Hither'due south our monthly update on the computer hardware market to see what the current trends are for CPU and GPU pricing. The situation of terrible availability and high prices continue, but let'due south hope we accept some skilful news to share on where the market is headed and what'south happened in the past month.

Follow up: Stock Update July 2022, Baronial 2022, September 2022, Oct 2022, November 2022, December 2022, January 2022, February 2022

Woohoo! CPUs are good now

One change for this month's update is that we'll no longer exist roofing CPU market. The reason is a positive ane: you can currently purchase the vast bulk of processors at their respective MSRP in most regions. In that location are a few exceptions, such equally the Ryzen 9 5900X in the U.s.a., just other products are now being sold slightly below the MSRP, like the 5800X. And of course, Intel's processors remain great value, especially in the 10th generation, so with that there isn't much point dedicating a clamper of time to talk almost CPUs availability when the marketplace atmospheric condition are nigh dorsum to normal.

Current retail GPU market place

What isn't normal right now is the GPU market. At many retailers the state of affairs is improving to some degree. It's easier to purchase GPUs than in prior months, especially outside the United States.

In Australia, for example, you can purchase whatsoever current generation GPU right at present if you want to, with the exception of the RTX 3060 Ti. Not in bundles or anything like that, just standalone graphics cards. The take hold of is that pricing is very high. Yous are faced with MSRPs 2.5x higher for something like an RTX 3070, and even relatively affordable cards similar the Radeon RX 6700 XT are selling for $400 above MSRP.

We're hearing similar stories from many of y'all, specially those in Europe. In Federal republic of germany, for case, certain you tin can buy an RTX 3070, it'due south just that it'll set yous back over 1100€, when the Nvidia MSRP has been set at roughly 520€.

A month ago, when cryptocurrencies were booming, most of these products were out of stock. As we've discussed before, one of the first steps before we can come across improved GPU pricing is to have cards actually available. Not that anyone will be rushing out to buy a graphics card for gaming with this sort of pricing.

There's been no change to the general reasons we have heard for high pricing, including shortages of raw components, limited wafer production at fabs, component shortages, high logistics costs especially for international aircraft, and so on. Still it seems that AIBs have cooled off a bit on increasing their asking cost for custom models, for the last few months basically any resupply of GPUs would see prices raised slightly to more closely align with the scalper market, just now that GPUs are sitting on shelves at some retailers, that process has slowed down thankfully.

Greater availability? It's due to mining

But why are GPUs more than available now than in previous months?

Well, aside from continued production at tape rates, which is slowly satisfying the insane demand for gaming GPUs, there has been a shakeup in the crypto market, so allow'southward talk most that. When we updated you in May, Ethereum was sitting at around $3,500, down from a elevation of $4,000 only a few days prior. Since then, ETH has fallen to around $2300 over the form of a month, a 34 percent drib, with similar declines in other popular coins. But that's not the only contributing factor to the profitability of mining.

Ethereum pricing nautical chart

Equally nosotros mentioned last month, gas prices and difficulty of mining are as well of import. Gas prices accept dropped substantially since May, as fewer transactions are taking place on the Ethereum network, due to lower prices and lower interest in full general. Equally tracked past Etherscan, gas prices are somewhere between one-half and a third of what they were a month ago, and so the reward for processing transactions has dropped a lot.

All the same, Ethereum difficulty has also declined in the past month, from a peak that coincided with the highest value for Ethereum. Difficulty has dropped by around xi percentage over the final 30 days, which has put difficulty around where we were in late April. This is both a skilful and bad affair. It'south practiced in the sense that lower difficulty means less people mining, and then the popularity of mining is decreasing, reducing the potential of new cards being sold to miners. It's as well bad though, as a lower difficulty increases cake rewards and increases mining profitability.

So overall, looking at the most popular coin for GPU-based mining, the value of Ethereum is downward 34 percent, gas prices are more than halved, and difficulty is too down 10 per centum. Everything combined has seen profitability of mining on a GPU like the RTX 3090 every bit measured at NiceHash, roughly halved in the course of the concluding month – from around $12 to $14 per 24-hour interval, to around $7, non including price of power.

While most of this profitability pass up occurred several weeks ago and has held steady since, the reduction has weakened the demand for graphics cards for mining, especially at certain (high) prices. Information technology greatly extends the fourth dimension to profitability from purchasing a GPU for mining, and with a lot of uncertainty around the futurity of mining in networks like Ethereum, miners announced more than hesitant to buy upward cards. In fact, during research for this article, I spotted several full mining rigs for auction on eBay which where nowhere to be establish months ago. No overflowing of used GPUs yet, but a better situation.

Current-gen GPU pricing

MSRP eBay Average Price March eBay Average Price May eBay Boilerplate Price June Current Price Aggrandizement Cost Increase May to June
GeForce RTX 3090 $one,500 $iii,083 $three,628 $2,962 97% -4%
GeForce RTX 3080 Ti $ane,200 $2,187 82%
GeForce RTX 3080 $700 $2,256 $2,601 $i,948 178% -xiv%
GeForce RTX 3070 Ti $600 $1,323 121%
GeForce RTX 3070 $500 $one,374 $1,660 $1,261 152% -8%
GeForce RTX 3060 Ti $400 $1,297 $1,617 $1,255 214% -three%
GeForce RTX 3060 $330 $905 $977 $830 152% -8%
Radeon 6900 XT $one,000 $1,870 $one,972 $i,932 93% iii%
Radeon 6800 XT $650 $i,560 $1,690 $1,450 123% -seven%
Radeon 6800 $580 $ane,340 $1,518 $i,210 109% -10%
Radeon 6700 XT $480 $1,165 $1,088 $907 89% -22%
Average 128% -8%

Tracking current generation GPU prices on eBay in the 3rd week of each month for new products and completed sales shows adept news across the board. GPU prices are down quite a chip since the terrible situation we faced in May, basically the worst calendar month for GPU pricing ever. Cards similar the RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 have seen a ~25% reduction in scalper pricing, while the RTX 3060 has fallen xv%, and AMD's RX 6800 and 6700 cards have dropped between 14 and 20%.

The average turn down in pricing is 18%, which doesn't lucifer the decline in profitability – only pricing increases final calendar month didn't reflect the full extent of profitability gains either. The scalper market moves more than slowly in response to trends, only it'south clear that scalpers are not able to become away with as high prices this month every bit they were able to terminal calendar month.

Make no mistake, GPUs remain ridiculously overpriced. Some GPUs accept fallen below double their MSRP for the first time in ages, like the RTX 3090 and RX 6700 XT, only the majority of cards withal sit down between 2x and 3x over their MSRP -- the average is 2.3x. That'south down from price inflation of 2.9x last month.

The more than positive news is that GPU prices are the lowest they've been in months. We started tracking effectually March, when Ethereum was in the $1,800 range, and running the numbers for a few cards it seems that pricing has lowered roughly to the level it was effectually tardily January to early on February. GPU prices are withal no good, but they're trending in the right direction for at present.

If you badly want a current generation GPU and are willing to pay scalper prices, the Radeon RX 6700 XT remains the best value graphics card on the marketplace going on cost per frame. That'due south because RDNA2 is worse than Ampere GPUs for mining, especially when Ampere isn't LHR limited. The 6700 XT is over 30% better value than the RTX 3070, while GPUs like the RTX 3090 and RTX 3080 Ti remain the worst value.

We can also proceeds some insight into why prices are the way they are right at present when we look at mining profitability. At electric current profitability rates every bit seen at website Whattomine, with power at 10c/kWh, more often than not it will take someone buying a new GPU at least x months to achieve profitability -- a lot longer than in previous months.

It's also interesting to look at how long it will have someone buying a GPU on the scalper marketplace to pay back the inflated toll through mining. In other words, how long it takes to pay the difference between the average eBay price, and the card's MSRP. That'southward sitting at around 200 days on boilerplate, or half dozen and a half months, and requires profitability to remain exactly the same every bit now for that entire period.

With this data in mitt, you can run into why some miners are choosing to exit the business and why mining difficulty has dropped in the past month. Information technology's a delicate balancing act between profitability, time to profit, and the value of the graphics cards on the used marketplace at present and in the future. If profitability and resale value go on to driblet, and the time to profitability increases, mining becomes a riskier investment.

Used GPU pricing

I also wanted to spend some time looking at the used market and ready the process of tracking used prices over the coming months for older generation cards.

Have prices on the used marketplace also dropped in line with new current generation GPUs? You bet they accept.

MSRP eBay Average Price May eBay Average Price June Current Price Aggrandizement Cost Increase May to June
GeForce RTX 2080 Ti $1,000 $1,458 $1,219 22% -sixteen%
GeForce RTX 2080 Super $700 $1,047 $887 27% -15%
GeForce RTX 2080 $700 $953 $834 19% -12%
GeForce RTX 2070 Super $500 $881 $784 57% -11%
GeForce RTX 2070 $500 $838 $678 36% -19%
GeForce RTX 2060 Super $400 $800 $707 77% -12%
GeForce RTX 2060 $350 $641 $549 57% -fourteen%
Boilerplate 42% -xiv%

First up, nosotros have the GeForce RTX 20 serial. Prices have dropped 14% on boilerplate for used models, and while most are withal beingness sold above their launch MSRP, that gap is shrinking. Unfortunately, GPUs like the RTX 2060 remain woefully overpriced due to a lack of newer cards in that performance tier, then while you merely have to spend near $100 over the launch price on an RTX 2080, you take to spend $200 over launch price to become a 2060.

MSRP eBay Average Price May eBay Average Toll June Current Price Inflation Price Increase May to June
GeForce GTX 1660 Ti $280 $585 $481 72% -18%
GeForce GTX 1660 Super $230 $582 $495 115% -15%
GeForce GTX 1660 $220 $497 $430 95% -xiii%
GeForce GTX 1650 Super $160 $346 $326 104% -6%
GeForce GTX 1650 $150 $299 $295 97% -i%
Average 97% -xi%

At that place's an interesting trend to spot with the GeForce GTX 16 series and the pricing of entry-level GPUs. The GTX 1650 and to a lesser extent the GTX 1650 Super accept barely fallen in price, while cards effectually them are dropping past more significant numbers. That's considering these cards are generally unsuitable for mining with their 4GB VRAM buffers and depression memory bandwidth, so pricing is less linked to mining profitability and more to the pricing of other GPUs. With that said, the GTX 1650 is a horrible bargain right now.

For Nvidia Pascal GPUs, toll drops are a little higher than with Turing but they follow a similar tendency. College-stop GPUs like the GTX 1080 Ti have dropped in price more than than a carte du jour like the GTX 1060 6GB or 3GB. In fact, everything from the GTX 1070 and higher up is now roughly in line with their launch MSRPs -- non a great situation, but better than other product lines. The GTX 1060 remains inflated though, due to the reasons we've been talking most.

MSRP eBay Average Toll May eBay Average Cost June Current Cost Inflation Price Increment May to June
GeForce GTX 1080 Ti $700 $855 $689 -2% -19%
GeForce GTX 1080 $600 $606 $526 -12% -xiii%
GeForce GTX 1070 Ti $450 $575 $467 4% -nineteen%
GeForce GTX 1070 $380 $498 $403 half-dozen% -19%
GeForce GTX 1060 6GB $250 $366 $327 31% -11%
GeForce GTX 1060 3GB $200 $255 $234 17% -viii%
Average 7% -15%

If y'all were lucky enough to purchase 1 of AMD'south Radeon RX 5000 series GPUs, you basically hit the jackpot on the used market. That's because the 5000 series is good at mining, the 5700 XT for example has profitability levels that compare to the RTX 2080 and RTX 3070, every bit opposed to the RTX 2070 which is its closest competitor for gaming. And then while the RTX 2070 was sold for about $840 on the used marketplace final calendar month, 5700 XTs were fetching most $1,200, and even today are still more than double their launch MSRP. Pricing in this instance is heavily linked to mining profitability.

MSRP eBay Average Cost May eBay Average Price June Current Toll Inflation Price Increase May to June
Radeon 5700 XT $400 $ane,184 $895 124% -24%
Radeon 5700 $350 $one,035 $806 130% -22%
Radeon 5600 XT $280 $754 $604 116% -xx%
Radeon 5500 XT 8GB $200 $507 $440 120% -13%
Average 122% -xx%

It also puts current 5700 XT owners in a bit of a foreign although lucrative position. If you're not at all interested in mining, the 5700 XT is actually meliorate at mining than the RX 6700 XT, simply effectually 23% slower at 1440p gaming. With used 5700 XTs going for around $900, and new 6700 XTs going for most $900 as well, 5700 XT owners accept the chance to take reward of the used market place and get a faster gaming GPU for essentially goose egg.

Older Radeon GPUs face a like predicament as pricing remains very inflated relative to launch pricing equally both Vega and Polaris GPUs are excellent at mining, provided you get ane with an 8GB VRAM buffer in the instance of the RX 580 and RX 570. This makes the GTX 1060 a much better value than the RX 580 for those afterward a GPU in the $300 range.

Wrap Up

1 central takeaway from this month's update is that GPU pricing is improving. Slowly. Nosotros don't have any clear indication of when graphics cards will render to normal, and who knows, peradventure next month we come back to report GPU prices take increased. But at least for now, the electric current market trend is a positive sign for gamers who have been waiting for a long fourth dimension to get a new graphics menu in their hands.

Despite a glimmer of positivity, I wouldn't recommend anyone pay electric current scalper prices, or prices for GPUs at retail. With most cards still priced at least double their MSRPs, well-nigh products remain direct up bad value either compared to other products currently bachelor, or previous years. If y'all've kept patient for this long, hopefully y'all can ride it out longer.

Even so it'south worth looking across the market to see if in that location are any anomalies you tin can accept advantage of. The pathway to upgrade a 5700 XT into a 6700 XT is interesting considering you probably don't care about mining performance but gaming.

Where do we go from here? For now we'll continue to runway GPU pricing and come across how things evolve. What we're seeing now isn't entirely different to the previous mining smash, then we'll keep an eye on trends and continue you lot posted.

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  • Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 on Amazon
  • AMD Radeon RX 6800 on Amazon