I'm planning a new gaming build.  Forget about getting the RTX 3080 and AMD Ryzen 5 5600X I want until the end of the year - if then.

Is it smart to buy the RAM, SSD and motherboard now, before the bots vacuum them all up and their scumbag neckbeard price-gouging masters scalp them all on eBay?

Just wait till Bitcoin takes a shit...

Fixed.  

This always happens right before cryptos tank. The fact that everyone on Arf is talking about crypto tells me this run is over. Time to sell.

Memory and SSD prices really aren't going anywhere anytime soon, between nothing really breakthrough happening and the shortages not affecting them the prices should be relatively stable. Motherboards are starting to get crazy for some specific models that apparently people want, but there are still great options available. I think this is more to do with people hyping up certain models and the resellers going crazy over legitimate demands and supply shortages.

While I can't help you with a GPU other than saying I hope you get lucky, if you need a cpu now it's not like the 3xxx series are obsolete. You'd likely be fine with a 3600 and just let it ride until the next generation comes out. It's better than not having anything. The other alternative is just going with Intel, and while they aren't the benchmark kings any more they did recently cut prices and they are widely available everywhere. I had to buy a new CPU thanks to my 7700k finally deciding it wanted no more and while I would have loved a new AMD processor a 10850k was on sale and available for pickup at Best Buy that day.

I hear you...

The struggle is real!!

But Nvidia fucking with the firmware and hash rates to combat the scalping and crypto captains is just plain shitty.  If only they could get their shit together on production.

If you need it right away, buying prebuilt is actually a decent option. You'll just be paying a $100-200 get-it-now tax for it.

Wait until crypto crashes again. Also, NIVIDA pissed off a lot of people by announcing they're reworking the 3060 to be less efficient at mining so those might be easier to get.

And they're not even locking the entire 3xxx series, which will of course drive 3080 prices into the stratosphere, and make them even harder to get.

Memory prices have already gone up almost 20% in the last two months.

Covid fucked with shipping and supply lines at release for the rtx 3000 series. Nvidia was also rushing to beat console pre-orders and I don't think they fleshed out some of the manufacturing issues either. I think Nvidia is blaming crypto amd scalpers when in reality they just can't get cards to market.

No shit, you guys that think ammo ia bad, go look at video card availability

I hear you, and agree.  But I think I'd rather wait for the 5600X than spend the money on a 3600.  Besides the fact that I don't want to buy a compromise graphics card.  If I have to wait for the latter, I might as well wait for the CPU.

I might do what you suggest if I could find a 2080Ti for under $500...  But they're selling for close to $2,000 right now.

I was naive to think that prices on the 2xxx-series would plummet when the 3xxx-series came out.

The 5600X's pop up somewhat frequently. Graphics cards on the other hand, good luck.

BestBuy has been good for video cards. Start refreshing tomorrow around 9AM.

I got a bunch of older gen GPUs I been thinking about offloading.  20x 1070, 1070ti, 1080, and a couple rx580.
Used but not abused.  

It's not to combat anything, they just want to sell their dedicated mining cards at likely a premium. Saying they are doing it for the gamers is just lip service.

Now would be the time to get top dollar for those.

You serious?

Yep, but even miners would rather have actual graphics cards- if the market takes a nosedive, you can sell a card. Selling a dedicated mining card is hard given their lack of video output...

That seems reasonable- I mean, isn't GPU mining dead for the major cryptos? Even a couple years ago it seemed like you needed a dedicated mining rig to come ahead with BTC.

Unless people are able to mine the newer coins, I know I ran my 2070 on some LTC some time ago and realized it was a fool's errand.

what 20xx you have?

They did the 3060 because it's cheapest. Mining ethereum on 3070/80/90 has a terrible ROI compared to 3060/5600XT.

The reality is most of the shortage is due to high demand and constrained production, not mining. There's a shortage of substrate material for packaging that's impacting CPU and GPU production fairly severely, plus Nvidia moved to a different foundry (Samsung v. TSMC) and production isn'tn up to speed.

Most of the new mining capacity is from old AMD GPUs bought one-two years ago finally going online.

I won't be upgrading for another year or so. My twin 980 Kingpins on a healthy OC and water blocks still will play any title on max settings with ease and the ole OC's 8700k is killin it as well. The big kicker for me was upgrading the monitors. I still cannot talk myself into doing a Ryzen build over an Intel.

Right there with you, OP.  This was the year my almost 10 year old frankenrig was going to get upgraded to VR specs.

But....guess I'll get a Riding Mower instead this year, and yeah maybe next year during the BitCoin Mining Lull I can do my PC upgrade.

Unless I run across a deal on a prebuilt somewhere....


But I do hate working a push mower....Hmmmmm

It's been a pain for a few years because of all the crypto mining demand for GPUs.

So the 3060 is a 'sweet spot?'
Why not a cheaper and more available card like a Quadro M2000?  Lack of VRAM?
I honestly have no idea what makes something a 'good' card for bitmining.

Prebuilts get snatched up quick too

I paid $850 for a 3070 like 3 weeks ago cause my 1080 Ti decided it wanted to die and I couldn't bear the VR headset I had just ordered being a paperweight. Mining with it when I'm not gaming to make up for the extra I paid. Glad it died then and not now that prices are even more ridiculous.

The other day there was a huge line at the local micro center for a shipment of the new video card.   Lined up outside before they opened and sold out in 10 minutes.

The 3060 is a "sweeter" spot, certainly way better than 3070/80/90 is. Currently the best ROI is the 5600XT. The 570/580 used to be the best.

For most but not all crypto AMD beats Nvidia on ROI due to slightly cheaper boards, slightly higher hash rates and lower power consumption. Some of the commercial ETH mining boxes are actually nothing more than a box of 580 boards and a basic motherboard.

A "good" card basically comes down to ROI per hash, the commercial miners do pretty extensive modeling. While a 2080 or 3090 might do more hashes per second, the increase in hash rate compared to a 2060/3060 is smaller than the increase in cost, so it makes the higher performance boards "bad" e.g. lower return on investment.

The reality today is that Ethereum makes up about 95% of all GPU-mineable crypto, so it's all about the total cost (board acquistion cost + power costs)  of an Ethash/s, lowest cost wins.

The only reason miners would go for 3060s is because they couldn't get 5600XTs -- the last go around they literally just worked their way down the best ROI list, wiping out available stock of 570/580 way before they went after 1080s or 2080s, since it didn't make sense to spend the money on them if cheaper, higher ROI boards were available.

CPU

Gonna have to make a road trip

https://www.microcenter.com/product/630285/Ryzen_5_5600X_Vermeer_37GHz_6-Core_AM4_Boxed_Processor_with_Wraith_Stealth_Cooler

Nvidia reportedly (by them, admittedly) has produced 3x series gpus at rates equal to or higher than previous cards.  Demand is the issue, along with supply chain issues at some of the third party manufacturers, especially early in the rollout.  It probably didn't help that at one point someone lost track of a shipping container with a couple hundred thousand gpus that then sat in a dockyard lot for a couple months...  Another issue for the US is that tariffs which had been deferred kicked in either 1 Jan or 1 Feb, so prices are up by $100 just because of that, though this really shouldn't affect availability, only baseline cost.  

Not sure why you think restricting the budget gpus (3060 only at this point) from the mining market is that bad - you can still buy the higher-tier cards (well, if you can find them, but other miners seem to have already cornered the supply) for that, OR, buy the dedicated mining cards.  Crypto mining has been the bane of gamers every time that crypto prices run up, and crypto miners are ALWAYS going to be able to pay to pick up the supply IF THEY CAN MAKE MONEY USING THEM.  The only way to combat that is to make crypto artificially harder to mine on the retail video cards, as opposed to the dedicated mining cards.  The dedicated mining cards lack video output circuitry, so unless you want to do some hacking, they aren't going to be used for gaming.  I guess you could simply want to use your home gpu to mine when you aren't gaming, but for the home user that hasn't been cost effective for a while, though with the recent run ups it may actually be profitable again.

Mike

Which VR headset did you buy, and why?  You can IM me if it's an Oculus Quest 2.

I will get VR for my new build eventually.

how much for all of them?

Thanks for the education.

If there was a store in Tampa I'd be walking out the door, hoping I'd get there in time to snag one.

I wouldn't commit to a motherboard until I secured the exact CPU I wanted. I spent 2 weeks last year looking for a specific board and when I couldn't get it I just settled on one that was essentially the same minus a small thing here or there for $10 less. You will always be able to find boards, as far as the cpu/gpu thing goes...yup you fucked.

My buddy was able to get a 3070 from the Fairfax store. I had already moved to Florida by that time though. I paid a premium for a 3080 and it's still worth more now.

What pre-built do you all suggest at a decent price that would run FLight Simulator reasonably well?

I'm too lazy to build my own and especially to stress out finding individual parts.  Played that game back in WIN98 days.

Would like it to run a new Oculus headset also.

Any suggestions?

Patrick

This is all relying on people not just finding a way to bypass the restrictions on the gaming cards, and when you consider this is all about money that's a losing bet.

A crypto card that falls out of efficiency is basically just trash and really can't be sold for anything. A graphics card that falls out of efficiency can still be used as a budget gaming card and can be resold as such. That extra money at the end of the cards life is just all the less they need to recoup their total costs and in the end is more profit to them.

The only reason the dedicated mining cards would succeed at this point is if Nvidia makes their initial price enticing enough (In which case they would have made more profit just selling more 3060s instead) or makes their availability a priority, changing the equation to "Well it's in stock and the ones that I wan't aren't".

The 2020 flight simulator?
Probably something with a 3080 or 3090

Good luck
LoL

Glad I built my pc when I did in mid-late 2019. 2080ti and a 9900k. Was thinking about probably upgrading later this year but that’s probably not going to happen.

Exactly.  They're segmenting their market.

I got lucky a couple months ago and picked up an instant ship system from CyberPower PC. AMD Ryzen 5600x, PNY 3080, 16gb 3000mhz, 1tb NVME, 1tb HDD, etc. for $1615 shipped.

I bet I could sell the 3080 for the cost of the whole system right now.

If you're willing to pay about $100 or so more than it's worth, and you've really got your heart set on it, Amazon has 5600X's in stock.

I wouldn't poo-poo the 3600 either. The truth is that if you're just gaming and not doing serious content creation or multitasking (aka, "work"), then you will not notice a huge difference in performance between a 3600 and a 5600. The large majority of your performance in gaming is going to come from your GPU, not your CPU. All you really need out of a CPU is to avoid bottlenecking your GPU with gaming, and the 3600 won't present serious or noticeable bottlenecks in most games if your card can handle it. Most of your frames are coming from the card. You can get an X570 board, pop a 3600 in there and overclock a bit, and then upgrade to 5600X down the road if you want. Turn around and sell the 3600 on the used market and recoup some costs. Or just keep playing on the 3600 and never really notice much of a difference most of the time. Pro tip: turn off your FPS counter when you're actually playing it for fun. All else equal, you'll never notice the difference between a 3600 and a 5600 if you do that.

As for the GPU, I would seriously look at the 3060 that Nvidia is about to roll out. If they're really nerfed for miners then there may actually be some availability. Those honestly look to be a sweet spot for price-performance, too.

Here's something else to consider: the market isn't going to come back any time soon. If you're waiting for crypto to crash, you may well be waiting for a long, long time. And if you're waiting for the supply issues to get ironed out, you may be waiting for a long, long time. There are a lot of people sitting on the sidelines now waiting for things to improve. They've been waiting for a year already, and there's no indication that the dam is going to break any time soon. In short, if you decide to wait for the environment to improve, you may be waiting for a long, long time.

As for prebuilts... pre-COVID they were a bad idea. Now not so much. The main drawback to them has always been that ancillary parts like motherboard and PSU (and often RAM) were shit, and the GPU was often an cheapo OEM version that didn't have quite the performance of the other cards. That said, if you can find a good deal on one that has the GPU/CPU combo that you want, you could always get a new mobo/PSU if they suck (and likely a new case) and you're off to the races. That didn't make sense before, but it makes sense in a world where ther GPU that you want is now selling for more than a prebuilt with a nearly identical GPU ...

You really aren't all that far off.

Why not get this one?

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/clx-set-gaming-desktop-amd-ryzen-7-5800x-32gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-rtx-3070-480gb-ssd-3tb-hdd-black/6441382.p?skuId=6441382

If I needed to replace my VR laptop I might get this.

Valve Index. I don't do the Facebook thing, and I was intrigued by the better tracking and the controllers. I was also thinking about an HP Reverb 2, but it's a bit higher resolution than I can drive and I heard the tracking is a bit off. I may get one to use with the Index controllers if/when I get a 4080 or whatever they will call it.

Thanks to Bitcoin, I can now afford the overpriced GPUs for sale on Ebay.

I bought my mobo, ram, SSD, and other stuff i needed for a new build.  Shortly after that I bought a Ryzen 3100 ($120) to run as a cheap, stopgap CPU until i could get ahold of a 5600 or 5800.  I got lucky and scored a 5800 a few weeks later and ebayed the 3100 for what I had in it.  

...as for GPUs, good luck.  slim pickings out there.  I'm holding out for when EVGA puts their factory LC up on their website for pre order.  The 4xxx series may be out by the time 3xxx gets to the market in any numbers.

I've been trying to get a decent new gfx card for about 6 months now.

My company sells them on the employee purchase site.  They've got new stock in (3070's and 3080's) twice since I've been looking.  Each time I didn't see the notifications until ~20 mins after posting.  They were gone.

I now have a rule in my email inbox to text my phone when a notification email arrives.  Hopefully I'll get lucky next time!