Gadgetory

welcome back to our unboxed for the final installment of why building a gaming PC right now is a bad idea in part one we looked at ddr4 memory discuss pricing and availability and speculated as to when would be builders can expect prices to fall then in part two we did a very similar thing but the focus there was on graphics cards those were the big ones for sure memory and graphics cards SSD pricing that crept up a little bit in late 2017 but nothing really worth talking about unless of course I've missed something as it stands right now quality one terabyte SSD such as the crucial MX 500 will set you back just 25 cents per gigabyte and that's about as low as I've seen prices get so I'm not going to bang on about SSD prices they really aren't increasing the barrier of entry for gamers that being the case with ddr4 and graphics cards already covered what other hurdles might game is hoping to upgrade or even build a new PC face well it's my opinion that even if graphics cards and memory modules were retailing for the suggested retail prices let's say that's still a good time to build or even upgrade your PC right now we're at the end of quite a few product cycles within three months from now AMD is set to release their second generation rise and sea views and what we're not expecting huge performance improvements there we are hoping for at least a 10% performance improvement as well as an increase in performance per watt couple that with the upcoming 400 series AMD motherboards which we're still not 100% sure what's going to be on offer there but it means for those buying a rise in CPU and a 300 series motherboard right now you should really only do that if you can't possibly wait a few more months it's also quite possible once these second generation rising CPUs arrive at existing rising CPUs and motherboards might go on sale so there could be some good bargains to be had for budget gamers next month's arrival of Raven Ridge the desktop AVP use should also be very exciting and well worth waiting for the horizon 520 400 G for example that could quite possibly eliminate the need for an entry-level discrete graphics card with its Vega 11 integrator graphics then on the other side of the fence we have Intel and they're still yet to be fully released coffee-like series namely the supporting chipsets as it stands the 8th gen core processors can only be paired with a Zed 370 motherboard no start at about 110 dollars u.s. from budget shoppers this doesn't really make that much sense and it almost eliminates the otherwise great value core i3 8100 we know motherboard makers are preparing B 360 H 310 and H 370 motherboards and they should become available shortly and again these will be far better value options for budget shoppers on the flip side high-end Intel shoppers might also want to hold fire on that core i7 87 arcade purchase as updated ded 390 motherboards will also be arriving shortly rumor has it these boards will be required to support the upcoming eight-course 16 thread coffee-like CPUs moving on from CPUs and motherboards we're also expecting new GPUs soon at least from Nvidia anyway and with AMD probably to act later in the year the Pascal based GeForce 10 series that was released back in May of 2016 so it really wouldn't surprise me if we see the next generation series take to shelves in May of this year but that's purely speculation on my behalf though we do know Nvidia is preparing to launch the new series soon and this is another contributing factor to why they won't want to increase the production of Pascal at the moment so in three to four months you could have your choice of new CPUs motherboards and graphics cards of course if you're desperate for an upgrade right now and you can't wait or then you can't wait but if you can wait then it seems quite clear that doing so would be the wise choice as a bit of a side note there is something else that could threaten PC component prices this year and that is a shortage of copper foil and this could lead to a PCB shortage the price of copper increased by 25 percent during 2017 and while there is still plenty of copper about there is a looming shortage in copper foil production capacity eating up a good chunk of copper foil production our lithium batteries used by electric cars current reports state that demand is continuing to increase while global output and compounding the potential issue here is the fact that China is planning to ban of the importation of electric waste and that is a significant source of recycled copper it's no doubt that other countries will eventually pick up the slack but in the meantime this could lead to a decrease in copper supply so there's no telling when graphics card pricing and availability will balance out ddr4 probably won't settle down until ddr5 takes over and now there's the possibility that everything could become a little more expensive in 2018 2017 we take it back you weren't all that bad of course this potential issue might not become a real issue at all and maybe in a few months time you'll see a new series called why building a gaming PC right now is a great idea fingers crossed I suppose on a final note you can almost always say it's better to wait than buy now but that isn't always necessarily true and after all at some point you actually do have to pull the trigger if you ever want to own a gaming PC so it really is up to you guys to do your research and work out if it makes sense for you to build your system at any given time right now though we are very deep into the product cycles and as we've noted there are a few other reasons why we think building or upgrading a PC right now just isn't a good time so I'm gonna leave it on that I hope you guys enjoyed the video and this series that we've put together I'm your host Steve see you next time