{"id":123050,"date":"2018-01-22T08:29:49","date_gmt":"2018-01-22T06:29:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=123050"},"modified":"2018-01-22T08:29:49","modified_gmt":"2018-01-22T06:29:49","slug":"graphics-card-shortage-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/hardware\/123050-graphics-card-shortage-in-south-africa","title":{"rendered":"Graphics card shortage in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Cryptocurrencies saw massive growth throughout December, and miners took the opportunity to invest in their mining rigs.<\/p>\n<p>This has led to a strong demand for graphics cards, which is affecting stock availability.<\/p>\n<p>South Africa is not exempt from this, and the quantity of graphics cards coming into the country is not enough to meet the demand.<\/p>\n<p>Memory shortages have also reduced the amount of GPUs being produced by manufacturers, compounding the problem.<\/p>\n<p>From the first week of January, it has been almost impossible to purchase certain graphics cards, due to their popularity among cryptocurrency miners.<\/p>\n<p>Online retailers currently list no stock of many popular cards, from the Radeon RX 570 and RX 580, to the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 and GTX 1060.<\/p>\n<p>Many of these cards are being snapped up by miners, with big profits to be gained from mining cryptocurrencies like Ethereum.<\/p>\n<p>YouTuber JayzTwoCents describes the problem of cryptocurrency mining and how it affects PC gamers in the video below.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/uT-pP4wvLV8\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">South African shortage<\/h3>\n<p>To see how high the demand for graphics cards is in South Africa, and how constrained supply is, MyBroadband spoke to online retailers Wootware and Raru.<\/p>\n<p>The two stores are popular among local PC gamers and miners, due to their range of PC components.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Wootware<\/h3>\n<p>Wootware told MyBroadband there have been multiple resurgences in demand for graphics cards for crypto mining, the most recent of which was during the December-January period.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs the total market cap of GPU-mineable cryptocurrencies has risen faster than the total compute-power allocated towards mining these cryptocurrencies, this has caused a surge in demand and a subsequent shortage of these models,\u201d said Wootware.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGPUs from the GeForce GTX 1050 and above as well as the Radeon RX 570 and above are all being purchased in higher-than-normal quantities.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Wootware is restocking on a continual basis and updating its online store as soon as it secures new stock.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Raru<\/h3>\n<p>Raru\u2019s Electronics Category Manager Colin van Zyl said that while demand from crypto miners has increased, the current card shortage is mainly due to two factors.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDue to the festive season, suppliers typically do not order stock from the middle of December as they close for a time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis means reorders typically happen between the middle to the end of January and can take up to eight weeks to arrive, depending on the shipping method.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Van Zyl said global memory shortages have also reduced the production of graphics cards and suppliers are only ordering a small number of units at a time.<\/p>\n<p>The backorder list for Radeon RX 580 cards \u2013 a favourite among crypto miners \u2013 is lower than its peak last year, but van Zyl said stock issues are causing problems in the market.<\/p>\n<p>Cryptocurrency miners who contact Raru in search of more cards are purchasing GPUs for specific coins, and favour the GeForce GTX 1070, he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cryptocurrencies saw massive growth throughout December, and miners took the opportunity to invest in their mining rigs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":226,"featured_media":105313,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_enabled":true,"_sma_x_custom_text":"","_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[25621,12541,6224],"class_list":["post-123050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hardware","tag-colin-van-zyl","tag-raru","tag-wootware"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/226"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}