TECH NEWS – If you thought inflation was already bad, prepare for the worst: even tech products will cost even more.

Nikkei Asia and The Register both report that Intel is preparing to make a significant proportion of its products more expensive in response to inflationary pressures. With complicated supply chains and rising logistics costs, it’s no wonder that the whole industry will soon be hit by this price increase, which will end up hitting our already modest wallets (which is even worse in countries with ridiculous VAT; in our case, that would be 27%!).

The Register says it could be as high as 20%, which is unreasonable given the slowing industry. GPU prices have just started to fall while the market waits for the next-generation products; especially around Nvidia, we hear exciting things (and massive power consumption, yikes!).

The price hike will mean that many will not upgrade simultaneously. First, they might get the processor (say, the 13th generation Intel, or AMD Ryzen 7000 series), then just the video card (Nvidia RTX 4000, or AMD’s RDNA 3 technology line), then DDR5 RAM, motherboard, NVMe SSD, etc., and you’re in for selling your arm for a new computer. So it’s no wonder that some of our editorial staff have an eight-year-old configuration because that’s about as good as it gets. However, it should be added that the hardware market has been going more robust than usual due to the coronavirus pandemic, so pulling this price increase after that does not seem particularly fair. Companies should cover some costs and not automatically push them onto the customers.

It will hurt our wallets once more. However, more people will spend their money on gas, bills, and food instead of upgrading their devices, leading to a drop in demand…

Source: PCGamer