GPU, Motherboard Prices Will Jump Thanks to US-China Trade War - ExtremeTech:
Up until now, the United States' ongoing trade war with China hasn't made much of an impact on tech enthusiasts' wallets. That's going to change from this point forward until the US and China settle their disputes or GPUs are specifically granted an exemption from the increased tariffs. Neither of these seems to be particularly likely at the moment.
Up until now, graphics cards and a number of other products have been shielded from the impact of tariffs by US-granted exemptions that shielded them from the price increases. Those laws, however, expired on December 31, 2020. Now that we're into the new year, companies like Asus are notifying consumers they can expect some unwelcome changes. Juan Jose Guerrero III, Asus' Technical Marketing Manager, has released a statement on the company's MSRP pricing expectations for 2021. This applies to both GPUs and motherboards:
We have an announcement in regards to MSRP price changes that are effective in early 2021 for our award-winning series of graphic cards and motherboards. Our new MSRP reflects increases in cost for components. operating costs, and logistical activities plus a continuation of import tariffs. We worked closely with our supply and logistic partners to minimize price increases. ASUS greatly appreciates your continued business and support as we navigate through this time of unprecedented market change.
Asus also notes that more than just GPUs and motherboards may be affected. Price increases are going to vary by GPU value, but the tariffs on Chinese goods ranged from 7.5 percent to 25 percent. This the very last thing PC enthusiasts will want to hear because it's going to additionally raise the price on GPUs at a time when the graphics cards market is running hot already.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 08 2021, @06:37PM
The rest of the world. Bye.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 08 2021, @06:51PM (2 children)
Thanks
ObamaBiden.(Score: 5, Funny) by fakefuck39 on Friday January 08 2021, @07:04PM (1 child)
Yes, let's blame either the guy in charge before the trade war was started, or the guy who is not in charge yet. Let's play some mental gymnastics to not actually blame the guy who proudly and publicly started that trade war. Not doing that would hurt our overweight redneck insecure fragility, for which we must overcompensate by joining a cult. Alone - crying in the basement - together strong, like russia.
Typical indeed. You remind me of this famous meme
https://i.imgflip.com/4gz2oz.jpg [imgflip.com]
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday January 08 2021, @07:10PM
This one's [youtu.be] the one that came to mind first for me.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by krishnoid on Friday January 08 2021, @07:08PM (1 child)
What kind of board/chip manufacturing plants are there in North America (or all of America, in that regard)? I've seen a video of a Chinese PCB manufacturer [youtu.be] and have been wondering for a while if/what comparable facilities exist closer to home.
(Score: 2) by slinches on Friday January 08 2021, @08:03PM
There are quite a few in China, but it isn't like there are none here in the US. Wikipedia lists many of them here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by slinches on Friday January 08 2021, @07:16PM (5 children)
If the GPU and motherboard companies haven't been using the exemption time to build out manufacturing capabilities in the US or outside of China, then it's their own fault if the prices go up and they lose sales.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 08 2021, @08:49PM (1 child)
This. Even before the trade war, China was starting to lose its place as most economic manufacturer. There's a "stickiness", to China and manufacturing, kind of like how everybody feels like they have to be in Silicon Valley for VC. We've diversified software locations in the US with Austin, Seattle, Research Triangle, etc. companies should have been diversifying manufacturing too, as the risk with China was always there. It's easier to move software development of course, but for these big companies it wasn't out of reach to contract outside of China. Surely they could have at least had some presence in India too?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday January 09 2021, @03:37AM
Oh, but they do diversify manufacturing. In Thailand and Vietnam nowadays, if my memory serves.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday January 08 2021, @09:06PM
They want prices to go up. As far as they are concerned the market is saturated. For them it's a price "correction". A way to clear out old inventory. Like when they have those "mysterious" fires and explosions at the chip factories. If sales decrease significantly, they can quickly set up shop in countless other places with cheaper labor and less bureaucracy.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fakefuck39 on Friday January 08 2021, @11:07PM
GPU and motherboard companies that source things from China aren't manufacturing that stuff on their own. What you're suggesting is they should have used that time to get into a new industry, build factories, and change their business model. That doesn't make things cheaper - that a huge risk and capital investment that raises prices and puts most out of business.
This is like suggesting that a leather couch company start farming cows because their leather supplier had a tariff placed on leather.
What everyone is doing instead is the rational thing. Raise prices to compensate for a few months and see if this is all over as soon as the reason for the tariff flees town.
Now, corporate reasoning aside, I think the trade war with China is not a bad idea, and we should stay the course, eventually forcing the industry to move manufacturing to other places like India. The reason (cheap labor) we had to do business with China vanished a long time ago, and the world is a big place, and even China is now outsourcing their production of cheap crap to Vietnam and Malaysia, then reselling it to us at a profit. This will destroy China's economy - removing a political and economic opponent (and wipe that smug off pooh's face). But mainly it will help other poor countries bring up their quality of life, and is a long-term cost-saving avenue for local businesses.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday January 09 2021, @03:35AM
Sales are a mean, bottom line is the profit.
You can cry them a river, if they could sell you nothing and still get your money, they'll do it.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by turgid on Friday January 08 2021, @07:27PM (7 children)
Food prices will jump thanks to Brexit.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 08 2021, @07:33PM (2 children)
That's an odd way to spell monetary inflation.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 08 2021, @08:22PM
It's the cause of what's coming.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Saturday January 09 2021, @03:41AM
Yeeees, indeed.
A funny type of inflation that doesn't happen in any other countries which still print money like crazy.
And also a funny type of inflation that affects only the food prices in UK.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Friday January 08 2021, @07:38PM (1 child)
Obesity needs to be addressed, so Brexit away.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 4, Funny) by fustakrakich on Friday January 08 2021, @09:09PM
No no, you should skip brexit, a glass of orange juice, that's it
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 08 2021, @08:26PM (1 child)
Just in time for a trade deal on cheap chlorinated chicken. Let's get motivated people!
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 08 2021, @08:35PM
Motherclucker.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by SomeGuy on Friday January 08 2021, @09:39PM (2 children)
Wait, what just happened to the (perhaps somewhat related) story "Honda Cuts Car Production on Massive Chip Shortage"?
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=21/01/08/0511218 [soylentnews.org]
All I get now is a "nothing to see here" page.
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Saturday January 09 2021, @03:19AM
Ok, it looks like an editor tried to use a toy cell phone to make an update and clicked the wrong button, deleting it. It is back but the new link is: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=21/01/08/2110217 [soylentnews.org]
I only mentioned it in case there was something more serious going on. Thanks for being open about it!
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday January 09 2021, @03:30AM
There's an update at the top of the story that will explain why that URL is dead.
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=21/01/08/2110217 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Friday January 08 2021, @10:56PM
There aren't any truly cheap 5g smartphones since the SoCs and modems are divided over Huawei patent pool issues around those supporting mmWave and those supporting standard 5g. And while some fabless, like MTK, are working with Ericson on a technical solutions to bridge the implementations together, the ability to manufacture one modem that the the smartphone vendor can decide whether to hardcode to the US-Japan block or the EU-China block will just leave the (dominantly Chinese) smartphone vendors industry with a powerful market segmentation tool that will transfer the costs straight to the consumers, and not the Chinese ones.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by Username on Saturday January 09 2021, @01:19AM (1 child)
Cost for components are increasing because of diminished supply due to lockdowns. The chinamen cannot make electronic components while welded into their homes. Their components cannot make it on time while sitting around in quarantine for two weeks at the border before they will be allowed into the country.
They were already under tariffs, cannot have a "continuation of import tariffs" without first being under import tariffs.
ASUS is cancer anyway.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 09 2021, @07:29PM
"The chinamen cannot make electronic components while welded into their homes. "
lmao
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Saturday January 09 2021, @02:12AM (1 child)
I've been looking at AM3+ and FM2 motherboards for a while, for the sole reason that I have one game I can't play because it uses an SSE4.2 instruction (and the code is single-threaded and runs far too slow with Intel SDE). So far I haven't been able to find anything I like that doesn't cost more than what my current board did when it was brand new. These are eight-year-old boards FFS. Must be they didn't sell very many of them. So maybe I'll learn 64-bit assembly and patch those instructions out instead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 09 2021, @04:46AM
I don't remember the *ACTUAL* name for it, but it was mentioned when No Man's Sky first came out in order to work around its mandatory SSE4 opcodes for processors with only SSE2 support. It even worked on K8/K10 AMD chips, although it would cause lag anytime it had to 'thunk' SSE4 operations into longer chains of old x86 instructions.
Good luck getting your game working! On another note: AM3+ boards are worth it because they are the last motherboards predating AMD's equivalent of Intel ME, and have enough performance to play most videogames with x86_64 binaries even today, since GPUs are still the processing cap for most gaming.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday January 11 2021, @05:22PM
I remember somebody saying that trade wars are good and easy to win [cnbc.com]. And that the whole thing was over and we won [ustr.gov]. Now it's been going on for how long now... since March, 2018 you say? And Americans have borne the cost of increased tariffs that whole time along with difficulty finding placement for US goods there due to increased costs on that side.
Maybe Biden can do something about that. I hear something from his opposition that he knows them well.
This sig for rent.