4 ms·
In light of the chip shortages everyone is talking about, I've been scratching my head about all the laptops, desktops and AIOs on the market - there are millio
by bserge 5y ago
In light of the chip shortages everyone is talking about, I've been scratching my head about all the laptops, desktops and AIOs on the market - there are millions of them, from dozens of manufacturers (or so it seems).
All soldered down but using modern chips from Intel and nVidia, same chips everyone claims are in short supply.
Who is buying these things?
What happens to them when they're not sold?
Where are all the old ones going?
Is anyone even bothering to desolder older generation chips like Intel 9xxx CPUs and nVidia 10xx GPUs and even RAM?
It has always seemed weird to me, but now that building a desktop has become more expensive than it should be it just seems insane.
- yellow_lead 5y agoOnes with good GPUs are being bought, chopped/stripped, and sold on eBay / Craigslist. My observation, anyways.
- YetAnotherNick 5y agoYes, why does the chip shortage only effect high end card/car chips. I would be pretty darn surprised if laptop/smartphones have less number of chips than cars, still the former industry doesn't seem to be affected by chip shortage even though they sell a lot more pieces for lot less price so the later industry would be willing to pay more per chip.
- maccard 5y agoI'm an uninformed consumer but if I had to guess chip binning plays a huge part in the availability of parts. If a production line can produce X chips per day with 20% highest quality, 30% "mid range" and 40% "low end" (with 10% waste) you'll have 2x as many low end chips available as high end ones.
- wmf 5y agoThe chip shortage doesn't mean no chips, just fewer. Vendors like Dell, HP, and Lenovo locked in long-term contracts with fixed pricing which enables them to still build PCs. Store shelves also show anti-survivorship bias where the stuff people want is sold out while the stuff no one wants is still on the shelves.