PC Building Industry in Crisis Mode Amid Hardware Shortages and Pricing Inflation
The PC building industry has been in crisis mode since 2020 due to a series of events that have led to constant hardware shortages and pricing inflation.
In 2020, the COVID-19 lockdown triggered a global pandemic, causing silicon wafer shortages and shipping bottlenecks. This coincided with a massive spike in Proof-of-Work cryptocurrency mining, driving up prices of graphics cards on secondary markets.
Nvidia's LHR (Lite Hash Rate) experiment in 2021 provided temporary relief by introducing algorithms that throttled mining algorithms. However, software workarounds and alternative mining algorithms soon bypassed these restrictions, and the market realized that consumers would pay double or triple the MSRP due to desperation or hype.
The prices of GPUs continued to rise, with the RTX 4080 launched at $1199, a 71% generation-over-generation price hike from its predecessor. This led to a shift in market expectations, redefining what was considered 'mainstream' PC building.