Gadgetory

2017 has seemed like such an amazing year for PC hardware the 1080 TI launched AMD returned to relevance with the rise and launch and then the follow-up surprise launch of thread Ripper Intel refresh their enthusiasts lineup with sky like X and then they followed up by giving six core CPUs to the mainstream with coffee lake a via even the Radeon Vega 56 and 64 although late to the party and not quite as powerful as expected can still be added to the list of options PC gamers have to choose from so with all of this having happened and considering that most of the products expected the launch this year have already launched you'd think that it would be prime time to build a gaming PC right now but it's not in fact it kind of sucks here are four reasons why item number 1 the obvious culprit GPU prices this is the result of cryptocurrency mining and it has been a pain in the backside of anyone looking to buy a reasonably priced mid-range graphics card since about mid summer 2017 the rise of alternative crypto currencies such as aetherium that are resistant to ASIC based mining has brought GPU mining back into popularity with cards based on AMD's Polaris architecture like the rx 480 and 580 in particular demand due to their efficiency and flexibility and videos cards suffered price jumps as well but thankfully they've settled down a bit which you can't say for any of AMD's cards that are priced above $100 even though the gtx 1060 3 and 6 gig do give gamers looking for a GPU in the 200 to 250 dollar range and option there's not much competition for these cards thanks to AMD's high prices so the prices for Nvidia are generally still the same or higher than when the GTX 1060 launched over a year ago 200 or more for the 3 gig and 250 or more for the 6 gig next up have you seen memory prices lately if budget builders weren't set back enough by the GPU situation consider that the average price for a simple 16 gigabyte 4x4 gig ddr4 2400 memory kit has more than doubled in price since early 2016 according to PC part picker going from less than $90 to over 180 and while that's one of the more extreme examples 50 to 100% price increases over the past year is pretty much the norm for ddr4 and ddr3 memory we were warned this of course market trends and all there are explanations like the fabs are switching over to a smaller manufacturing process or defect rates are high or they encountered setbacks related to sampling and healed so the supply situation remains tight or Apple just bought it all like like all the memory Apple just bought it or maybe they just wanted to squeeze the supply to up the price in order to earn record profits for themselves this year but I don't know where we'd find any evidence of that now third up you may have spotted Intel's recent coffee leak CPU launch and you might have been excited because clearly here is some evidence of AMD's new competition from Rison paying out mainstream six core Intel CPUs and an unlocked quad core i3 not bad from Team blue but right now there are some definite limitations to this platform and motherboard selection is chief among them there are only Z 370 motherboards available for this platform until 2018 there are some budget Z 370 options in 120 140 dollar range but that's still pretty expensive considering that AMD has competitive be 350 motherboards for their rise in CPUs for 70 and 80 dollars each that can even do some overclocking speaking of budget AZ 370 motherboard with a chipset that costs more in order to unlock overclocking for unlocked chips makes a bit less sense with their new locked CPUs like an i3 8100 our i-5 8400 but Z 370 is your only choice for a motherboard right now I'm hoping Intel considers a lower priced chipset that still has some overclocking options unlocked maybe call it Z 350 now lastly if I had to choose the most impactful PC technology that's become widely available in the past 10 years or so I would have to go with SSDs but my second choice would be variable refresh rate monitors don't worry it was a vertex - at least when it comes to PC gaming but I wish widely available could also align with widely affordable when it comes to these fancy new gaming monitors the experience of playing on a variable refresh rate monitor which synchronizes the framerate output of your graphics card with the refresh rate of your monitor for buttery smooth gameplay that also makes the most out of your graphics cards performance is one that once you've tried you just won't want to go without especially if you play fast paced PC games but monitors with this feature that compatible with nvidia gpus dubbed g-sync are typically 100 to $200 or more more expensive than a free sync monitor with the same specs that's compatible with AMD GPUs so that's fine just go with an AMD GPU for their consumer friendly free sync monitors that aren't horribly marked up and pair it with an AMD graphics card that is horribly marked up so pick your poison over pay for your AMD GPU and a fairly priced free sync monitor or get a fairly priced NVIDIA GPU and overpay for your G sync monitor the choice is yours so guys I know this was a negative video but it just sort of occurred to me the other day that things aren't all sunshine and daisies in PC building land but nevertheless we soldier on and I know I'm going to keep building computers and I'm pretty sure you guys are going to do the same but there is something to be said for waiting until 2018 to invest if you're considering it maybe for now just go with AMD CPUs and NVIDIA GPUs and and you'll be fine if you are looking for ideas for parting out a PC without suffering from one of these previously mentioned pitfalls check out my monthly build series thanks for watching this video though subscribe if you enjoyed let me know if you'd like to see more like it in the comment section down below of course hit that like button on your way out and we'll see you guys next time