News hardware That’s it, the PS5 and graphics cards are starting to come back in stock at affordable prices
The PS5, Xbox Series X and graphics cards like Nvidia’s popular GeForce RTX 30XX are still in crisis. The shortage of components rages, but the situation seems to be getting better little by little. In this article, we’ll explain everything from the origin of the deficit to the situation in April 2022.
PS5 and graphics cards: a shortage that never ends
The tech world has been on its knees for over 2 years now. The crisis we are going through is huge, and like any massive crisis it cannot be explained in a single sentence. The origin of this painful situation is multifactorial. Do not panic, we will summarize the essence as clearly as possible.
This shortage, which is called “shortage of electronic components”, ultimately affects only one type of component: semiconductors† About the size of a grain of sand, semiconductors are essential for the flow of information in almost all modern computer systems.
These very small chips represent a high-tech concentrate that is extremely complicated to manufacture. The proof: the company TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company), the world leader in this market, has the most expensive factory in the world, no more, no less. This factory is called Fab 18 and the production costs are estimated at 17 billion dollars.
Semiconductors are becoming increasingly important as the technology world is changing rapidly. Very quick. For example, the arrival of 5G installations around the world or the crazy growth of the market for electric cars a large number of semiconductors. As a result, manufacturers struggle to keep up.
On this, a global pandemic has arrived. While much of the world was locked down, people began to renew their technical equipment en masse. And as builders came under new pressure, they also had to deal with the various health measures required by the magnitude of the pandemic.
That’s not all. This global deficit has also been borrowed major geopolitical issues† For example, the way Donald Trump has treated some major Chinese companies such as Huawei has prompted some Asian manufacturers to build up stockpiles of semiconductors. The tech world as a whole relies on Asia, and when the global geopolitical situation is as tense as it is now, it will certainly be felt.
Then we started to have a hard time. Most industrial giants have therefore started to make drastic choices to ration the use of semiconductors. For example, Apple has sacrificed production of many iPads in favor of the iPhone 12 Pro.
That has actually been going on for a long time. Some markets are more favored than others and that’s why you can’t get a good graphics card for a decent price or a PS5 on the shelves of Fnac.
We could continue to explain the semiconductor shortage by telling you, for example, about: energy price rises and raw materials, i.e. freight and production costs, strikes in factories, considerations ecologicalthe explosion of cryptocurrencies who have created “graphics card farms” dedicated to Bitcoin mining… in short, this is all complex and you now have the main keys to understanding this crisis.
PS5, Nvidia or AMD graphics cards… the light returns
Since the beginning of 2022 we have started to keep our heads above water. The pandemic is less present in our daily lives, the main 5G installations have been installed, millions of people have still managed to equip themselves with droplets and bumps… that’s it, supply is gaining ground again on demand.
As a result, GPU prices are finally starting to fall for the first time in far too long. If we look at the price curves, we see a decrease of about 30% in the average prices charged over the first 4 months of 2022. The dynamics are good.
We can even take a very concrete example. The graphics card AMD’s Radeon 6700 XT is $645 on Amazon† Yes yes, you read that right, we are not talking about an ultra-specialized merchant but about Amazon, THE online sales giant that must have a lot of stock. As a reminder, this graphics card, which competes with Nvidia’s famous GeForce RTX 3070, has been listed everywhere for more than 700 euros for almost 2 years.
Be careful, even if there is an improvement, the market has not returned to normal and does not appear to be ready. According to several expert analysts in the field, we should certainly not expect a miracle before 2023. The war in Ukraine (and ensuing embargoes) and new Chinese detentions could extend the crisis by several years.
Meanwhile, it happens more and more often that graphics cards are offered at fair prices (more expensive than the advertised prices but correct given the current situation). Do not hesitate to check stocks regularly.
- Check stock graphics cards at Grosbill
- Check stock graphics cards in Rue du Commerce
- Check stock of graphics cards on Materiel.net
- Check the stock of graphics cards on LDLC
- Check stock graphics cards at Top Buy
- Check the stock of graphics cards at Cdiscount
The same goes for PS5 and Xbox Series X. At JV Tech, one of our jobs is to keep an eye on the stock for next-gen consoles. Of course, we don’t warn you about price drops at scalpers, but that doesn’t stop us from seeing them on a daily basis.
We have ultra-responsive resources that let us know up to the minute as soon as regular-priced PS5 or Xbox Series X stocks are spotted somewhere. Each time we send you the information in a special news item. Recently, replenishments have been increasing and, moreover, they are lasting longer. A few months ago, the stock shortage could happen in just seconds. Now it always takes a few minutes, sometimes even a few tens of minutes.
Again, don’t hesitate to check the stock status yourself and to create customer accounts with the various resellers. This remains the best way to get a PS5 as soon as possible.
- See PS5 stock at Amazon
- View PS5 Shares at Fnac
- View PS5 Shares at Cdiscount
- View PS5 Shares at Micromania
- View PS5 Shares at Cultura
- View PS5 Shares at Boulanger
