There's still time to buy before prices go UP

I said last month you should buy GPUs ASA up and and you need a GPU, you've been thinking about getting a GPU at these prices because for sure prices are way up this month. This one store that we track GPUs prices bleeding red but this is pricewatch where we look at data not emotions. So let's go into those prices. Nvidia around 30% price increase. Is that really the case on the market? And on the flip side, how is AMD looking? Are they going to capitalize on Nvidia's price hike or will they also increase prices? We'll take up all of that this episode if now is the time to buy or hold MAC hardware. And they're a great place to buy a rig or buy a component for upgrading. And one question we always hear in the shop is Windows. [music] Windows. Not at all. Okay. Start from scratch. We need to create an account. So, it's sign up. Super simple. Password. Okay, so now we're logged in and so we're going to go with the MS Win1 Pro OEM key. So click that. You notice they also have other software may MS Office sila. Let's stick with Windows for now. Buy now HS25. Apply and it becomes $25. So, almost $10 off. Quite good. Submit order. And what I really like about this site may local as in Philippine payment option. So, my G-Cash, my QR, the QR Dio. I have my phone ready. Pay now. One payment lang guys. One payment. Do not scan. Do not pay repeatedly. Got it. I have my BPI ready to go. Just point it. Swap. So, register QR in the BPI app. Boom. Bang. Super simple. You notice pay confirm. It will toss us back to the site and you just need to go to user center where you'll see all of your orders. And here is the key. Copy. Paste into Windows and your Windows is activated at a fraction of the cost. Welcome to the shop here at PriceWatch. Usually, we talk about GPU and CPU prices, but now we're going to do something different [music] to give you a better idea. Entry- level, mid-range, and high-end. Sort of what you could have expected from the market last August. And all of these builds that we do, you can see them on our info page. So, website, it's on the URL. All kinds of builds for different purposes, whether for work, for gaming, AI research. I try to keep the info page as updated as possible. And there are price estimates also. [music] If you're looking for aesthetics, if you're looking for performance, all of the builds are there. So, this is my notes for this one. The most entry- level build we did last August was at 47K. Pretty decent actually for that price. So, your usual entry- level AM4, not [music] even entry- level. You can get lower, but generally we recommend at least the R55600 Mo Gigabyte A520 MKV2 for less than 4,000 pesos. So, that's one of the better priced AM4 MOS that we've seen. beats the B550M versions at least in terms of price. So, if you're looking for entry level, the A520M, that's the kind of spec you'd be looking at. 3050, to be honest, you know, in better times, you could have gotten a better GPU, but these are not better times. [music] This 3050 for this type of build, 16 GB of RAM, DDR4 expected for this price range. And for DDR4, actually, for most use cases, we don't recommend going beyond 16 GB, especially for DDR4. More RAM is always nice to have, but what's also nice to have is money, and you're saving money and not leaving a lot of performance on the table if you just go with 16 GB. The PSU, 550 W FSP, not the greatest PSU, but reliable in fairness. Itong HV Pro, we've sold a lot. Very few have come back, and it is a good price. Can a 550 W PSU handle the CPU, the 5600 and the 3050 GPU? Yes. Not much headroom for upgrading, but at this price point, you just want to get the best bang for your buck right now. 550 watt FSPSU, Kite Bronze, Kite non-Modular. This is a pretty good price. And the case, this is one of the cheapest cases we've ever sold. It's around 1,000. Perhaps the cheapest case in Tread Sonic. I'm not quite sure why we had it actually. I'm not sure if this customer requested it and then we liked it so much that we got more. For the price point, again, it's not bad. Lastly, the storage. This is one of the better entry-level models. So, it's a Zai 7100S. We've been dealing a lot with the YMTC models and so far they have proven to be reliable, but to be honest, it's only since the RAM apocalypse or you know, storage prices have gone up that we even started looking at YMTC because they only started expanding their production. Demand for these RAM and the storage any price so far. Okay, man. In fairness, performance YMTC for [music] us. And then rounding out the build, Windows 11 Pro Activation. To be honest, if you're really trying to save some money, you can go with Windows unactivated has completely all the same features. Microsoft, [music] it's going to keep telling you, asking you, bugging you, octate, oi, activate. But it is an option if you want to save some money to go unactivated. 5% discount on customer because we have a long-standing promo where if you meet four requisites, so you're the first customer for that kind of order for the day. You come in physically to the shop, you order a full rig and all of the parts for that rig are on hand. We don't need to custom order anything. Those four requisites, you get a 5% discount already. And this customer met that. So actually the total would have been higher p. But the 5% discount is nice and it is usable. Even at this price range, less 5%, [music] you can get three games, one AAA game. With the money that you saved just shopping with us, next up, a more expensive build. This one is at 160K. So, we're doing the most entry- level kind of average range. So, this is the average range. Different shops will have different price ranges. So, it and ours also varies from month to month. But for 160K, this customer got 7800 X3D. So, AM5 platform. At this price range, usually you would go with the AM5 platform already, but still an M8X motherboard. MATX motherboards budget me cheap. But over the past 2 years or so, we've seen a real trend where they're legitimate builds. You might want to go MATX because an ATX case is too big for you. Occasionally, MATX motherboards, but they give you the same performance. So, a lot of the builds now have been trending towards the smaller side, and MATX is the sweet spot. You don't want to go full ITX, which can be expensive [music] and small and hotter. You also don't want to go full ATX, which is bigger, roomier, but also takes up more space. So, MATX, even at this price range, very much an option these days. 9070 XT GPU, great performance for the price right now, huh? So, this is the king of the hill of AMD. If you don't want to go with Nvidia because Nvidia is very very expensive, [music] the mid tier cards of Nvidia, let's say the 5060 Ti, 5070 or sometimes even more expensive than the 9070 XT. So if you want performance, you're okay with maybe fudging around with the drivers a little bit. AMD 9000 series 9070 XT, good choice. And then the RAM for DDR5, you can still go with 16 GB. Usually we recommend 16 GB for DDR4. For DDR5, it really depends. Okay, 16 GB for DDR5. But for this price range, 32 GB, I mean, you're matching the performance that you're going to get from the 7800 X3D. Very capable CPU for everything, particularly for gaming. GPU, the best of AMD currently. Then 32 GB of RAM. PSU Corsair RM850X. I think this one was a request by the customer. And of course, you know, the customer is paying for it. We give them what they want. But this goes into an issue I see often when people talk about their builds online comments, etc. And many times the people that comment forget that their opinion doesn't matter and my opinion, the shop opinion doesn't matter also customer. And we give the customer what they want. Generally, we would not recommend off the top of our heads a Corsair PSU and 850 W. Actually, you could have gone with 750 W for this build. Although headroom, it's a trade-off again between balance and budget. Another thing that, you know, comments sometimes forget. We don't have only budget. We have different priorities builds because everybody has their own aesthetic, their own opinion, has their own wants. And ultimately, the one who decides is the guy who's paying. So 850 watts here, not super egregious. It's it's completely fine. You have more headroom. Maybe you're going to upgrade to a bigger GPU later on, better CPU. 850 W is fine. The case CM Elite 302 Cooler Master, you're really getting what you pay for. They're a little bit more expensive, but you're getting quality. The looks, you can get the looks elsewhere. I mean this is not generic but it is very similar to many other cases on the market but with cooler master sheet metal when you open up the case you know it's quality so the 302 pretty decent the storage again plus talked about it already in [music] the previous build this one actually we can't get it anymore the 7100s walana sold out na so we have a different YMTC model but the 7100S was pretty good and it wasn't even we were our go-to storage was something was a different model from YMTC before sold out. So, it was that one, then the 7100S [music] and then uh currently I think it's the E7 that is our [music] go-to now. And this build does have a third party CV cooler. So, it's the Deep Cool AK620. Very reliable cooler. I know from experience because my air cooler at the shop is an AK620 digital hardware. All of us here, the techs, myself, we're all PC enthusiasts. So when we can recommend something, when we carry them in the shop, usually we know it's because their [music] quality either because we've used them in many builds or we've used them ourselves in our own builds or build because monitor. So the tough DG34 at 24K. [music] To be honest, I don't remember the specs of this monitor. Generally, I like the quality of ASUS monitors. We've reviewed a lot of them in the past. Again, my personal monitor. It's an ROG OLED PG48 UQ for the old ones out there. Generally, I like the color out of the box of the ASUS monitors. I don't feel like I need to fudge around with the settings to get the kind of colors that pop in very vibrant colors. So, I don't have experience with this particular tough VG34, but I expect that same level of quality. And then Windows 11 activation. So, total came around to 160 actually minus the monitor. So mga 136 nanga very decent build actually. Um, I was surprised. I thought 160 when I was reviewing my notes before this 160 was total monitor. Not too bad. And this one, the most expensive we did last August was 249K. And customers, I mean, quarter of a million pesos. Quite, you know, quite a big chunk of change. But what do you get for that amount of money? 9800 X3D. So the best gaming CPU that you can get right now, we talked about before gaming, it's the X3D architecture, the way the chip is designed. So there's an extra cache and everything that's great for applications gaming which are really more single core use rather than multi-core multi-thread. So this is an ITX motherboard to be honest like feeling the motherboard could have been better. >> [music] >> So this we have a B650i consideration. It's very difficult to get an X870 ITX motherboard now like I I do not know. We've looked and looked like available locally cannot get it at least through the local distributors. May B850i actually that became available but not before this build. So, ITX for AM5 B850i you can get, but sort of the go-to modeling is the B650i. And even that was around 11,000 pesos. So, I mean, you know, I'm going to be upfront. I would have preferred a at least a B850i for this build, but you everything is a balance. It will serve its purpose well. N man, this one is actually our go-to RAM. So, it's 2x16 you GSkill flare, low profile, so it's easy to stick into an ITX build. We don't [music] need to worry about clearance. Uh CL36 6,000 MHz at around 30,000. That's sort of the range that you [music] would expect. Now, some people want faster timings like CL30. Although some other people man want are okay with slightly slower timings, CL48 for cheaper. So, we can still get you Crucial Pro RAM. A lot of customers have been asking for that as well. Customer also did not scrimp on the GPU 5070 Ti at around 82,000 pesos. I think I'm I'm not too sure if this was bought prior to the price increases as we'll talked about in this price watch episode around 30% Nvidia GPUs and we're starting to see that effect on the market. We're going to talk about that later in [music] on in this episode. This one before we actually saw the price hike [music] taking effect. But 5070Ti now for 82,000 um is not bad. I think cuz like the 5080s now if you look at the price watch data definitely more expensive than this but around the increase in cost that you would expect jumping from a 507Ti to a 5080. So this was a pretty good price for that card at that time. Probably more expensive now. Then we have an FSP dagger for PSUs. I mentioned that I like FSP for PSUs. The dagger is their SFX PSU. So SFX for small form factor builds. No problems using it. Generally reliable. 850 W for this build. Uh I think is more appropriate. You have a you know beefy graphics card. Then you have a 9800 X3D. So this one, yes, I would have recommended also a 850 watt PSU. The case Mushroom D Black sort of underrated. We do see mushrooms from time time to time and we do use them in our builds, but they're not as immediate a go-to option for customers. Let's say like uh Lean Lee or ATX cases. Uh Jonesbo, I think actually this one we don't have a supplier for this, but this one gets asked often also. I'm not sure what this guy is doing in the shop to be honest for cleaning or for assembly. Uh but Mushroom we have had a build lug on this and yeah it's um good airflow cases and we do have a lot of experience with them. So it's an option if you want ITX. Also you notice with the mesh room you can have an AIO. So this one it's amazing what they can pack now into an ITX build. So this one is a 240m MRAD AIO. You have a big GPU. You have a 240 mm RAD AIO. Then we have our usual ZIA 7100S per 2 TB. Ah, and again I did not notice that this build has a monitor. It's a beautiful OLED customordered the MSI 341 CQPX at 60,000. So this is a very good choice. Um I I haven't tried this particular monitor. MSI, if you want to send me some OLED monitors for review, I would be more than happy to take a look. In general, you know, I if [music] budget, I I suggest OLED OLED, you really makes a difference, you know. I mean, so what games, but if your monitor can't show you that graphic fidelity, can't show you that higher resolution. So, I I don't remember the specs for this. I'm sure it's at least 2K, probably around what 2 280 Hz or something. Don't know the specs, but based I'm there, man. Game uh for 60,000 for a 34 in OLED. Not bad. And I do I remember sort of seeing the boys trying this out. The customer asked us to make sure everything was okay with the monitor. So, we turned on the display, made sure there were no dead pixels and everything. Uh my my initial impression, yeah, very nice quality, very crisp, good image. But what I really like about this pairing is that build, you have a 900 X3D, you have a 570Ti, and he also didn't hold back on the last mile. Last bridge to having great [music] gaming performance is the monitor and 60K for a 34 in OLED. Big chunk of change, but you know, if you're enthusiast, if you're a gamer, you'll really feel the difference. It's well worth it up to now years later OLED. But at the same time, every time I look at it, I'm like image quality. So, that was the entry level mid-range and most expensive build that we did in Hardware Sugar for August. For more inspiration, we have that info page link below. Scroll through there. I try to update it as much as possible [music] as much as I can. Different builds, different price ranges. Go there for inspiration. Starting off with some good news. N man, very small good news. The prices for the 3050 and the 3060 12 GB have gone down by not that much, you know. 3050 down by 400 pesos. >> Yes. >> Oh, keep that there. >> And then the 3060 12 GB down by 400 pesos also. And that's the only good news for Nvidia GPUs you're getting this month cuz everything else to mas 5060 from around 23 now it's around 25. 5060 Ti 16 GB from 35 to 38 570 43 to 46 5070Ti lucky an 11,000 peso price increase 5080 around a 6,000 peso price increase 5090 wild an almost 55,000 peso increase and that is so just we like also tracking If this is the most expensive we've ever seen this card for sure 5090 panalo maybe I should color code that now is the most I don't know wait sorry let me backtrack we've actually seen it even more expensive so yeah good news price increase the most expensive we've seen the 5090 is at 312,000 it's around 311,000 so not the all-time high but very close to the all-time high in contrast the cheapest we've seen it is around 154k Okay, last September. So 1 year ago. One year ago 154,000 l average price 5090. Now it is at 311,000. More than a 100% price increase. Wild. So that's the bad news. We're bleeding red. But the good news is at least so far 30% price increase. >> Look at my car. Because around the start of August, Nvidia said that they would that's the markup that they would put or that's the increase that they were eyeing 30%. So how come we said last August to buy now because there's lag time may latency the new market. Nvidia says prices will go up but that doesn't trickle down right away yet to the suppliers the distributors and then the retailers. So you still had a window August to buy it at the old prices. Customer when he initially approached us we quoted the old prices. It's like 1 week 10 days ready to buy sorry out of stock GPU at that price. We had already sold all of our old inventory because we don't raise the prices at the old prices. We kept it at our old prices. We could have sold them for more unfair customers. And if you know anything about hardware sugar, we really try to be as customer friendly as possible. But when the supply is out, it's out. we need to restock at the new price. And I think he felt maybe that we were trying to cheat him. We explained, he asked for the timing, price increase, etc., etc. We're very clear sequencing. And again, we don't try to gouge the customer. If we got them at the cheaper older prices, we will give them to you at the cheaper older prices. Moral of the story, if you're ready to buy, buy now because prices are very unexpected. But that's the market. But I think he did feel bad. But going back to the better side of the news, nothing is really good, but you know, not as bad news. We're not yet seeing that 30%. 5060. So this is only a price increase of around 10%. Yes, prices have been going up. It's not that great. Although this is kind of below the current market like if we were to restock now from our suppliers 25k it would it be more than 25k. So there is still a window. Um we're not seeing the full 30% yet at least based on market prices. So supplier side 30%. But like timo like what we're seeing now on the market 5060 Ti around a 10% increase also in line with the 5060 5070 less than 10% price increase 5070 Ti this one is a big one um around a 15% price increase 5080 not too bad actually less than a 10% price increase 5090 this is around a 20% price increase very roughly 25 30% price for the 5090. So, yes, all of the new models of Nvidia have gone up in pricing, but some of them are still better than others. Some of them, like the 5060, if you're in the market and you really want the 5060 AMD, I would suggest buying now. Tata P based on what we're seeing on the supplier side. And speaking of AMD, how are they doing? the 960 XT 16 GB which was supposed to be you bang for buck you not entry level mid-range nto but at a very good price it's at around 29,000 now not that great you a few months ago maybe like March at 24,500 that was excellent value for money but you put that in comparison with Nvidia so you're looking at 25,000 for a 5060 29,000 for a 9060 XT 16 GB ABS. I'd to be honest rather go with the AMD card. You're getting more VRAM. Performance is better. Yes, the drivers of AMD are not that great sometimes, but it's honestly quite all right already 9000 series nil. So, it's not the excellent value for money it was before. But considering the state of the market, 1960 XT 16 GB, not bad. 1970 actually dropped down very slightly in price. actually not even very slightly by around 1,400. So not too shabby. And then the 9070 XT so you king of the hill nila also dropped down but it very slightly by only around 100 pesos. Actually we're seeing a lot more inquiries now for the AMD GPUs particularly for the 9070 XT. We expect prices. So there has been a price increase also. I mean it's not we're not seeing it yet here in the market data but there has been a price increase also for the AMD 9000 series GPUs but not as bad. So we're expecting more and more people to start considering AMD currently may supplies n man and the price is relatively stable noticeable price increase but nothing compared to the Nvidia GPUs Intel no data since May this year. RIP GPU program Intel. On the CPU side of things, always more stable. And there is better news here on this front. Slight price decrease for the 9800 X3D by around 100, no 1,100 pesos or so. Slight 300, sorry, slight 100 or so peso increase for the 7800 X3D. Very mild. 7600X, no price change. 5600X, decent price drop of around 800 pesos. And then the 5600G, no price difference. Intel CPUs also went down slightly by around 500 pesos for the Ultra 9285K. Drop also for the 4900K around a,000. So not too bad. Still no data, still nothing available for the 14700K. and then no price difference for the ultra 7265 KF. So this is not unexpected. You we're not expecting CPU prices to go up. Um the next generation of AMD is about to come out. I mean you know relatively about to come out. Maybe end of the year I think or start of next year then you know I'm always so surprised when CPU generations change. So this will be the second gen of the AM5. So we have the 9000 series. Sorry third gen pala. We have the 7000 series, then 9000, and then itong next one up. I can't remember they call it Zen 6 or something, but we are expecting a refresh soon for the AMD CPUs. So, that was the summary, but we're all about the data, so we're going to do a per shop deep dive like we always do. The way we calculate prices is that we manually, as in literally manually, sorry Ren. She goes to the websites of the four largest PC retailers in the country and then we get the average price data of the models that we're tracking. So we don't want to give any other shop free publicity. That's what our YouTube channel is for for us. But so we give them aliases, but these aliases are consistent. So wedge that we're talking about now, it's the same wedge from all the way back when Joker and Wash. Then see Husker, we swapped out a shop um I think maybe start of the year this year because the other shop was not so responsive anymore setting updating their online prices. Uh so hopefully through this method we're getting a snapshot the average price for that model on the market. And we always get the for the GPUs we always get two fan and then the cheapest we can get for that particular model and like gra wedge wedge is insane. Every GPU we track in the red meaning price increase. Husker ganun except for one card the 3050 s wash gan everything red except for one card the 3050 and perhaps maybe joker. So I I don't I won't reveal Cena's Joker, but their online store, nothing. No GPU prices, at least for the models we track. For CPUs, for all the models we track, nothing. They had nothing listed. So maybe we should start swapping out Joker soon. Um well, I'll I'll consider that to be honest. Like we're still posting the B580, but it hasn't been there for several months. the 1650. I'm actually surprised now. We haven't been able to find any because this is the current generation. No cards die generation par Nvidia's bringing them out to satisfy demand. The demand is crazy. Let me caveat that. 1650 we can't find. So 4060 consistently also we can't find 4060 Ti. Um we can actually source that. If you're looking for a 4060 Ti, we can custom order that for you. So maybe um we'll swap out the 4060 for the 4060 Ti and then remove 1650 um naman for next month. So wedge all price increases um before so we won't do it individually but you know just to give you an idea before their 3050 was 70,400 now it is wild 18,870 but you that's why it's important to get a sampler or the average price on the market you notice the other stores we track bumaba naman price for the 3050 so this is actually quite expensive for 3050 around 18,900 00 because you can get a 3050 from Husker at 16,000 and uh Zotac also for around that price. So if price is the ultimate consideration, yes, you really want to canvas and different different retailers have different prices talaga. Of course, apples and oranges brands. This is a Zotak, this is a colorful, this is a Gigabyte. But the way we control for that is we try to get we we only list the cheapest model that the store carries. So it cheapest 3050 from these stores. And then to this is the cheapest 5070 5060 560Ti 16 GB that all of the stores carry. the 5060Ti 16 GB before was kind of like a stretch a little bit you know but you were kind of getting the performance that you were paying for but now um it's at 38,000 just last month it was at 35 and then actually you can go 34 33 although we have seen this kind of pricing already um last May 38 and April so again yes there have been price increases but this is not the full depth yet of the increases that Nvidia has warned us about. So that's wedge for the Nvidia GPUs, wedge for AMD GPUs, price decrease for the 9070 XT just very slightly um on the averages. So these are the same that we reported last tab. The 1960 XT 16 GB has actually gone up, but then the higherend models have gone down, but just very slightly. Husker has all of the AMD cards. So, does actually Husker is the only one with all of the AMD cards that we track. So, aside from the price increases, which I've already commented on, nothing really striking about these prices. Um, this sort of what we would consider in line with the new normal except like so Husker has a really good price on uh 5080 around 85,550 everybody else. So, 94K and then it 100,000. So again, looking around really matters. We have an 85,500, then jump to 94K and then jump to almost 100,000. Of course, different brands will have different prices and the stores price that accordingly, but if you're just out for the cheapest one, um, Ino3D is not bad. I mean, I if I were in the market for a 5080, Eno 3D from Husker. But if you want better warranty, like you know, you want to be assured or we might be even be able to reach this price. Um, if you're looking for a 5080, message us on Facebook. We might be able to get it as a custom order. We don't have any on stock now. 5060. This is a great price for a 5060. Um, around 23K. Although Husker naman is well known for their prices. They're not so well known for their warranty. Uh, I've heard a lot of complaints about them. not bashing other shops since anonymous naman sila. So ion not much to report really on the individual shop Nvidia GPU side also on the AMD side. Shifting now to the CPUs um much easier on the eyes. So no price increases and actually price drops in certain models. The 9800 X3D from Wash is looking particularly good at 25,000. If I had an AM5 platform and I were a gamer, I would that's, you know, one of the most lauded CPUs for gaming and 25,000 is not a bad price. Everything else either no change or price drop. So, where are we in the market? I mentioned that I would conclude whether now it's a good time to buy or not. Definitely, we haven't seen yet the price increases, the full price increase on Nvidia GPUs. If you're looking to angle for an AMD GPU, there there's no upside in waiting, but because I don't think prices will go down, but I don't think that prices will go up drastically anytime soon on the AMD GPUs. You Nvidia GPUs, particularly for the more mid-range or entry level like the 5060. Yes, that one you might want to buy now if because most likely prices will still go up on some of these models for sure. We already seen prices go up on our distributor supplier side. If you're doing a full rig, um we still see a lot of customers as and as you saw in the earlier segment, that's the kind of range that you can expect now from the market. So you can still get decent computers man. Are you spending a bit more? Yes. talaga. Um, there are some tricks that you can do to try to get it at a better price, but you know, it's the market is what it is. We can do maybe like decent builds. That a decent build was around 50k. Now, you know, it's around 70, not going to lie, around 80, you know, that's that's decent mid-range. You're getting good performance already for the price. You're getting decent performance. And then, you know, entry level really is around 50 now. And then we've had builds at, you know, 120 patas. And so those are the performance builds. Now, there are ways to get better value for money. For instance, like buying secondhand, which you can also do through us. We're the only PC store that allows our customers. We allow people to list. We allow hardware sugar customers to list on our secondhand list. And it's a very brisk trade and we don't get any cut. Uh, and it's also nice consolidate secondhand list so that if you are in the market for a new PC, you might want to mix and match some new parts from us and then some secondhand parts from our secondhand list. Will there be good news since Christmas? Historically, no. Historically, prices do not go down, at least for our market in Christmas. And then considering everything that's happening now, I wouldn't expect it. Um, but as always, we will have price watch every month. See you next month. You never know, right? Peace in Iran and peace in the world and drop AI and suddenly GPU prices are down again by 50%. I mean, you never know, right? Roll back roll back GPUs. I wouldn't bet on it, but you never know. Thanks for [snorts] watching.