Yeah there is no way this demand can be sustained forever. But... if they keep coming up with new cryptocurrencies it can make the demand last a significant time. But yeah, at some point it has to burst. I'm starting to believe though that it won't be in the near term (next 90-120 days). Which is why I bought the TitanXp. It was cheaper than any 1080ti available anywhere (here anyway). But if thought the bubble were going to burst in the near term, I would've just waited. But I believe this is going to be the reality for the near term anyway. I posted prices of 1080ti's in my OP and they are almost double what they were in November. Same cards. Same company (newegg). They were all in the 700's and now are all well over a thousand. With at least one or two I saw at $1,499.99. Which is about double.

ADDED: By the way folks should read this. Interesting.

https://hothardware.com/news/nvidia-tells-retailers-to-sell-to-gamers-not-cryptominers

1060 6GBs cost $500 where I live. I don't think this year will be a good year for GPU prices / value since its effectively Nvidia in the market alone, with no competition and the old (ie RX series) AMD cards might as well not exist since they're so overpriced buying them is literally throwing money away. Vega being such a flop and AMD not releasing anything this year will really stagnate price-to-performance. This year is probably worse than last year for buying a GPU /building a PC.

I hope this is ok. This is the PSU I bought.

I really don't know much about PSUs, but a Platinum rating and a 10 year warranty sound pretty damn good to me. Certainly doesn't look like a cheap firecracker. :P

Very much so :-)

Here it costs five times more than what I paid for mine.

I don't claim to be economics expert, but couldn't nVidia/AMD increase production of GPUs in order to bring down the price?

Neither owns any factories so they need to order quite a long time beforehand. They are scared of producing too many chips too.

They can't and don't want to for a couple of reasons.

1. You need some kind of RAM on your GPU. Prices for memory have increased by $20-$30 lately, because memory is pretty scarce at the moment.
2. Nvidia and AMD produce GPUs when a board partner orders them. If no one orders them, they don't produce them.
3. Increasing the production doesn't show an immediate effect. It takes a couple of months before the new cards will be available in stores. Manufacturers are afraid that the mining boom will die during that time. They'd sit on a huge amount of new cards while miners flood ebay with cheap used cards.

tomato sauce

Good article that explains it in easy to understand terms.

Here are two screenshots showing the same GPU before and after the price hikes. BIG DIFFERENCE.

Due to the memory shortage issues combined with miners gobling up inventory constantly, I'd say probably not. If chip makers can design a chip that is perfect for mining but not for gaming and seperate the market, and keep up with production demand on that chip so that miners don't just simply go back to buying all the gaming cards as soon as the mining cards run out, then maybe. Or, if all of the cryptocurrencies tank due to governements or something along those lines.

I'd love to see Nvidia and AMD release drivers that somehow completely destroy video cards mining potential. I couldn't care less about miners. I have no particular desire to see them fail I guess, but since they are interferring in my life financially (my ability to upgrade computers) without regard, then I won't show any regard for their situation, either. Chip makers and board manufacturers don't have any incentive to do that, though. At least, not financially. They are making money.

The only hypothetical reason that they perhaps should care, is that if this trend continues long enough, a sizable chunk of PC gamers - particularly those with smaller budgets - may jump ship in favor of a much more affordable outlet for gaming (consoles). Should mining dry up one day, then Nvidia, AMD and board manufacturers may find themselves unprepared for a much weaker market. Nvidia and AMD could survive on a smaller scale by putting their technology in other devices, but some manufacturers would be out of business in this hypothetical situation, since they rely solely on the sale of PC compenents.

My current system configuration:

- CPU: Intel Core i7 2600K
- Memory: 8GB DDR3-1600
- Graphics: GeForce GTX-780
- Storage: 512GB SSD + 1TB SATA-III HDD + 16X DVD+RW
- Motherboard: LGA-1155

Built the system in early 2011. Original specs had a GeForce GTX-580 GPU and 64GB SSD. Other than the GPU and SSD upgrades a few years later, the rest of my rig is still rockin’ its original 2011 specs. My original build was definitely a “Mercedes” of gaming PCs – excellent performance with a fair bit of luxury. Even today, while it may not be top tier it still provides “pretty damn good” performance in most titles – especially considering how long it’s been since the core build (and only two component upgrades since then).

My rig has served me very well over the past seven years. And while it can still play most games from the past few years quite well, it’s starting to show signs of (finally!) reaching the limits of its CPU. This will require a complete replacement of the CPU, motherboard and memory. And if I’m going to go all-out in those areas, I may as well upgrade the GPU too in order to avoid any bottlenecks. But… alas… the current price of GPUs is absafragginlootly ridiculous. Any game-worthy GPU is at least 200% higher than its MSRP. For example, a GeForce GTX 1070 – what is supposed to be a $350 GPU – is currently running over $900 on Amazon and NewEgg.

I’m currently at a point where I could, potentially, do a complete system rebuild. But I won’t, because the price of the GPU is so far out of whack. I’m currently willing to spend a good bit of money to buy a new CPU, motherboard, memory, GPU – and potentially even a PSU, case and storage drives. But I will not do so because the current price of GPUs is so ridiculously high. And I don’t think I’m alone in this situation. Current GPU prices are holding back potential hardware upgrades in most other categories as well.

NVIDIA and AMD better figure out a way to segregate their GPU lines into “gamer” and “processor” models, or else they're going to bottleneck the entire enthusiast PC market.

It is odd how we seem to be getting these freak technology price hikes quite often. I still remember when I was looking for a bigger HDD, there was some flood in Thailand (Bangkok?) which destroyed some important HDD factories, which caused HDD prices to go up all over the world. I wonder if they have already recovered?

Many have already mentioned how RAM prices have gone up, is this only due to increased demand also in phones and tablets, or something else?

And now this, GPU prices getting high due to bitcoin miners who need the extra processing power in order to make money.

What next? Computer mice prices going through the roof when terrorists find out you can make excellent remote bombs of them with little modifications, and suddenly 95% of the world's computer mice are sold to Syria?

Concerning the ram I think there was a destruction in a Hynix factory and since then prices have been increasing.

Up to black Friday there were rx 580 8gb for about 300-350 euros but they were all bought and when bitcoin reached about 17000$ it was game over for gamers.