Graphics card prices: the horizon is clearing up after months of trouble

As all followers have seen, the price of cryptocurrencies has been in freefall for some time now. An uncomfortable situation for investors with a well-stocked cryptoportfolio, and which also has direct consequences on another problematic market lately: that of graphics cards, the price of which is finally starting to drop significantly after long months of crossing the desert.

Indeed, these components are the central element of the systems which make it possible to undermine – that is to say, very vulgarly, to appropriate – certain cryptocurrencies. The price of GPUs is therefore closely linked to the price of these assets, starting with Ethereum.

Everything comes at the right time to who knows how to wait… the dip cryptos

And since the latter melts like snow in the sun (-50% in one month!), it tends to fall below the break-even point. This means that the mining energy bill becomes higher than the value of the cryptocurrencies thus mined; in this context, the miners’ installations are therefore transformed into gasworks that produce nothing but deadweight losses.

Since they no longer have any financial interest in running their machines, they stop rushing to new cards and try to get rid of their stock. Moreover, the supply chain is also much healthier than it was at the height of the pandemic. And this is reflected in the prices.

Prices generally returning to normal

We are starting to see graphics cards appearing again at much more reasonable prices than in recent months, when these products were regularly offered at two or even three times their original price. Overall, the star models (3080, 3070, 3060 Ti, 3050) are still expensive, but the drop is already noticeable.

At the time of writing, for example, it only took us a few minutes to find an RTX 3080 OC 10G at €929 on LDLC, while this model regularly approached 2000 € a few weeks ago. And on the side of the models that have been a little less popular lately, because they are excessively expensive (RTX 3090, 3080 Ti…), we are even starting to return to prices that we could almost qualify as normal. On the AMD side, there are even GPUs below the original price!

The horizon is clearing up… for now

A situation that requires rubbing your eyes to get to the bottom of it, since we had simply not seen this for almost two years – when the Covid-19 pandemic and the explosion in crypto prices put the hardware market to fire and blood. Excellent news, but we must nevertheless remain cautious.

Indeed, the state of the market also pushes miners to try to limit damage. They are hastily getting rid of GPUs that have sometimes spent long months running intensively at full throttle. Vigilance is therefore required as soon as an advertisement includes the mention “used”; those second-hand graphics cards can be great deals, but it’s still a risky bet; Beware of too-good-to-be-true ads, they probably are!

Note also that Ethereum has timidly started to climb the slope in recent days. Here again, we will therefore have to remain cautious and avoid declaring victory too quickly. But the trend seems to be confirmed in any case; hopefully, therefore, the general public will be able to consider buying a 40X0 generation RTX, which will probably be announced before the end of the year, without being forced to mortgage their house. It was time; now, it only remains to knock on wood for the situation to stabilize… and that it does not fall back as soon as the next generation is released.