I’d check the used market and try to buy a used 1070, 1070Ti or 1080 before spending $400-$500 on a card in the 1650 range, myself. The price is still lousy but you’ll get better performance per dollar. Looking at Facebook Marketplace and OfferUp, I see a decent number of them in that range though your mileage may vary based on geography. Can’t speak for the silent mode stuff though since that’ll vary from card model to model and you’re stuck based on what’s in the local market.
My guess would be the prices won’t ever come back to the old levels (people are willing to pay the new prices), but the increases might stop. That way, in 3 or 4 years they’ll look reasonable again.
Can the used market be trusted? I kind of assume all used video cards have been running at full load 24/7 for the last six months mining crypto and are being sold off just before dying.
If I’m going to spend $400, I think I’d feel better about buying new unless I knew the seller personally in real life and knew they weren’t mining with it.
One area of concern for me and my little hotbox is that some people talk about the 1650 running hot and the 1050 ti running cold. (Both MSI Gaming X versions.) That reason alone is almost enough to sway me, as I found a different marketplace seller offering the 1050 ti for more like $340, almost $100 cheaper than the 1650.
The other minor selling point for the 1050 ti is that it requires no power cable, getting all its power from the pci slot. The 1650 has to be plugged into the psu with a 6-pin connector, which I don’t have, but I assume my 8-pin connector will suffice.
Honestly, not having to plug it into the psu, the possibility it might run cooler and being almost $100 cheaper is kind of selling me on the 1050 ti right at this moment.
The notion that mining cards are all worn out junk is flawed on a couple levels. For one, serious miners (the ones running 24/7) undervolt their cards so they’re running at a smooth and consistent rate using as little power as possible to maximize profits vs electric bills. They don’t just red-line the card for a year because that’s a waste of money, both power and cards. Also, the idea that a mining card is ruined isn’t really supported by testing. Tests I’ve seen showed pretty much even performance between a card used for mining and “standard” cards except for one video where the mining card was maybe 10% worse – but the card was filthy and a good blowing out of the fans/radiator and maybe reapplying paste/pads would have reclaimed most of that. But a 1070 with 10% less performance is still notably better than a 1650.
Besides all that, chance are that a used 1070 is just a used 1070 someone upgraded or wants to cash in on while the market is hot. I doubt many miners are trying to sell off their cards right now given the silicon shortages.
If you don’t trust or feel comfortable with a used card, that’s understandable. Just saying what I would be doing in your situation. In lieu of a 1050Ti, I’d be looking for a used RX580 (4GB) which I’m seeing in the $300-$400 range locally.
It’s definitely worth looking into. Any other good sites aside from OfferUp and Facebook marketplace? Is there a discogs for computer components?
My first look at OfferUp shows 1070s in my area for $500 to $1,000, which seems about right. I’m in a Connecticut suburb of New York City; everything is expensive here.
On a side note, when I first set up this computer and measured the sound it was around 7 dB, which seemed weird to me. Also, the quietness of the computer revealed a background evil sound that I attributed to my central air system. Turns out it wasn’t the central air system, it was the subwoofer that was plugged into the computer. It was vibrating on the desk and echoing. I mostly use headphones anyway so I ripped out the speakers and now there’s no noise at all. Total and complete silence. Measuring the computer noise with my phone now registers less than 1 dB whether the computer is on or off.
You can try the Hardwareswap subreddit. I bought a few things from there without a hitch, both local sales and people shipping stuff. Also search for comparable AMD lines since they’re sometimes cheaper (as people tend to gravitate towards Nvidia).
If I was buying today, I’d be getting high power cards from relatively old generation - those are still overpriced, but not as bad - example AMD r9 290x or r9 290 - those are similar or just behind in performance to those cards you mentioned but use way more power, which makes them less desirable for mining = cheaper.
The downside with the older cards is they tend not to have fan stop / silent mode, so I’m kind of stuck with newer(ish) models. I’m not entirely sure any AMD video cards have fan stop, though I assume the newer ones do.
So I see on OfferUp a guy within 10 miles from me selling an EVGA 1060 for $50. I’m tempted to take a flyer on that just because why not, right? I could drive out, pay cash and be home in an hour. Google says the specific model has fan stop. (In fact, if you Google it, you see a lot of people asking how to fix their 1060 fans not running, one of which was specifically about the EVGA.)
I’m pretty sure you can manage the fans yourself on an EVGA 1060 (set your own fan curve on where they will speed up).
I don’t know if you can stop them completely but, honestly, they are dead quiet at idle in my experience. They only whiz up and get noisy if you stress the card.
Some of that fan noise from the video card can be mitigated with a good case and good airflow. The case I use has great airflow and my video card never has to get into that screaming, 100% fan mode because cool air is being supplied to it constantly and the hot air is being removed.
This is my guess too. People are showing Nvidia, AMD and Intel(?) that the market can bear much higher pricing than they have set in the past.
Yes, the GPU situation is terrible but it doesn’t seem to be impacting gaming laptops as much.
If you need a new gaming rig I’d either buy a gaming laptop (which probably has a similarly powered GPU to the desktop GPUs you could afford) or be prepared to wait it out.
Well, the market right now is being affected by some dramatic scarcity. So maybe they could get away with selling cards for $X since they barely have any cards to move but, if they had a bunch of cards, they’d find it more profitable to sell them at a lower cost but make it up in volume by reaching people unwilling or unable to spend that much. Plus competition by the other major GPU Team and with Intel entering the market this fall with their discrete gaming video cards. So I could see prices being higher than they once were but probably not maintaining the prices we see today. Or I’m just wrong.
Another thing (beyond the crypto elephant) was that the 20 series of Nvidia GPUs wasn’t a big hit. They were good for what they were but they weren’t a big jump from the 10 series and a lot of people didn’t feel like paying a “ray tracing tax” for unproven first gen tech and very few games. The 30 series was a larger jump and had a lot of pent up demand from 900/10 series owners who skipped the last generation. Unless the 40 series is super amazing, it may be a repeat of the last generation.
Have you looked at cyberpowerpc.com?
I got my computer from them a few months ago with a a 3080 card. Whole system was a bit under $2k.
Looks like they have gone up in price, but there are plenty of 3080 equipped systems still under 3k, which seems to be about the going price for the card alone if you buy it ala carte. But that’s a system with a top end processor and 32 gigs ddr4 ram.
You can also do a fair amount of customization. You can go up to a 3090 if you want to drop another thousand on it, or save 300 to 550 going down to a 3070 or 3060. RAM and CPU are customizable as well.
Looks like the lead time is about a month, and that fits what I experienced. I’m really not a salesperson for them, or anything, and I’ve only ever bought one computer from them, but I’m pretty happy with what I got for the price. If anyone knows a reason not to use them, I’m not invested in this recommendation, but seeing what else is out there, I think this is probably the best bet right now.
Maybe bitcoin and cryptocurrency will crash, and suddenly all these miners have no assets but the GPUs in their farms, and sell them off cheap.
Wow…a whole PC with a 3080 for less than the price of a 3080 (at scalper prices).
Crazy.
I don’t think that scalper prices will survive the silicon shortage but I do think that board partners like ASUS and MSI will not go back to a $900 (CAD) MSRP for the 3080 TUF OC, but stick closer to the current $1,100 to $1,200 for example.
But, I am no market expert and I hope your optimism for prices to return to normal pans out. I am wishing good things for the 4080 one day 
Given what Nvidia did with the 3080 Ti don’t hold your breath.
I know, I know… a man can dream though, right? Maybe the 5080 will be the one
I can’t complain, I have a 2070 super that performs pretty decently on my 3440x1440 monitor. Any reduction in visual quality I have to make is on me for going ultrawide with that card.
My only hope is that AMD really seems to be doing better and being a good company (for consumers and not scalpers/miners) and they are genuinely making some good shit (see: Ryzen). Easily competitive or better than Nvidia/Intel.
If Nvidia keeps raping its customers the pendulum should swing.
Add Intel coming in to the video market. I am dubious about that but I’ll take a wait and see attitude for now.
Sorry for the confusion, I built my computer in February. (This thread is from January.) I bumped it because my original plan has changed.
Originally I was planning to just use on-board chipset graphics until prices started coming down on video cards, not buying any video card at all to start with. I thought I could easily wait a year or more, but now after just four months I don’t think I can take this chipset graphics anymore.
I was right that the new computer easily plays all the games my old computer could play (of course), but in the past four months I’ve added a bunch of more modern titles to my library and the chipset is struggling mightily. So now I’m looking to spend my original video card budget ($400) on a placeholder card.
I believe this new computer of mine totaled around $1300 or $1400 at the end of January, can’t remember which. The idea was <= $2000 including video card. But one of my biggest priorities was for it to run fully silent, and boy howdy does it do that. Less than 1 dB! Speed was always a distant second for me; I’m a 1080p guy with no plans to upgrade to 1440p or 2160p pretty much ever so I don’t even need much speed anyway. (The chipset graphics is struggling to run many of my games even in lowly 720p at lowest settings.)
After searching used markets for hours and then napping on it, I think I’m leaning toward the 1050 Ti. When I eventually get a real video card, plugging in the power cable will be a major PITA since I did those in the “wrong” order. (I’d have to either plug it in with the psu still in the shroud – very cramped – or re-cable the entire machine.)
For the placeholder card, “not having a power cable” has unexpectedly shot up my priority list. I think I’d like to embrace the lazy and have a video card that “just works” without having to plug anything into it.
I did it, I’m officially a sucker. A brand new MSI 1050 Ti Gaming X should arrive in two weeks. Total was a hair under $370 after shipping and tax. I feel dirty.