Why It's Safe to Buy GPUs Today

If you're looking to buy a GPU this year, consider yourself lucky. Any graphics processor right now is at a fairly reasonable price whether you're going for a GTX or an AMD. Either way, they're worth every bang for your buck as long as they meet your criteria as well as your PC's specs. So why is it safe to buy a GPU now? Let's break it down, shall we? 

The Bitcoin Era

Two years ago, prices of GPUs skyrocketed, going as high as double their original suggested retail prices.This was due to the short buy expensive period of the Bitcoin bubble from late 2017 to the early 2018. During this time, it was pretty frustrating for potential PC buyers to purchase a 1060 Ti and even more so with a 1080 Ti because of the Bitcoin bubble. 

If you aren't aware why Bitcoins affected the PC market, it was because a lot of people started picking up the cryptocurrency trend and thought it was the best time to start investing back then. Of course, if you want to earn Bitcoins, you need to "mine". Not like Minecraft kind of mine but rather through digital harvesting. I'm not the most professional when it comes to explaining how Bitcoin works but I do know the general process that you need a powerful PC in order to extract Bitcoins off of online cryptocurrency mines. 

The thing is, you don't just invest in Bitcoins, you mine them. And to do so, you are required to have beefy PC, as I have said previously. That means requiring the latest GPUs, a powerful CPU capable of overclocking without causing too much damage, a very strong motherboard and a whole lot of RAM... lots and LOTS of RAM. As in 16 GB of RAM. And to top it all off, your monthly electricity bill also skyrockets. I'm not even kidding; some folks who have been mining have said they had to pay double than their usual bills because of how much energy Bitcoins accumulate. 

During this time, the demand for PC peripherals were at an all-time high. But instead of using the GPU to play games at high settings, they use it for mining. And with that, prices for GPUs as well as CPUs, RAM and water coolers were high. So high that they went beyond the MSRP. 

It's a bit scary when you think about it. While Bitcoin mining may be a bit obsolete now and its value has decreased significantly, there are still people mining cryptocurrency. But these days, I highly do not advise it. In fact, a lot of people gave up on mining especially midway through 2018 when the Bitcoin exchange became low and everyone turned back to the Dollar. 

And so, when that happened, the market price of GPUs and other PC specs slowly returned back to their original prices. Right now, in the current year, it's very safe to buy one whether you want to opt for an Nvidia, Palit or even AMD. We are facing a change of pace in the PC market now; Nvidia and AMD have announced a new set of GPUs that are going to be much different from the usual GTX and RX releases. They're promising something more cost-efficient yet consistent in performance at the same time. 

A New Turning Point for Modern GPUs

Right now, Nvidia and AMD declared the new Navi series - a more convenient GPU that uses less energy while maintaining turned up graphics. They say it will be cheaper but we'll let the market decide for that. However, Nvidia still promises to bring big bad wolves into the PC scene. Just when you thought the GTX Ti was tough, wait till you get a load on their upcoming Super GTX. Yes, that's the name and judging by its title, you can tell they're going overboard with power and performance.

And when a brand declares a new series, that always means one thing: its current set of items in the market will have lower prices. This marks a great opportunity for you to buy whatever GPU you like because their MSRP will become permanently lower, with the exception of the newly-released GTX 2070, that is (see the review here).

But if you're opting for that 80 series that you always wanted to impress the gamer girl you found on Discord, now is the perfect time to do so.

It's Not Just the GPUs on Sale

Every brand synchronizes with other companies to match the requirements and run the PC properly. And since Nvidia and AMD announced new GPUs, it won't be a surprise to see new CPUs by Intel and AMD Ryzen, new motherboards from ASUS and Gigabyte and new sets of SSDs from the likes of Kingston, Seagate and Toshiba. And when those announcements drop, so too will the current hardware prices.