How have you been? Better, I hope. Things have not been well for the last 1.5 years, due to… the circumstances being what they are.
But at long last, we can see a ray of hope!
The Story So Far
If you have followed our previous updates during the Gloom ‘n Doom period, we saw an initial rise in prices of the “heavy” items, such as cases and PSUs. This was followed by a price hike for most other items, but CPUs and GPUs went up more than most.
By the end of 2020, GPUs had gone up in price to near-infinity, and you had to sell a minimum of 3 body parts to afford anything above a 750 Ti.
No dark cloud is permanent, though, and the winds of changes are coming. Well, a light breeze for now…
The State of the Market
The current PC part situation is as follows:
- All items are available.
- Most items (sans GPUs) are available for MSRP.
- Non-GPU items that are still overpriced have reasonably-priced alternatives.
- GPU prices are still terrible, but are coming down slowly.
Going Forward
With that, I have updated the USA table, with some of the most notable changes being:
- New cases have been added: MX331-X, 4000D, DF600.
- A new alternative, the i5-11400F, is added for the overpriced i5-11400 (non-F).
- New HSFs are added. The highly-requested-but-never-in-stock Mugen 5 is not new, but it is available. The U12S Redux is a welcome addition, removing the need to recommend different version of the U12S for AMD and Intel systems.
- The WD SN850 is now our best recommended SSD.
As noted above, despite tiny improvements, the GPU situation is still awful. We will hopefully be able to say something more positive about that in the next update.