# Computer component shortages



## Mat (Dec 13, 2020)

Finally got around to ordering parts to build a newer daily user.  The video cards are really hard to find now as well as a Ryzen 5 3600 cpu.  The shortage of video cards is due to crypto-miners buying up huge quantities of cards.  Many of the high dollar cards are built without any video output headers.  I think one of these days the mining will fold and the card makers will be crawling back to the normal everyday users who are really the ones that float their business. They build the cards without those headers so you and I can't buy a used one, them knowing they will be sold as used.


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## Nathan (Dec 13, 2020)

Yea, I could have kicked myself for selling my GTX 970 that I was using for folding@home, a few years ago.   I was going to get a newer latest & greatest card for folding, but hesitated.  During that period of hesitation the prices went through the roof, because of the  crypto currency miners.

I'd love to build a new rig, but my 10 yr. old(yes! 10!) skt 2011 system with a Xeon E5 2650 processor + 16GB DDR3 is still quite the powerhouse.


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## MarciKS (Dec 13, 2020)

Because of COVID it's difficult to find parts for computers and it's tough to get any kind of electronics right now. Everyone has to keep busy if they're not out spreading cooties.


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## Mike (Dec 14, 2020)

Not only components, but small towers are also
scarce, I have been looking for some time now,
but the ones on offer all for gaming and very big
and expensive for what I need.

Mike.


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## Mat (Dec 31, 2020)

My first RAM order made on the 13th arrived today and it was the last part I needed to fire up the first machine.  Everything went very well and no surprises.  I managed to have all the case fans connected due to the extra two fans I bought.  Those two fans had a 2 split so that allowed me to use the fan locations on the motherboard as it should be.  I did order two splitters just to make the connections less cluttered in the center area of the case.  It looks pretty nice but I noticed it has a led background lit on the motherboard and I have dust problems here where I live already so I sure don't need another light to attract more.  The small case is so quiet and you don't even know it is running.  Got win 10 installed and that went flawlessly but I suspect there will be some problems soon when I start running it everyday.  You have to turn off win 10 update for the hardware so it won't hose all those constant AMD graphics card updates for drivers and the software installed.  I have another really fast machine with a little better AMD card for graphics and it would crash randomly so I finally did a good search and found that it was windows hosing the new update soon as I rebooted then going back to the default driver win 10 was supplying.

  So I was able to immediately connect to the network and this machine I use daily.  One annoying thing was not only win 10 edge browser attempting to hijack my browser choice but also when I installed Avast anti virus it also kicked both edge and my firefox off the perch.  I uninstalled the Avast browser and found a deep switch to turn off edge completely.  By the time I finished it was around 4pm so I cleaned up all the things I had spread all over the room and turned off everything and took a two hour nap.  There is lots of rain out there and even strong thunder storms but I haven't had anything but occasional short downpours every hour or so.  So one down and one to go on the computer building.  I think I will rest a couple days and then start assembling the second.  I plan of doing some reading and see if I can clone this drive and put it on an SSD so it will run fast and at the same time reset the first run which you can reset in the registry by changing three entries back to their original first run status.  You can do this when you make major hardware changes on a windows machine or else the drive won't boot.  If you ever forget to make that registry change you can still download an external registry editor and make the change for a drive that won't boot due to major hardware changes.


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