurant for serving him badly and demand a reimbursement therefore (or leave) 

[Zodiark1593]

It’s called Supply and Demand have a big problem. 
 

 

[papajo]

8 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

It’s called Supply and Demand have a big problem. 
 

 

It is not called supply and demand when you intentionally limit supply, that is called profiteering (also I dont know why you seem so happy about it it's you -and me and all of us consumers- that get screwed by these schemes you prefer to have a laugh at me even if it means accepting the fact that they laugh at your expense? ) 

 

 

[Vishera]

both scalpers and crypto-currency miners buy large amounts of hardware,most of the new hardware is in their hands.

[papajo]

10 minutes ago, Vishera said:

both scalpers and crypto-currency miners buy large amounts of hardware,most of the new hardware is in their hands.

There altcoin mining is not that much profitable anymore especially not at such prices! 

 

 

Btw in my initial post in this topic I linked a similar topic I had in which I say that I believe even the "bitcoin Bogeymen" were just a scheme and it checks out since now that they cant fault altcoin mining for gpu demand they found a new scapegoat. 

 

Scalpers! Again scalpers wont exist if supply is ample period that's how it works (and that's why we didnt have GPU scalpers all those 30 years back! ) they are just a side effect not the source of the problem. 

 

As to why I theorize that altcoin miners "taking all the GPUs from us gamers" is a similar hoax too is simply because of GPU sales which havent considerably altered during the mining craze compared to previous years

 

 

(yes this is a market share but I couldnt find yet the units chart I uploaded in an older topic i created having said that inference can still be made since Intel here works as a "control" sample since igpus werent used for mining or at least people didnt buy clusters of CPUs to mine.. so if more GPUs were sold from nvidia or amd their chart will have gotten higher relative ti intel because the total market share increases but intel doesnt increase linearly by the supposed marketshare increase -market share increase due to extra GPU being made and sold to miners- ) 

[Zodiark1593]

15 minutes ago, papajo said:

It is not called supply and demand when you intentionally limit supply, that is called profiteering (also I dont know why you seem so happy about it it's you -and me and all of us consumers- that get screwed by these schemes you prefer to have a laugh at me even if it means accepting the fact that they laugh at your expense? ) 

 

 

Oh believe me, I’m not especially thrilled about it at all, being in the market for a card myself. However, you appear to be laboring under the delusion that complaining about it and claiming in foul play (you should probably cite evidence to support your claim of intentionally withholding supply btw.) will be changing anything anytime soon. 
 

So yes, I’ll have a brief laugh. Better for my sanity than screaming into the abyss of the internet. 

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

Honestly the disruption in global supply chains, the ability for production to proceed safely, and transportation networks in general due to the ongoing pandemic is probably a larger contributor than scalpers. To put into perspective, my stove top broke down a few months ago and we ordered a new one through Home Depot. The expected wait time for delivery was 3 months. There was simply not much in stock for the entire region. For something that's arguably a bigger necessity than computer parts is back ordered for months, you know there is a serious problem.

[Morrie Sells Wigs]

1 hour ago, papajo said:

Why are you all so apologetic without actually looking into the data ?

 

I mean lets say that you are ordering something from a restaurant and it is served to you cold and most of the posts here are like: 

"Maybe the ingredients have a high heat dissipation factor and lost all the heat while the waiter was walking to my table" 

 

"Maybe I am too hot and think the plate is cold" 

 

"maybe it is supposed to be served cold" 

 

"maybe the demand for hot food cranked up and they cant serve hot plates at this point" 

 

Or MAYBE.... MAYYYYBE just maybe the kitchen did a shitty job and the waiter delayed to take your plate and that is why it is served to you cold!

 

These companies are in the GPU distribution business for about 30 years and they have entire divisions for sales projections (to know how much the demand would at a given release date) and distribution logistics (to have the know how and the channels to distribute their products globally. 

 

So you are telling yourself that accidentally BOTH companies (AMD and Nvidia) on the same time did a "boo boo" as if they were first time on the job and messed completely the availability by accident? BOTH? On the same time?  really? 

 

This is more plausible to you than e.g intentionally limiting the supply in order to profit from the pricegauge? 

 

And ok new gen has small supply (because it HAS small supply entire continents like Europe were getting like small 4 digit numbers of GPUs)  because there is no way to increase the supply supposedly. 

 

WHAT ABOUT OLD GEN? why does a RX 5600 cost now as much as a RX 5700 XT used to cost 1 year ago? those GPUs (and all the other "old" gen GPUs are widly available no supply issues there!) so why?

 

Maybe just MAYYYBE they intentionally limit the supply just because they exactly want to profiteer more from old stock by selling something double the price  that otherwise would not sell anymore or sell at half the price ??

 

 

Typical "low-hanging fruit" apologetics:

 

 

1)Covid:  There is no incident e.g in TSMC or other production lines related on covid outbrakes or anything similar why do you like to slap this card without reason? On top of that such production lines consist mostly of robots which dont get covid and from workers that dont work in close proximity to each other and go to clean rooms dressed like that

 

 

Also for the sake of argument let's not exclude covid then why is covid affecting only the new gen GPUs and AMD 5000 series?  why not intel ARM (apple cpus as well) and older GPU models as well as ryzen 3000 series? 

 

 

2) Scalpers: They sell for 30 years graphics cards each year... when did you last hear of scalpers increasing the GPU prices?? were all the people innocent all those years and just on 2020 learned about scalping? 

 

NO! Scalpers exist exactly because the supply is very small. If they increased the supply scalpers will disappear, scalpers are the side effect not the source of the problem!. 

 

3)High demand: Again: First of all the numbers and general feedback from youtubers asking around is that there isnt much of a supply.  On top of that again those companies are not farmers that go to the bazaar to sell their fruits...

 

They are teams of professionals doing this business for 30 years. You think that they did not expect on Christmas and due to covid (which existed a full year before new gen releases) they suddenly had a "Pikachu face" when seeing the demand? They are more than capable to project that demand months before the release!  they just intentionally didnt do anything about it probably because they are profiteering out of this situation. 

 

4) The supply was law because they rushed the new gen:  Nvidia had 2 years since the previous gen which is more than enough for the next gen AMD releases every year (and Nvidia used to do that too but they started to sandbag since Pascal) 

 

 

But yea it's probably covid and the noobs in BOTH amd and nvidia didnt expect nearly that demand made a pikachu face once they saw it and still went with shipping only about 5000 GPUs for the entire continent of europe (741.000.000 million people)  because they rushed their designs.. they needed 4 years this time...  (which still doesnt explain old gen pricegauges btw) and it remains a mystery to me as to why you think this series of farfetched coincidences being more plausible

Scalpers are a "side effect" because supply is limited, yes. 

 

However, in many ways they are the SOLE reason supply is so limited for everyone else.

 

You can always say that Nvidia, or AMD, or Sony and Microsoft with their new consoles, should have enough supply to meet demand - but this is impossible. 

 

There are always shortages whenever a new product like this is released. 

 

Scalpers exacerbate the issue by taking that initial release supply, a supply that may offer at least some customers an opportunity to purchase at the regular, excepted, retail price, and placing it beyond that average customer.

 

Consequently, only those who can afford to pay the exorbitant mark up can get a look in.

 

It completely up ends the normal relationship between customer and supplier. 

 

Unless or until that manufacturer can meet demand, which may take months, the scalpers act like parasites. 

 

It's something that could easily be solved by Captcha or one sale per credit card or I.P address...something like that.

 

Unfortunately, I get the distinct impression the companies aren't too fussed. 

 

They still sell out, it keeps demand and anticipation high, and ensures the next batch are highly sought after. 

 

 

 

 

[Justaphysicsnerd]

I hope the prices settle down to the normal before I have to build a pc in like July or something