It’s not as if we needed to be told that the chip shortage is causing increased prices for electronics and computer hardware, but thanks to Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan for spelling it out. In a tweet forecasting the direction of his company’s self-branded line of stylish gaming laptops, the executive stated flat-out that increased component prices would drive the price of the Razer Blade series up significantly.
The tweet was spotted by VideoCardz, which notes that since Razer laptops are far from cheap at the best of times, that’s no small potatoes. For example, the cheapest 13-inch Blade with a discrete graphics card — a rather ho-hum GTX 1650 Ti — is $1,800 at its full retail price. Models with beefier hardware and more advanced screens creep up over the $2,000 mark quickly. A fully-loaded Blade 17 with 4K touchscreen, Core i9 processor, and RTX 3080 graphics card will cost you $3,700. You could find a used car for less than that, though admittedly not one you’d actually want to drive.
But Tan’s prediction isn’t exactly hot gossip in the PC industry. With Intel and AMD in a surprisingly tight fight for processor performance and demand for PC gaming hardware not slowing down any time soon, it only makes sense that newer and more powerful hardware will be more expensive. Nvidia is making a few motions towards bringing back older and less expensive hardware just to throw a bone to gamers on a budget, but in all other areas of the industry, you can expect better internals to cost more. And, on top of that, to cost considerably more in relation to current hardware than new hardware used to.
When will we see some relief? Even the titans of the computer industry really don’t know. “Probably not in 2022” is about as close as we can get to a consensus.
Michael is a former graphic designer who’s been building and tweaking desktop computers for longer than he cares to admit. His interests include folk music, football, science fiction, and salsa verde, in no particular order.
