Here's the deal: crypto mining is notoriously unpredictable. It just had this massive explosion recently, which sent GPU demand through the roof, far beyond what anyone anticipated. It reminds me of how AMD overproduced GPUs back around 2014; when the mining craze suddenly cooled off, they were stuck dumping inventory at massive discounts left over from the surge.
Jen-Hsun Huang, the CEO of NVIDIA
Nvidia Quote : Strong demand in the cryptocurrency market exceeded our expectations. Cryptocurrency mining accounted for a higher percentage of revenue than the previous quarter. Keep in mind that’s very difficult for us to quantify down to the end customers view. Our main focus remains on our core market, as cryptocurrency will likely remain volatile.
The reality is that a miner looks at those inflated prices differently than a gamer does. To a miner, a high price tag is just a business expense that eventually pays itself off through profit. For a gamer, buying hardware at those rates is nothing more than a pure loss.
I think it would pass, considering how much they used to cost back in the day—it's not like $433 it’s some huge mistake. It's more likely they just forgot to hike up the prices 😁
Forget about swapping out the CPU—you’re already sitting on one of the absolute best options available for that socket.
Check out this CPU support list from Gigabyte. It’s basically the roadmap you need if you're planning an upgrade or building a new rig. Just make sure you verify your specific processor against their compatibility table before you drop any cash on hardware. It saves a massive headache later on.
Other CPUs just offer higher clock speeds and more L2 cache, but you can always overclock yours to bridge that gap.
I see that GTX 970 is gone already—probably snapped up instantly. When deals like that pop up, there’s no room for second-guessing or hesitation; you just have to pull the trigger immediately.
As for the rest of the GPUs, I’d suggest holding off for a bit. Intel mentioned they've rolled out a new batch of chips, so NVIDIA will likely follow suit soon. Plus, crypto prices have been in a freefall for a while now... I don't think these inflated prices are going to stick around forever.
Look, it all comes down to the risk you're willing to take when buying used hardware. Lately, the GTX 970 and even the R9 390 have become way too pricey compared to the R9 290, making them a bad value proposition right now. As for those cards sitting around the $400 mark—like the HD 7850 or the GTX 660—$233 taking a gamble on a GTX 760 is definitely worth the risk. You aren't sinking massive amounts of cash into them, yet they still function as perfectly solid GPUs.
If having a warranty is a priority for you, then you really ought to be hunting for GTX 960 models.
You can actually snag a GTX 760 for about $700 and $250. If you're looking at higher price points, the only thing worth considering is the R9 290 vapor-x for $500 . Around 900-$333, you might find a GTX 960 that still carries a warranty . Out in the States—say, a massive tech hub like Austin—it makes total sense to pick up used GTX 780s or GTX 780Tis for next to nothing during this GPU shortage. But here? You either can't find them anywhere, or some guy is trying to charge you an absolute fortune .
Oh, and the guy who actually needed the printer ended up being perfectly fine with it. 😁
My neighbor picked up that HP ($90, it was a great deal from Target), so I set it up and got everything installed for him. He tried printing a single photo, but it came out all smudged and pixelated, and then suddenly—he tells me the black ink isn't working at all and it just refuses to print 🤷
So, he headed straight to customer service to file a claim, and a few days later they swapped it out for a new one. Everything’s working perfectly now.
I was out in Indianapolis. To be honest, they advertised this great deal on a printer and some mediocre offer on a laptop, plus a bunch of "other stuff." I specifically went there to check out what was in that "other stuff" category, only to find out they didn't actually have anything else besides the printer and the laptop—and the first 50 customers just ended up with some cheap mousepad.
The price looks solid, especially considering you're including an aftermarket cooler. You might want to try listing it at 1100-$400 first, then you can always scale back if you don't see any bites.
You’ve essentially described the exact same PC setup several times now—which means its market value sits right around $1000 (+/- 100-$67, depending on who you're negotiating with). You don't need to list it every single time; just offer to cover the price difference if you're looking at a trade.
I find laptops a bit harder to pin down since their value depends so much on physical condition and remaining warranty, but if we're talking about gaming performance, they simply can't compete with that desktop build.
Don't waste your time Googling it; just check if it's actually throttling or not. At 3.5GHz, you shouldn't be seeing any issues unless the thermal paste was applied poorly or the cooler isn't seated right. Also, watch your voltage—for a motherboard like this, you definitely need to stay under 1.40V, though even with that setting, hitting north of 4GHz should be totally doable.