The situation is so bad that some retailers are now selling the GPUs in bundles or through PC builds.
Sometimes I wonder if the crypto-era was really the worst phase for the PC market in recent history, since the RAMpocalypse continues to prove me wrong. There was a time when most users were hardly able to secure a GPU whenever vendors and retailers refilled their inventories. It looks like we may be heading back toward a similar situation due to the intense volatility in the market at the moment.
You might have read our recent report on the GPU pricing update in China , and as per several reports, a new price hike is incoming worldwide. GPU prices continue to soar as we witness more expensive memory due to the AI boom. Almost every major memory maker has prioritized fulfilling the demands of AI servers, while the mainstream consumer market continues to suffer from sky-high prices.
The situation in some regions has become so bad that retailers are finding new ways to sell the hardware. We are already witnessing retailers bundling memory kits and SSDs with CPUs and motherboards, but now GPUs are facing a similar situation. The current prices are already 20-30% higher than the pre-RAMpocalypse era, and with another hike looming, they are about to get unaffordable.
Therefore, some retailers have started bundling the GPUs with other components. For instance, the popular Taiwanese retailer, Cool PC, has started to sell the NVIDIA RTX 5080 in bundles or through full PC builds. You can't purchase the RTX 5080 as a standalone product from the retailer at the moment. While this trend isn't seen in all regions, it can become a common trend in the near future.
The NVIDIA RTX 5080 currently retails at $1,200+ on major retailers like Amazon and Newegg, which is 20-30% higher than the MSRP of the Founders Edition. Some cards are listed over $1,500, and premium editions can go as high as $2,000. RTX 5080 still enjoys better availability than other slower 16 GB cards due to higher performance. Given that when such a card is facing availability issues, lower-end GPUs may easily witness significant price hikes and lower availability in the coming weeks.
News Sources: @unikoshardware , Cool PC
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