How Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are hurting gamers

Sasahara · 10 Jul 2017 at 11:25

Ether will never have an asic as it should be going POW soon and the costs to make an ether asic are too high due to the high memory requirements.

rtho782 · 10 Jul 2017 at 11:28

What a load of ********.

I'm a gamer. I bought my 1080ti on release day. I bought another 1080ti when this craze kicked off. I mine when not playing games, it's paid for the 2nd 1080ti. None of this has harmed me in any way. Hell, additional sales will only assist AMD and nVidia in developing better cards for me to game on.

The only people harmed are those who had no PC, and must build one right now rather than wait a month or two. (profitability is dropping right off already, I'm "only" making £200 a month or so profit now.)

Psycho Sonny · 10 Jul 2017 at 11:50

rtho782 said:
What a load of ********.

I'm a gamer. I bought my 1080ti on release day. I bought another 1080ti when this craze kicked off. I mine when not playing games, it's paid for the 2nd 1080ti. None of this has harmed me in any way. Hell, additional sales will only assist AMD and nVidia in developing better cards for me to game on.

The only people harmed are those who had no PC, and must build one right now rather than wait a month or two. (profitability is dropping right off already, I'm "only" making £200 a month or so profit now.)

your not looking at the bigger picture. people that buy GPU's for mining on don't buy everything else a gamer normally buys.

e.g. i'm thinking about getting a better GPU and a better gaming monitor. i have already ordered a gaming mouse, etc. so where a retailer would get someone like me ordering all these things they are getting miners instead who are only interested in what they need for mining. they are losing out on sales of gaming monitors, gaming cases, etc. miners don't buy cases or monitors as they don't need them.

i'm now going to wait it out. i reckon it will be a lot longer than 2 months before prices stabilise. like your saying your making £200 a month profit atm. it's when they are only making £20 a month or so that people will stop buying.

StrongSad · 10 Jul 2017 at 12:07

rtho782 said:
What a load of ********.

I'm a gamer. I bought my 1080ti on release day. I bought another 1080ti when this craze kicked off. I mine when not playing games, it's paid for the 2nd 1080ti. None of this has harmed me in any way. Hell, additional sales will only assist AMD and nVidia in developing better cards for me to game on.

The only people harmed are those who had no PC, and must build one right now rather than wait a month or two. (profitability is dropping right off already, I'm "only" making £200 a month or so profit now.)

I think the issue here is the availability of GFX cards for gamers to buy...

You can not deny mining is having a huge affect on supply and subsequently price.

Currently there are No Rx 580/570 in stock @OCUK and only 10 GTX 1070's......

I know this will all pass soon enough but mining is having an affect on the market.

Gerinako · 10 Jul 2017 at 12:13

I've clocked on ebay prices seem to be dropping a bit

Anyone else clocked it too?

ubersonic · 10 Jul 2017 at 12:56

andybird123 said:
You can just run multiple psu's - in fact thats exactly what they do.

Generally speaking standard practice is to use a scrap ~300w PSU for the motherboard and a separate 1-2kw gold/platinum PSU for the GPUs. It's only really the gamers/dreamers who are jumping on the bandwagon who are buying £100+ PSUs.

Psycho Sonny said:
your not looking at the bigger picture. people that buy GPU's for mining on don't buy everything else a gamer normally buys.

That only affects retailers though, not AMD/Nvidia or their AIB partners. And it's been the case for over a decade with mining/folding/etc.

So as above no this doesn't really hurt gamers (aside form making cards more expensive) it benefits them as the company making the products they want have more revenue to play with.

Psycho Sonny · 10 Jul 2017 at 14:12

ubersonic said:
That only affects retailers though, not AMD/Nvidia or their AIB partners. And it's been the case for over a decade with mining/folding/etc.

So as above no this doesn't really hurt gamers (aside form making cards more expensive) it benefits them as the company making the products they want have more revenue to play with.

making the cards a lot more expensive is enough to stop gamers from buying at all. less gamers buying gaming rigs means less money spent on other gaming gear which means less money for gaming companies to play with. has a domino effect.

same thing happened in the vegetable oil market. when people found out you can pour vegetable oil straight into old diesel cars. people were buying it all up. veg oil cost 10p a litre. since then it hasn't dropped below £1 a litre. veg oil went up in price 1000% and stayed there forever. this hurts everyone that buys vegetable oil not just those who used it to power their cars. the supermarkets got away with it because diesel is more expensive they could charge £1 a litre and people would still buy it.

it doesn't work in modern diesel engines so nobody should really be using it but the price has never went back down. was essentially a permanent increase and nothing to do with supply and demand.

ubersonic · 10 Jul 2017 at 14:20

Psycho Sonny said:
making the cards a lot more expensive is enough to stop gamers from buying at all. less gamers buying gaming rigs means less money spent on other gaming gear which means less money for gaming companies to play with. has a domino effect.

Not really, increased sales without increased RMAs (miners generally just bin a worn out card) is good for revenue. The only way it would affect any one manufacturers revenue would be if (I.E) an ASUS fanboy couldn't get the RoG card he wanted so puts off buying the RoG motherboard and mouse he wanted, but how many people actually make a build using just components from one specific manufacturer? It's almost unheard of as people usually build using the best components for performance or their budget. Hell, XFX/Sapphire (the two biggest AMD GPU vendors) don't even make motherboards anymore.

Point of note, AMD's record sales due to the mining boom of 2013 will have directly affected how much they had to spend on Ryzen/Vega development, I don't hear a single person complaining their Ryzen CPU is too good.

Psycho Sonny · 10 Jul 2017 at 17:28

I'm talking about retailers and gaming brands not just GPU manufacturers.

Companies like Asus are losing sales on gaming monitors.

Companies like Corsair are losing sales on RAM.

Companies like Logitech are losing sales on gaming mice.

All the gaming companies will have had reduced sales because of GPUs being so expensive

V F · 10 Jul 2017 at 17:59

How will Corsair be losing on memory sales? Memory can cover anything that is needed. I doubt that applies to Asus as well as somebody is always looking for a display.

Telecaster · 10 Jul 2017 at 18:06

ubersonic said:
Generally speaking standard practice is to use a scrap ~300w PSU for the motherboard and a separate 1-2kw gold/platinum PSU for the GPUs. It's only really the gamers/dreamers who are jumping on the bandwagon who are buying £100+ PSUs.

Hmm, where are all these sub £100 1-2kw Platinum PSUs coming from then if only dreamers are paying over £100 for them?

Telecaster · 10 Jul 2017 at 18:08

triss said:
I doubt the major players with 100's of gpu are going to RMA them if the market crashs and it would look pretty odd if one person did RMA 1000 gpu's

That's what happened after the last BTC crash, 4 or 5 of the AIB companies have said that is one of the things that concerns them aside from raking in the cash.

andybird123 · 10 Jul 2017 at 18:43

Telecaster said:
Hmm, where are all these sub £100 1-2kw Platinum PSUs coming from then if only dreamers are paying over £100 for them?

1000w+ Hp server Psu's are around £25-30 and widely available

Telecaster · 10 Jul 2017 at 19:02

andybird123 said:
1000w+ Hp server Psu's are around £25-30 and widely available

And they're plug and play?

andybird123 · 10 Jul 2017 at 19:11

Telecaster said:
And they're plug and play?

Why is that a requirement?
If you wanted to get in to mining and wanted to save hundreds of pounds on power supplies why wouldnt you spend an hour researching how to wire up a power supply.

Even using standard PC power supplies you are going to need a load of extra adapters to get all the pcie connectors you need.

Telecaster · 10 Jul 2017 at 19:18

Because some people, whilst ok behind a keyboard, aren't exaclty savvy, or safe enough, to be rewiring/soldering a 1kw+ PSU.

andybird123 · 10 Jul 2017 at 20:38

Telecaster said:
Because some people, whilst ok behind a keyboard, aren't exaclty savvy, or safe enough, to be rewiring/soldering a 1kw+ PSU.

But that is exactly the point being discussed. The people who even vaguely know what they are doing with mining aren't paying the current stupidly inflated GPU prices, or paying 5 times what they should be on power supplies.

Sasahara · 10 Jul 2017 at 21:00

All well for business miners, but the home miner won't want a server PSU. The noise they make would make it a no for most people and you should have supplementary cooling/aircon as they aren't really designed to run in hot ambient temperatures.

I wouldn't trust a non qualified person wiring up a 100 Amp PSU. Using cheap under spec cables and low quality connectors would create a nice fire hazard. Or one miss wired cable and you GPU is fried.

Also a top end PSU will still be worth a lot in a years time so the cost isn't that high, most come with 5 - 10 year warranties.

jabbz · 10 Jul 2017 at 21:18

How much better are the mining cards compared to the same standard?

ubersonic · 10 Jul 2017 at 22:18

Telecaster said:
Hmm, where are all these sub £100 1-2kw Platinum PSUs coming from then if only dreamers are paying over £100 for them?

You can buy gold/platinum rated HP/Dell PSUs designed for rackmount/blade servers for ~ £25-30 per KW. It's standard practice to use one of these to power the GPUs plus a scrap ~300w PSU for the motherboard. Like I said the people buying the £100+ PSUs for mining are are/were the bandwagon jumpers/dreamers, the same type who were paying GTX1070 prices for used AMD cards with lower profitability because they didn't know any better.

Telecaster said:
And they're plug and play?

If you also buy a £10 adaptor yes, or you can make one yourself if you have a basic understanding of electricity.

Sasahara said:
All well for business miners, but the home miner won't want a server PSU. The noise they make would make it a no for most people

1: Yes they do, at least the smart ones. Why pay an extra £100-£200 for the same performance when you're trying to make money lol.
2: You honestly can't even hear them over the GPUs.