The market entered the new year in a state of a serious shortage of video cards, which will not be eliminated by the middle of the year, even in the forecasts of AMD and NVIDIA management. Consultations with the participants in the production and logistics chain allowed us to find out what reasons caused the shortage of video cards this season, their number reached six.
According to the resource Igor's LAB, miners are buying up GeForce RTX 3060 Ti at factories for $ 700 apiece, exacerbating the shortage of video cards. For manufacturers, this form of selling products is more profitable, since they give a good price, and in such cases, there is no need to worry about warranty obligations. Although this factor cannot be called new, it is gradually coming to the fore in terms of the degree of influence on the market.
The second reason, which has long been known, is the lack of proper next-generation GPUs. The current video chips TSMC releases for AMD using 7nm technology, NVIDIA receives 8nm gaming solutions from Samsung. Both contractors are struggling to cope with the demand, and it remains to be seen who chip developers are less dependent on in this situation.
The third reason, which affects not only the video card market but also all products using the power subsystem of electronic components, is the lack of PWM controllers for printed circuit boards. Laptops, motherboards, video cards - all these products are in short supply precisely because of the lack of power elements.
Not much is known about the fourth reason for the shortage of video cards and motherboards, but the primary source claims that specialized controllers for monitoring operational parameters are also supplied in insufficient quantities.
The fifth and sixth reasons stand side by side, as they relate to the memory chip market. For the needs of NVIDIA, the GDDR6X chips are supplied only by Micron, they are required in the production of GeForce RTX 3080 and GeForce RTX 3090 video cards, but it is not possible to use them in combination with video chips other than GA102, and this graphics processor itself is a scarce component.
GDDR6 memory is much more in demand since it is used by both new AMD video cards and Sony and Microsoft game consoles. GDDR6 microcircuits are also not enough for everyone, although not only Micron can supply them, unlike GDDR6X.
Finally, a new wave of the cryptocurrency boom has provoked a shortage of power supplies of running ratings. Manufacturers rushed to meet the demand for powerful models, which is fueled by miners, among other things. Many new players began to appear on the market, who make cheap and powerful power supplies for mining, not caring too much about their quality and longevity. Not everyone has enough components for their production.
A rather exotic impact on the computer component market is the lack of elements for creating controlled RGB lighting. Many components are now equipped with it - from motherboards and video cards to memory modules and water blocks. In China's domestic market, demand for RGB lighting solutions is now very high, so the export of profile components is starting to suffer.
It remains to add that the unpredictability of the supply situation is forcing some manufacturers to increase their inventory, only exacerbating the shortage of purchased components. This equation with many unknowns, it seems, market participants will not undertake to solve in the coming months, so end customers have to learn to live in conditions of constant scarcity.
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