A popular chain of computer stores in Western Canada (Memory Express) announced they are having inventory problems for video cards and power supplies. So they are limiting direct sales to one per household per day. They are also suspending online sales and their 10% price-beat guarantee on these items. Any stocks they receive will be prioritized for system builds and upgrades rather than direct sales.

There's something going on, I'll usually buy only one every 3 to 5 years.

Checking around, there is a widespread shortage, prompted by the spike in Bitcoin prices and news coverage of late.
https://kotaku.com/the-great-graphics-card-shortage-of-2018-1822346367

This started in the middle of 2017 actually. It was in various news how AMD Vega 56 was sold out immediately after being released. That's august-september 2017. I also found (ukrainian) news dating back to may 2017 about video card sales going insanely up because people are building bitcoin mining farms.

This "problem" has been around for a while now. Since around December GPU pricing was already going up, and shortages hit hard this month. Everyone knows there is a problem, but no one knows a workable solution.

Video card manufacturers don't want to increase production. Many were caught out when the last bubble burst and ended up with a lot of excess inventory they had to sell at massive loss, so they don't want to repeat that even if it means there are shortages now.

At least, the mining capable cards are hit hardest. On nvidia side, that is 1060 series upwards. On AMD side, it is pretty much everything with 4GB or more on it. There was a little trick of getting the Titan Xp Star Wars Edition directly from nvidia as they never put up the price even with all this going on, but it looks like they're sold out in US now. They are still available on the UK store. It was never a cheap card, but it seems better value now given the other cards have rocketed in price if you can even find one.

Gamers are just hoping for something to cause another crypto crash so the market will be flooded by miners selling out. I'm not holding my breath, although the increased attention from governments and inevitable regulation will contribute strongly to that.

Even if crypto pricing has fallen back from their recent peak, it remains high enough to fuel mining. Right now, I have 6 full time current gen cards doing it, and my estimated income is over US$500/month. Even knocking off a fair bit for electricity and potential tax later on, that's a decent profit margin.

For those who want a gaming system, apparently the supply and pricing hasn't affected big name system builders, so that remains a viable route to get a system.

Also note older generation cards on the used market haven't been really affected as their lower power efficiency makes them less attractive to mining. A used 970 or 980 would still be potent for gaming today and pricing is far below their equivalent performing modern versions.

This started in the middle of 2017 actually. It was in various news how AMD Vega 56 was sold out immediately after being released. That's august-september 2017. I also found (ukrainian) news dating back to may 2017 about video card sales going insanely up because people are building bitcoin mining farms.

When people talk about mining Bitcoin, in general they mean cryptocurrency in general. Bitcoin itself is still very much in ASIC territory.

There is a popular mining service, mainly due to its easy to use application, that will make your system mine whatever is most profitable in the moment, and they pay out in Bitcoin.

If you mine coins directly, you get whatever that coin is.


I did dabble with mining in mid-2017, but profits then were much lower than now, plus combined with the summer heat, I didn't get far with it then. That didn't affect supply or pricing of GPUs so much. Mining or not, Vega itself was never made in large quantities, apparently due to restricted supply of the HBM2 it uses.

Yeh, mining cryptocurrency in general rather than specifically BTC, I should have said. ASICs will probably always be better at calculating SHA-256 hashes very quickly, but other currencies have different algorithms and approaches that allow GPUs to come in.

To add my 2 cents to this thread I ordered a 1080Ti gpu in late December and just got it last week thru Amazon, it took that long for them to fulfill my order. I thought I had cancelled it and ordered one from a different place and it got here within a few days, so I now have 3 of them. No they aren't for sale they were my Christmas and Birthday presents from my wife, the 3rd one I'm also keeping because who would send it back once they have it in hand?!!

Jeeeeeeeez....

My son bought a GTX 1060 6 GB last March for $235 US. The 3 GB version is going for close to $600 now.
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My lucky number is 75898⁵²⁴²⁸⁸+1

Not saying you can't mine on a Titan V, but a lot of its feature set is irrelevant to mining. What's left isn't particularly special, so I think miners would find it hard to get value out of it.

As for pricing, I could sell my 1070 bought over a year ago for more now than I paid for it. I don't need the cash or the card in short term, but the next gen cards are expected later in the year... I have even older generation that's as fast, but not as power efficient, which would still do me for the gaming side.

Jeeeeeeeez....

My son bought a GTX 1060 6 GB last March for $235 US. The 3 GB version is going for close to $600 now.

I wonder if putting it inside an aluminum foil lined box would help? At the current prices, and them going up again almost daily, it would be a shame to have to shut it down.

T-Mobile Interference Caused by Man's Bitcoin Mining Rig

T-Mobile customers in northern Brooklyn had been complaining for much of last year about mysterious service issues that consistently plagued certain areas of the New York City borough. After a lengthy investigation, the FCC and T-Mobile discovered the culprit was that one man's bitcoing mining rig (more specifically a Bitmain Antminer S5) was somehow causing the interference in the 700Mhz band. "The device was generating spurious emissions on frequencies assigned to T-Mobile’s broadband network and causing harmful interference," the FCC's enforcement bureau told the man in the letter.

I wonder if putting it inside an aluminum foil lined box would help? At the current prices, and them going up again almost daily, it would be a shame to have to shut it down.

T-Mobile Interference Caused by Man's Bitcoin Mining Rig

T-Mobile customers in northern Brooklyn had been complaining for much of last year about mysterious service issues that consistently plagued certain areas of the New York City borough. After a lengthy investigation, the FCC and T-Mobile discovered the culprit was that one man's bitcoing mining rig (more specifically a Bitmain Antminer S5) was somehow causing the interference in the 700Mhz band. "The device was generating spurious emissions on frequencies assigned to T-Mobile’s broadband network and causing harmful interference," the FCC's enforcement bureau told the man in the letter.

I wonder if putting it inside an aluminum foil lined box would help? At the current prices, and them going up again almost daily, it would be a shame to have to shut it down.

Simple solution. Put the whole thing in a Faraday cage.