GPUs are back in stock (well, sort of)

Less advice and more useful information to consider: GPUs are making a comeback. For the past few years, supply shortages made buying certain components damn near impossible. When these vital desktop components did hit the market, they sold at enormous markups and were quickly gobbled up by scalpers who relisted them at even higher prices. At their peak, Nvidia and AMD GPUs were selling at 300% above their retail price.

Things are now improving. 3DCenter Germany released a report in mid-April indicating that AMD GPU prices had declined in the past three weeks by an average of 13% while Nvidia cards had dropped 6%. The price decrease for Nvidia cards is slowing as components from both Team Red and Team Green near their original MSRP.

We’re not out of the woods just yet. All of the stock cards sold directly by AMD and Nvidia are out of stock and you’ll still need to pay a small markup for most cards, especially those landing between the top-of-the-line options and the budget ones. We just aren’t seeing the 2x or 3x price hikes we once did at the height of the pandemic and the concurrent growth of unrestricted cryptocurrency mining. With prices leveling at lower rates than we’ve seen in recent years, now might be the right time to resurrect your PC. That is, unless you wait a few months for next-generation GPUs.

Either way, I wouldn’t start my PC build unless I had a GPU physically in front of me. You’ll want to return components should you run into any issues, so sitting on a bunch of expensive parts as warranties dry up is not a risk you should take.