Gadgetory

this video might be a little bit of a touchy subject but we're going to approach it as neutrally as possible the idea we had going into this was looking at the current GPU market and the lack of stock and inventory most places or spikes prices we wanted to know how did the manufacturers feel about this we know how a lot of you feel about it because you've asked us why is the stock low I want to buy cards my game TT build but we didn't know how they felt how the manufacturers feel with regard to their bottom line is it better because they're selling out of cards or is it worse because of some other unseen side effects like lessened impact on the overall ecosystem a minor buying 10 GPUs doesn't necessarily buy that companies for example peripherals for gaming so we asked a couple manufacturers about it before getting into the video a few things to note none of these people can be named so it is all unfortunately anonymous sources they are from GPU AIB partners but we can't say who and which is a reasonable request really and then the other aspect of this we might have b-roll of video cards in this video it's just beer oh if a particular video card is shown on screen it does not have any affiliation with what I'm saying in the verbal part of the video so just those things aside let's dig into it and see what the manufacturers have to say about mining that positive or negative before that this coverage is brought to you by Z Cordy 21 enclosure from thermal take a $70 case with 2 4 millimeters thick tempered glass side panels mesh ventilation in the front for breathability a rarity in cases these days and a power supply shroud with top mounted SSD sled learn more at the link in the description below overall there were pretty diverse opinions from each of the companies we spoke to about half a dozen or so GPU vib partners and then also some power supply vendors so we've got thoughts from each sides of that argument because of course power supplies are pretty important for GPU mining on an intense scale the first company we spoke to seems more or less positive about this so they noted record high demand which I think we could all agree with and record high profit because of that so revenues up demand is up they're ordering more cards to try and fulfill the rising demand but of course the big note that they had there was that the scare from 2013 or 2014 when Bitcoin crashed previously is that these companies will be ordering more stock to try and keep up with demand from both miners and gamers to fulfill both and may end up over ordering ending up with overstock and more or less investing money and product that won't sell because it's obviously these cards have a lifespan a shelf life Volta and Vega come out eventually so you end up stuck with inventory that just doesn't move so that's the concern they're trying to balance out how much they order the insight from this company was that this still company number one they thought that there could be a long-term investment option they're hesitant but researching there is a series of mining cards coming out from Nvidia that's kind of known about at this point it will not have IO so the companies generally all of them that we spoke to actually are hoping that that will pull miners away from buying gamer cards because obviously the the biggest outcry has been from gamers you can't build the system with a 10 sec we've done 74 85 80s something like that other than this the last thing they noted actually two last things they noted one was the company number one does not believe that this should create more console gamers which is an argument we'll get into in a second and it should not deter too many inbound PC gamers they think it's something that eventually will steady out and those people will remain potential customers rather than just running to buy a console for example and that's something that they see is good overall because right now if you want to build a system you're pretty much forced to by 1080 class or higher hardware and then the last note from company number one is they felt like they got a little bit burned by our mas in the past for the 2013-2014 crash where people bought into mining just before the crash like 1 2 3 months before the crash got some mining in ended up doing either a full return if it was within window and so you end up with a bunch of inbound stock that is an excursion from the norm in terms of yours for a return and then they also had an increase in our mas where people are trying to get a card replaced with something that can be sold secondhand as new for instance so that's company number one company number two in the short term it company number two believes that this is great for company revenue they are concerned that or I should say disappointed was the the word you used disappointed that they cannot fill demand for gamers specifically and feel that they are a gamer targeted company first so losing out on delivering for fans is disappointing particularly because they're worried about reduced ecosystem sales we'll use that phrase for other products that are adjacent to their video cards so that might include something like just pulling some random examples cases peripherals not power supplies because those are affected by mining but cases peripherals and generally things that are not involved with mining directly those sales we reduced an example would be if you sell NVIDIA hardware let's start with them if you sell Nvidia or AMD hardware and a minor purchases your Nvidia or AMD graphics card that minor is not also going to purchase most likely a g-sync or a precinct display so your market share in those particular regions g-sync and precinct for NVIDIA doesn't grow and then as the manufacturer who creates the monitor you don't get that sale so whereas a gamer would potentially going buy one of those two displays with their new computer so you lose out on ecosystem sales which is potentially damaging on the long term for those connected product lines that aren't directly GPUs or power supplies the next thing that company number two noted was a increased sales in general right now they're trying to come up with other ways to keep miners off of gamer cards though and help fulfill the gaming demand they are also concerned about a flooded used market that could hurt bottom line later so the sales are way up right now but later on that may come back and bite the companies because they're going to have a whole bunch of used sales on eBay to compete with for example and then a couple notes here from company number two it doesn't help PC game and grow because you can't find an affordable graphics card which pushes people towards consoles so this is a a different viewpoint from company number one where they didn't think that would be a problem and that the potential buyers would either wait or would buy higher-end hardware this particular second company thinks the opposite that it might push people out of PC gaming and ultimately hurt the PC gaming space if this goes on for long enough and by that I mean the mining Cray is currently happening and then the next point was RMA so true this company says too early to say if it's going to be better or worse or the RMA process and then we've got two more main ones to go through here and also I will say the companies we've spoken to which sell power supplies are not necessarily GP makers but just power supply makers in general as a whole the ones we've spoken with have noted increased sales kilowatt power supplies as you would expect so 1,000 plus with the biggest focus being on something like 1200 1300 watt things like that and previously in 2013 2014 there was a spike in up to 1600 watt power supplies whereas now it's still it's still pretty high so kilowatt power supplies are going for more and sales are getting more orders and then the higher eighty plus rated units are also more popular because the serious minors the non homebrew miners care more about that efficiency according to these companies so company number three GP makers or a heavy partner they say best-case scenario this is a short-lived fad and then hopefully people move on and gamers can go back to purchasing the products at normal prices and the best case is because it's a short-term fad they would get increased revenue immediately but not have long term effects where people might move away from PC gaming or towards other brands worst case scenario end users are turned off and move on to other products like consoles and then this company also made a very good point noted that miners unlike gamers don't really develop brand loyalty or any kind of affiliation they buy the car that fits the watts and the hash rate that they need and then don't really care too much about the vendor so it all they need is a lot of cards in stock that fit a particular bill for power consumption and hash rate so that means that you don't gain a customer for life and this particular company number three would rather have the long-term lifelong customer who is buying GPUs every couple years or every couple cycles rather than someone who buys five to ten today and really doesn't care what happens to them might have used the RNAi system something like that and miners generally aren't loyal to the companies that make the cards another note this company also feels like they could be hurt when there's a ton of second-hand supply which could affect pricing for retail cards or at least sales rates of retail cards so that is in line with what one of these other companies has said and they also again are unsure on the RMA process impact but previously 2013 2014 the RMA process was abused a bit when the mining market crash so that seems to be a consistent concern with these folks where they're worried that when this current mining trying to find the most neutral correct word is when this current mining excitement may or may not fade if it fades the companies are concerned that the spike in RMA s that people can refresh a card that's been in use for a few months and then flip it on second-hand market that seems like a pretty common concern finally the last company is one two three four seventy number four they say that also they would rather have a customer for ten years than for ten GPUs today so that's consistent with the previous one this company number four feels that they don't necessarily profit from the miners because they feel that the miners could exploit RMA's or could just hurt long-term adjacent product sales from the rest of the ecosystem again things like g-sync freesync displays keyboards mice cases which none of those things are used by mining and if you don't make power supplies then you don't get the benefit of high wattage powers by sales separately power supplies undergo a lot of views from that so we're not really sure and neither were most these companies about how that could impact the army process because just way too soon to tell a lot of them can take a lot of abuse but maybe not as much as they're being hit with in some mining scenarios this final company number four also feels that service teams can get backed up by the RMA request they feel that the quote actual customers who are gaming or workstation users feel left out we're out of luck and that that's unfortunate from a brand building perspective another somewhat consistent team with some of the companies or not all of them and and then finally feels that it cost the company potentially more money than it makes in the long run even if short-term profits and sales was good so that's that sounds up the AIB partners and then on the power supply side again generally I've seen better 1000 watt plus sales that's a good thing but the concern again just like with video cards is that you end up ordering a whole bunch of really expensive to make 1200 1500 16 watt 1600 watt not 16 watt power supplies the mining excitement fades and then they're left with all these expensive items to manufacture on the shelf and they might not ever move or at least not until the next spike in mining interest or other high power consumption interest particularly because multi-gpu is fading now so Nvidia doesn't really officially support 308 plus SLI crossfire exception of Vega forthcoming doesn't make a lot of sense outside of two cards so that means that from a gamer standpoint you don't really have the 1200 watt plus failed because it's just it's a really uncommon use case to need that much power in an industry where power consumption is as a general rule going far down from what it used to be so you end up left with all these power supplies because not everyone minds and miners are one of the few use cases where it's a mass purchase scenario where that high wattage actually goes to use as opposed to the one-off single users and the single digit percentages for multi-gpu configurations that are very heavy and power consumption so I think that that pretty much goes through it I'm not going to share any of my own thoughts on this right now I don't think it's it's appropriate for the video topic we're just focusing on what the manufacturers think however I am curious what you all think so this is always opening a camera caniforms but leave comments below please try to keep it civil but the part I'm curious about is I know a lot of you have tweeted or commented in the past if you are a gamer that you are unhappy about the lack of availability of GPUs and we've also seen some comments from folks who say well they're the manufacturers have sold out they should be happy and I'm making some money on my card so I should be happy so there's two very different camps here I don't know that there's a lot of in between them probably couple more neutral people who don't have any opinion at all but either way leave a comment below let me know you think and I don't know that will touch this topic too much going forward mining in general but I thought it was a somewhat unique perspective to speak to the manufacturers even if it's off record unfortunately but I do understand why even if it's off record it's a very interesting perspective that we don't normally get and I think it's certainly more interesting than a content creators perspective since we've got plenty of those already so thank you for watching as always you can go to patreon.com/crashcourse Nexus to help out directly you can subscribe for more and as always the articles on the site going up this week should be pretty interesting we have more follow up Vega coverage we have some more reviews even with the looming holiday weekend so stay tuned for that I'll see you all next time you