Perhaps you’ve wanted to build the gaming PC of your dreams recently, but high-performance chips have been hard to find. Supplies have been down for quite a while now, so when will you be able to finally build that gaming machine you’ve been wanting to unleash?
Most gamers are looking for two types of high-end computer chips to build a gaming PC around. A Central Processing Unit and a Graphics Processing Unit. These two higher-end chips work together to make a smooth and functional gaming experience for the user. You may ask yourself, "Where can I buy a solid CPU? When can I buy a GPU that fits my needs?" Let’s first discuss the differences between the two and then delve into when they may be available.
A Central Processing Unit, known commonly as a CPU, is responsible for handling a wide range of tasks quickly. This is noted in terms of CPU speed. The faster the chip is able to handle calculations, the better and more efficient the machine runs. It has a broad range of duties and responsibilities to handle, managing every input and output of a computer.
A Graphics Processing Unit is also known as a GPU. GPUs are ideally used for repetitive and highly-similar computing tasks. In addition to video rendering, GPUs also specialize in machine learning, financial sims, risk-modeling, and many other types of scientific computation.
Buying gaming PC parts has been difficult for quite some time now. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, many products and resources have been difficult to keep up with in terms of supply and manufacturing. The lack of manpower in many factories, especially in countries with very strict Covid protocols, has led to a shortage of high-end PC parts, CPUs and GPUs. This has driven up pricing for such PC components and made them difficult to find.
The prognosis for availability is improving. Chip producers have been aggressively increasing production and attempting to ease the supply shortage since 2021. Some are planning large multi-year investments in ramping up manufacturing and back-end capabilities. Expansion is happening more and more outside of Asia, with some manufacturers pairing up with the US government. This supports building domestic capabilities and production enough to reduce supply chain risk. The majority of chips these days are usually produced in South Korea and Taiwan. As the number of chips and overall supply increases in other countries as well as domestically, the shortage of CPU and GPU chips should correct itself.
Most industry experts expect computer chip revenue growth in the mid to high single-digit range for 2022. This should finally help increase supply amid solid demand and pricing. If you’ve been holding off on buying high-end CPU and GPU chips, 2022 may be the right time to finally make the investment toward building the gaming PC you’ve always wanted to build.