I don’t think there was ever a time in my life that I wasn’t in some sort of mid to high tier setting when it came to PC gaming. I love gaming, I love editing photos and videos, and I love the multitasking capabilities I can accomplish on a desktop computer. Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I remember for most of my adult life, computer parts were easy to come by.
Cryptocurrency is a great idea and it makes sense in a unified world standpoint. What I don’t like, is that the mining aspect of it is so heavily dependent on GPUs and ASIC devices. People found out that GPUs did a great job than getting a device that was meant directly for mining, especially daisy chaining multiple GPUs together in mining farms.
Then the perfect storm of
PANDEMIC – MINING RESURGENCE – SILICON SHORTAGE – SCALPERS
happened.
The Pandemic
People were home, some for the first time, working and going to school. They realized that their shitty old computer wasn’t up to snuff and they started buying some video cards up, it wasn’t bad, the 20 series from Nvidia and 50 series from AMD were nearing the end of their life cycles with a lot of different SKUs out there. So everyone that wanted to upgrade or even start streaming, and there was enough to be had.
As time went on, so did the consumption of video cards. Though we all knew that team green and team red were about to reveal the next generation of cards.
And boy did they.
People were excited, but what the average person didn’t realize is there were rumblings.
The Mining Resurgence
Cryptocurrency was on the upswing again, fiercely. This meant miners were also on the upswing fiercely. They saw the new generation of cards coming as a cash cow. So, as they were buying up older 20 series cards by the boatload, focus turned to the 30 series cards.
They started building bots to order as soon as they dropped, having both companies sell out instantly of all stock. This made those companies happy, of course. But the average consumer was dumbfounded. So, partner boards started to be released, and just the same, gone instantly.
Before you could humanly order it, all stock gone.
Miners were posting their 20 – 30 card rigs online, showing their profits. It was frustrating and it made a lot of gamers mad, but good on them for figuring out how to get them with the use of bots.
Though, we started learning that the actual hidden problem was:
The Silicon Shortage
Well that speaks for itself.
But the biggest problem is:
The Scalpers
FUCK THESE GUYS. Sure we’ve all been in on the dirty reselling game. Buy something from a yardsale and flip it, or from a store and flip it, or even ebay and flip it.
These guys went from using bots to mine, to using those same bots to snag every card, even old cards, and sell them at an inflated price.
Sounds normal.
Until you find out they bought a $450 video card and people (idiots) are actually buying them for $1k+ from these people.
If you are ok with paying that much, then great, but stop it, stop making these things get so inflated. It’s literally cheaper to buy a pre-built PC than buying a stand alone video card.
For example, there is a pre-built system, with current generation hardware.
Ryzen 7 5800x
32gb 3200 DDR4
RTX 3080
1tb NVME
850w Gold Rated Power Supply
Fancy Mid ATX Case with RGB and AIO Liquid Cooling
$2,100
And to show you, what people are selling 3080s right now.
So here I am, in a lottery at Newegg… waiting for my chance to buy a card.
This is my life.
I hate this so much.
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