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'Why PC Builders Should Stock Up on Components Now' (pcmag.com)
Michael Kan, writing for PCMag: NZXT is a popular PC desktop case vendor, but the California-based company recently had to raise its prices. The reason? The new US tariffs on Chinese imports includes PC cases. In September, the Trump administration imposed the 10 percent duty, which also cover motherboards, graphics cards, and CPU coolers from the country. As a result, NZXT had to introduce a 10 percent price increase on PC cases to deal with the added costs, VP Jim Carlton told PCMag in an interview.
And building a PC could get even more expensive in 2019; US tariffs on Chinese-made goods will rise from 10 percent to 25 percent in January. "If I needed to build a system in the next six months, I'd definitely build it before the end of the year," Carlton told us. For PC builders, the tariffs risk adding a few hundred dollars to the total cost of components for a custom desktop. "If it's a $2,000 purchase on 25 percent tariffs, it's going to be a $2,500 purchase," Carlton said. "So we are very concerned with the direction of where this is going. I don't have a 10 percent [profit] margin I can just throw away and absorb the tariffs," he added. "And certainly no one has a margin for 25 percent."
And building a PC could get even more expensive in 2019; US tariffs on Chinese-made goods will rise from 10 percent to 25 percent in January. "If I needed to build a system in the next six months, I'd definitely build it before the end of the year," Carlton told us. For PC builders, the tariffs risk adding a few hundred dollars to the total cost of components for a custom desktop. "If it's a $2,000 purchase on 25 percent tariffs, it's going to be a $2,500 purchase," Carlton said. "So we are very concerned with the direction of where this is going. I don't have a 10 percent [profit] margin I can just throw away and absorb the tariffs," he added. "And certainly no one has a margin for 25 percent."
Meanwhile people are lining and throwing down big cash up to buy new Macbooks, iPhones and other Appliephile stuff. Film at 11.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Nerd!!!!
Haven't they heard? We're a service economy now. We build things like facebook and twitter where the 'margins' are much higher. Only a moron could think a sustainable business is shipping stuff over from China and bolting it together to sell here.
PC components will drop more than 100% in price before I need to buy new hardware. Cases can be reused, I have cases from the 90s I'm still using.
Increase the tariffs to 400% - hit Ching Chong where it hurts
How much more for a case built in the U.S.? Or even from another country that plays fair on trade?
Last case I bought cost $20. If this raises the price of a whole system by $5, it doesn't make any difference to me. Especially if it's across the whole market.
So quit whining.
There is no law of god or men that says all electronics should come from China.
Order a quality motherboard from Japan. A GPU from Singapore. A CPU from Mexico. A PSU from Canada, and so on.
If you are human and care about human things, you should already be boycotting China.
Sorry lolbergs , no right to access cheap chinese labor/goods.
"News" stories are always so foreign to those that actually experience in real life what they are talking about. I just bought a NZXT case yesterday. I had to make a choice between a $69 case and a $99 one with LEDs. 3-4 years ago I paid $150 for a NZXT case in the same class as the one I just bought. Even at 25% increase NZXT cases are a steal compared to 3-4 years ago.
People often dislike tariffs because it means more expensive goods. But they don't stop to think about why those good are inexpensive.
It all pretty boils down to the fact that, even when accounting for the cost of living, youcould not take a factory building anything in the third world andbring it to the use because of.
1. Labor laws...minimum wage, working hours, overtime rules.
2. Government regulations...safety, healthcare, discrimination, etc.
3. Environmental laws...emissions, hazardous waste disposal, etc,
Most would agree that all these regulations and laws are for the good and that we don't want a steel plant in the US operating like it does in China.
However, the same people who don't want to have the dirty, dangerous manufacturing here are more than happy to have it somewhere else and then take advantage of the cheap prices. Hence, their opposition to tariffs.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
It's too bad that machined sheet metal is too difficult technically speaking for an American company to start producing. Whatever will we do?
Concern over hardware with a long supply chain like cpu's, mobo's, ram etc is one thing.. but something as stupidly simple to produce as a fucking metal box? come on.
Hopefully the outcome of these tariffs is that another country (maybe even the US?) will step up and start producing and supplying components. It is somewhat foolish to allow one single country to have a near total monopoly on something as important as electronics.
(But more than likely some enterprising individual will setup shop in Mexico or Canada; and import the goods from China, then just ship them across the border to avoid the tariff.)
in 2020. The one thing that's kept my meager standard of living up is cheap goods from China. It's not like tariffs will stop the flow of cheap labor from India flooding IT. Meanwhile Trump's tax cut wasn't as big as folks think. A lot of people set their withholding lower than they should and are going to get an unpleasant surprise in April when they either have a smaller than average refund or maybe even owe.
Normally the decisions made by a president don't show up immediately. It took close to 8 years for Obama to repair the damage from the 2008 crash. But tariffs and tax cuts are immediate. If folks don't see a positive effect they're gonna get uppity. We'll know in a few years.
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and build a PC case out of it, i seen some great PC cases made from hardwood and they look more like art-deco furniture than a PC case
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Why US PC Builders Should ...
...but none of the games I'm playing these days have any serious system requirements.
The last time I upgraded was so I could play Doom (2016). I saw that game and thought "okay gonna need some horsepower to run that". Went with an i7 and a 1070gpu... but I haven't played any other games or seen any upcoming titles that made me think "hm I might need to upgrade in the future".
I'm sure RDR2 is great fun but I won't be playing that. The only upcoming title I see that somewhat interests me is Cyberpunk 2077, but let's be real, by the time it's released it'll be so full of micro transactions that it won't be worth playing.
As it stands, I really only play Overwatch, Cities: Skylines & Divinity Original Sin 2. After that, there are emulators to fill in the gaps. I'm not saying this 1070gpu is going to carry me far into the future, but for the time being I'm set.
PS: Article is right, though. I had been eyeing a 1080TI to sorta kinda future proof my machine. Their prices had been sitting comfortably around $700-750, but now I can't find one for any less than $1100... that may have to do with the release of the new line of cards though.
So with a 10% tariff on the cost of bringing this into the US... assuming they're passing 100% of the cost of this to customers... they must have $0 in other costs to take into account for each chassis. That would be $0 in marketing, sales, R&D, operations, etc.. Or, they're passing on say 105% of the tariff increase to customers. Sounds sketchy.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I like my NZXT case, and I needs my computer and its part, but at some point...$$?
Nah!
Níggers!
There is no law of god or men that says all electronics should come from China.
Laws of economics do dictate where electronics come from. The overwhelming majority of the supply chain for electronics depends heavily on China because that's where the companies are located and it's been trending that way for decades. If you can find a way to shift the supply chains away from China have at it but you'll find that near impossible.
Order a quality motherboard from Japan. A GPU from Singapore. A CPU from Mexico. A PSU from Canada, and so on.
Good luck with that. You'll find the components on that motherboard, power supply, graphics card, etc are made in China even if the assembly was put together elsewhere. If you want something made with just local content be prepared to spend a fortune on it. Companies like Apple and the rest don't source from China because they like China. They do it because there are no practical alternatives.
If you are human and care about human things, you should already be boycotting China.
Why? Because you think your country is owed something and shouldn't have to compete? Because you have a jingoistic view of China and it's people? You think 20% of the world's population should just sit on the sidelines economically because it's inconvenient for Americans or Europeans?
Only need to track some Linux kernel timing regression that mostly affects USB and audio, and my Transmeta Crusoe Oqo 01+ is as good as new: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
that none of the major computer suppliers will have any trouble sourcing and fullfilling their demands for sufficient hardware.
Concern over hardware with a long supply chain like cpu's, mobo's, ram etc is one thing.. but something as stupidly simple to produce as a fucking metal box? come on.
Sure, we know how to make cheap metal boxes in the US. That's never been a problem. The problem is the percentage of labor content that goes into producing cheap metal boxes and the cost of labor. Cheap metal boxes tend to be labor intensive to make unless you make those boxes in HUGE volumes. It's more economical to have them made in a country with cheap labor. China has cheap labor and the US does not. QED they get made in China and not the US.
Goods that are capital intensive are made in countries with high labor costs but access to cheap capital. The US has the cheapest cost of capital in the world so goods that have low labor content tend to be made here. Stuff like jumbo jets, earth moving equipment, cars, CPUs, chemicals, etc. The US has a manufacturing sector worth about $3 TRILLION annually which makes one of the 5 largest economies in the world - roughly the same size as the entire GDP of the UK or Germany. We make lots of stuff but we can't compete on cheap metal boxes just like China can't (currently) compete with the US on jumbo jets.
Any time you see an idiot politician (like Trump) promising to "bring back manufacturing jobs" to the US they are promising the impossible. The only way those "cheap metal boxes" will get produced here in the US is if we experience a massive reduction in wages to bring us close to those paid in China. No amount of tariffs will change that economic reality. I'm pretty sure you don't actually want such a fall in wages to happen. The good news is that as China becomes more prosperous their wages will rise and labor intensive production will leave China for other places with still cheaper labor. Already happens in some industries.
For this reason, God sends them a powerful delusion(operation of wandering)(planet) so that they will believe the lie.
So Canada doesn't have any of these tariffs, but somehow I have a feeling we'll be paying them anyways but the money just goes to greedy companies and not the government. Yay, Canada!
Meanwhile Trump's tax cut wasn't as big as folks think.
It was plenty big for certain people with several commas in their annual income. That isn't the real problem though. The real problem is that they cut taxes without cutting either Medicare/Medicaid or the defense budget or social security which together account for around 3/4 of federal spending. So we continue to accrue debt at a rate of nearly a $trillion per year with no end in sight which our children are going to have to pay off sooner or later. In 2017 we basically borrowed the entire defense department budget. ALL of it.
So enjoy the party while it lasts. Sooner or later the bills will come due and your children will "thank" you for it.
Quit importing from China for these parts and instead use North American, or import from another western nation.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
SSD prices have crashed. You can get a Samsung 860 250G for $50 or 500G for $80 now.
Memory prices have finally stopped being insane. 16G kits for desktops have dropped to $100 and a little lower.
I'm stocking up. Already got all the SSDs I need for a while. Just waiting on a new laptop before getting memory chips for it though.
Well we can make them in the usa with the CPU'S
If the cpu's can be made in the usa why not the ram and MB as well??
Trump killed the EPA so can go USA! USA! USA!
china factory's also make a lot of smog! that lowers costs as well.
'Why USA PC Builders Should Stock Up on Components Now'
Stuff for USA nerds, stuff that matters to the USA
Sounds like a business opportunity to make PC cases in the US so Americans aren't 'forced' to buy Chinese shit.
Go ahead and try since you think it is so easy. We can talk about how it went after your bankruptcy.
Here's a little clue for you though. The reason we don't make PC cases in the US has NOTHING to do with our technical ability to make such cases and has everything to do with the cost of labor and to a lesser extent cost of materials. We know how to make them but we cannot do it as cheaply as they can in China. No amount of tariffs will change that fact nor will they cause the supply chains for goods made in China to shift to the US in any substantial way.
Freedom isn't free you fucking libtard traitor.
You know, like maybe tarrifs should be 40 percent so you can build your cases in America, pay into social security, Medicare, etc. Then American workers may have money in their pockets to, you know, buy things, instead of worrying about working gig jobs with no benefits to pay the rent and health costs. Oh, that's right, build it here you have to pay taxes. Bummer. Besides you have a moral obligation to your stock holders to make the greatest profit, without having to you know, actually do something yourself that earns that profit.
You seemingly don't realize that increased cost will reduce demand AND create a market advantage to production of these items in the US.
Speaking as someone who actually makes products like this for a living including electronics that go into metal boxes, you could not be more wrong. If it reduces demand, it doesn't matter if the box is made in the US or China. The China+tariffs vs US made at the same price will not benefit US consumers. It means we are costing taxpayers a huge amount of money to support a tiny little industry with a handful of jobs. Explain to me the logic of making literally every PC purchased more expensive in order to gain a few hundred jobs in a niche industry? Tariffs are almost never a good idea and this is no exception.
Raise the price of steel to support the roughly 80k steel workers in the US and you raise the price of every car made which hurts 2 million auto workers + everyone who buys a car. You are robbing the many to benefit a few.
What all of the people complaining about the tariffs do not seem to get is that they are simply tools to get other countries to reduce THIER tariffs. Ours go away when the other side re-negotiates.
Trump and others have stated this multiple times yet it seems to elude many people.
Since they are merely negotiation tools, if there was a whiff they would hurt elections they would be gone. But they didn't seem to hurt Republicans any in the mid-terms; the reality is many voters either do not care about tariffs or see them also as simply a tool.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Companies in Canada that buy in China, then relabel and re-export to the USA will make a killing.
Should be "Why US PC Builders Should Stock Up on Components Now'" the rest of us don't give a fuck. You stupid "trade" war is a prime example of someone shooting themselves in the foot. Good luck with that.
There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
a huge percentage of components for PCs come from china. They aren't made anywhere else.
Only because any tariff that might otherwise be sufficient to accomplish it would only result in a domestic black market being created to meet the demand.
Incorrect. The problems with tariffs is that they are a blunt instrument and they almost always have unintended consequences. You raise prices on steel and it raises prices on everything made with steel which is a far larger industry than just the steel industry. You protect a few jobs at the cost of far more. Take an economics 101 course and you'll learn how tariffs almost invariably result in a net loss to the economy of both countries individually and collectively. They almost never actually accomplish the intended goal without substantial collateral damage to the broader economy.
I was hoping that there were PCs still being made in the US, but apparently not. Oh, they may be _assembling_ some, but most of the components come from overseas.
https://www.neweggbusiness.com...
That's what the tariffs might help do.
No they will not. No amount of tariffs are going to move more than marginal amounts of the electronics supply chains away from China. Worse even if the tariffs did cause damage to China's electronics industry they will cause MORE damage to our economy in the process and STILL will not result in those electronics being made in the US. Tariffs are a blunt instrument that invariably cause collateral far great damage to the broader economy. Seriously, this stuff is economics 101. Do not make the mistake of thinking that tariffs will result in the outcome you favor.
No. It's because I don't want to end up living in the same economic, social, and environmental squalor that 95% of chinese apparently think is a-ok.
I've actually been to China and clearly you haven't. Your idea of what China is actually like has no relationship to reality.
China's wages have already gone up a lot. Southeast Asia is nearby, and has lower wages than China. An electronics manufacturing base has already moved to Vietnam a couple of years ago. It shouldn't be difficult for it to scale up. Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar have even cheaper wages than Vietnam.
Shouldn't the fall have made up for the 10% tariff? Why did they have to raise prices 10% when purchasing the stuff from China should be cheaper because the RMB is cheaper? When Trump raises the tariff to 25%, then I understand why they may have to raise the price, since stuff from China would be getting more expensive.
Are businesses just trying to get an extra 10% profit and blame the extra profit on the tariff?
So where does Taiwan sit in the component industry these days? Thinking motherboards and video cards. CPUs, the US. Memory: Korea and Japan (... and Micron here in MN). Drives: Korea, Japan, and MN again (Seagate). At first glance, stuff from Newegg you'd put together yourself seems to have more non-China sources than a lot of the other current Trade War items might. You're not getting away from it entirely, of course, but there at least are options.
Order a quality motherboard from Japan. A GPU from Singapore. A CPU from Mexico. A PSU from Canada, and so on.
Man, you are way out of touch with reality. To imagine that even on products produced in factories located in those countries there's no Chinese made components or materials... you clearly doesn't have a clue.
Orange man bad. Boycott China? You're racist.
These more expensive cases now come with a free 'orange man bad' sticker.
Given a choice between an American-made components and those imported from any non-free nation, my company would choose the American made products every time even at 3 times the cost. It's a matter of principals.
I do not belong to the church of the lowercase 'i'
Trump, that is. Any number of past Presidents, I'm certain, could have addressed the trade problems we have with China in such a way as to not wreck the U.S. economy in the process, but Trump is about as ham-fisted as anyone could be.
Move the damn production into the US if you want cheap stuff. Or roll yer own. I mean, who buys Mexican weed anymore?
Gonna put that money in to pay down the debt, right? *cough*
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Why not have cases made in the US? They're mostly stamped aluminum sheet. The only difficulty is in the management of environmental hazards for powder coating or painting. Ohhhh, that's why we do it in China, it's a country with no regulations unlike the USA.
Trump wants to make the US just like China, with a Yellow River of contaminated piss. And lower salaries for every US worker in order to stay "competitive" with the third world. As long a Trump's loyal friends make money we'll have be able to call it "Making America Great Again"
Electronics have a shelf life of 3 to 6 months. Stockpiling them now just means you are forced to sell them when they drop in value.
The trade gap between China and US has hit new record highs since the Trump tariffs were put in place. That's right, folks, the Trump tariffs have made things WORSE, not better! That's how incompetent Trump is!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
BOOM BOOM BOOM all the way back to the Gilded Age. Get ready to stand on line for food Amerikuks!
This ONLY impacts the USA. And if nothing else it will encourage exporters in the USA to shift manufacturing to China so they can supply the 96% of the worlds population who are NOT in the USA with cost competitive goods.
The fastest growing markets are in Asia , Trump could see the USA locked out.
> If you are human and care about human things, you should already be boycotting China.
I'm human and I care about human things, such as people's lives and the future of our planet beyond the next 15 years, so I should actually be boycotting USA.
Your statement directly contradicts how sourcing works, the motherboard from Japan may have Chinese components and you have no say in that.
but that's not what we're doing. So far the tariffs have been a give away to the Steel industry (who donated heavily) and a rather childish middle finger to the Chinese electronics industry (which we are in no way shape or form prepared to take over even if the companies wanted to put factories here). What we have _not_ done is demand China improve environmental, safety and labor pay in order to bring their workers up to parity with US workers. Canada OTOH has done this.... to America.
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the left favors tariffs and labor protection. That said we want to do it carefully. Trade wars are _not_ easy to win.
Now, Clinton Democrats (e.g. the right wing of our party that followed Bill & Hilary into becoming Republican Lite) are happy to have open borders. Hell, Hilary got caught outright saying she wanted to eliminate the borders. It was one of the reasons she lost.
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Taiwan
South Korea
Japan
Can a brand in the USA work with metal/plastic and add color computer controlled lights?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Which GPU's are made in Singapore? I tried googling it and found nothing.
What if somebody lives in China, should they also be boycotting China?
In September, the Trump administration imposed the 10 percent duty, which also cover motherboards, graphics cards, and CPU coolers from the country. As a result, NZXT had to introduce a 10 percent price increase on PC cases to deal with the added costs, VP Jim Carlton told PCMag in an interview.
The items from China are taxed (tariff) 10% on the value of the material imported, not the retail price - for example, import a TV at a $100/cost from China, sell it for $250 with a warranty, support, etc. and the street cost should only go up $10, or 10% of $100 value of imported goods, not $25, or 10% of $250 value once imported.
Ken
I think the reason some people are finding it odd that you have conservatives suddenly supporting these new import taxes, while liberals are suddenly against them, is because TRUMP suggested them. He's been such a polarizing force, people will flip-flop on their ideals just to get behind the man, or to bash another one of his decisions.
If you can step away from all that nonsense for a bit and just look at the facts? I think you'll find that most libertarian, pro free-market types are as much against the tariffs as they've ever been about tariffs in general. But China has also been kind of a "worst case scenario" for America because we rely so heavily on them for things we used to manufacture here, but stopped bothering with. Under normal circumstances, you don't have to compete against a foreign government that's artificially subsidizing production of goods getting exported, to ensure they can be bought far below the cost of production. That's often what China has done, in a gambit to destroy our will to do production ourselves. This absolutely happened with the market for solar panels, and I've heard claims it happened with items as basic as roofing nails.
I really don't think it's our government's job to try to enforce other governments treating their citizens at what we deem an "acceptable standard". Chinese citizens will be the ones who have to revolt against their own government, if they want real change and better working/living conditions. So no, I don't support slapping on tariffs just to try to offset Americans getting great buys on imported products. I do, however, think you can't really have a fair global economy if the playing field isn't level thanks to a government covering losses on sales to undercut ALL competitors.
When picking which goods to apply tariffs to, instead of targeting inputs to other things (such as circuit boards and components) they should have targeted finished consumer goods, especially those where China isn't the only country that makes them.
But no, that would make all the cheap Chinese crap they sell at Walmart more expensive and given how powerful Walmart is (and how much money they likely give to politicians of all sorts via "donations") that would never fly. Better to target goods that are only imported by people who aren't powerful enough to matter to Trump and his supporters...
Trump imposed a tax on stupidity. This tax will end when the stupidity ends. Note that Trump doesn't actually have the authority to impose tariffs, that is the purview of congress.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
That's a dickhead strawman. You can't attack the argument so you resort to poking fun at those making it. You must live in a flyover state.
Welcome to how the rest of the world feels when buying products from you.
It's OK Bender, there's no such thing as 2.
it's not much of a problem because when China comes to collect their money they'll ask "Well what did you spend it all on?" and we'll just answer "Well, all these bombs".
Seriously though, gov't debt doesn't really function like household debt. Most of it (2/3rds) we "owe" to ourselves. This is the one and only thing Trump got right. Deficits don't really matter all that much. They're a boogieman of the right. Google "starve the beast" sometime. It's a trick to get you to accept education and healthcare cuts while they raid the public coffers for their cronies.
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1) Stock up on PC components.
2) PC component producers move to the US to avoid tariffs.
3) People are stocked up on PC components so they can't compete with overseas manufacturing due to lack of sales.
4) Yet another attempt by China to corrupt our economy for their own benefit succeeds.
No thanks, communist scum.
Ever see how much a foreign country visiting Chinese citizen buys to bring home? They visit Japan and buy rice makers to bring home. Not exactly the most portable of things to slip into a suitcase. Because the "Zojiroshi" they can buy in China is a Chinese fake and burns down the house once in a while.
As someone who has built his own PC's for many years I can also attest to the fact that most of us probably have 2 or 3 extra boxes just lying around not being used. If I REALLY want to build a rig, and I was REALLY put off by case prices, I'd probably just re-use an old one. It isn't like they really wear out or anything (sure you might have to replace a fan or something for a few bucks). The only reason to buy a new case really is if you really want something shiny or a different size, or something new and shiny :).
Really the only reason I haven't done a new build (my current one is getting a bit old in the tooth at probably 5+ years old) is:
A) It still does what I need it to do, and can still play the games I want to play (at least for now).
B) The prices of video cards have been stupid since the whole bitcoin craze started.
So tariffs aside, I'm more waiting until my rig can't handle the next big game I want to play, or all the bitcoin folks finally loose their shirts and the bitcoin miners all go out of business. Whichever comes first really. Trying to save 10% by hoarding components seems a terrible idea.
"which also cover motherboards, graphics cards, and CPU coolers from the country. As a result, NZXT had to introduce a 10 percent price increase on PC cases"
I didn't see PC cases covered in that category listing, and NZXT is an overpriced hitty brand, period.