As a surprise even to us, something quite interesting happened with PC component pricing. Some GPU prices have fallen under MSRP, but we're not out of the woods on that yet. That could just be the calm before the predicted storm. However, what we're really worried about is motherboard pricing. What in the world happened there?!
Motherboard prices are shooting through the roof, even for motherboards using older chipsets. This is a really big deal and something that more people in the tech circuit need to be talking about. Some of the motherboards are retailing for two to four times what they're actually worth, and some newer boards are costing consumers well over $600! This is crazy! Not only is there a lot of scalping going on, prices are being artificially inflated. It's like a huge price fixing scheme between all of the manufacturers, many of which also produce and sell the GPU's that have at least temporarily recovered insofar as pricing. For example, we got our X470 Gaming Plus Max for $100 on Amazon. If you go dig that board up now, you'll see it used for double that. We bought that motherboard as brand new! And the newer X570 is starting at $246 on Amazon. Newegg is no better with pricing these parts. X570 boards are supposed to start at around $150. We're not seeing them. Instead, we're seeing B450 boards starting that high, and even A320 boards are near that mark! This is it. THIS is the [first] landmine! Market analysts predicted dramatic increases to CPU and APU prices, they barely went up, and now you can get deals all over. We bought a new Ryzen 5 5600G for only $164, and it included the Wraith cooler. That's the Zen 3 microarchitecture, and the APU's MSRP is $259. GPU prices went down without bans on crypto or the Ethereum switch to proof-of-stake [pushed back again]. RAM prices are stable. SSD's are already going back down and HDD's are a bargain. There's a pattern here, and this is the next spike. We started with insane RAM prices; then we just closed out brutal GPU prices. Now we're on seriously absurd motherboard prices. Help us spread the word. We need to address motherboard costs. These ARE NOT good deals! We took another look at cost and selfie cameras, and we thought seriously about our decision to move on the ZTE Axon 40 Ultra or ZTE Axon 40 Pro. Starting with the latter, that device appears to be an Asia exclusive device. Though it is possible to get it, there are some potential problems with going that way with it. For starters: language. Secondly, we're not really into modding anymore, so we're not trying to root the device and install a custom ROM. We like stock these days.
As for the former, outfitting the team proved challenging even at the great introductory price. To get the desired versions of the device, the costs went up significantly. We wanted at least 12 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage for each. 128 GB of storage just doesn't cut it anymore. This is the age of 4K and 8K video recording. That's simply not enough space for those resolutions. And for that price, we'd like to take and send some pretty impressive selfies to our loved ones [they can be such quality snobs]. So, you have the background for context. All of that considered, we gave the Pixel 6 another chance. It started reviewing well, so that means that Google has finally resolved the biggest issues with the phone, and most of the issues overall. This is fantastic news because we always wanted to try it out. Well, we can now do exactly that because we bought the entire team 256 GB versions of the standard Pixel 6! To be honest, we're quite excited about this! Does this mean that we're revoking our endorsement of ZTE's offerings this year? Nope! If you have the budget and access for either, we still recommend them. We just needed to save money and didn't have a reliable way to get the Axon 40 Pro. That's all for this one! We're gathering collaborators for our live stream! We'll use Bigo to get some popularity, so we won't be joining any agency to collect on gifts there. We don't want our company to serve someone else in that way. Instead we'll get the ball rolling there and build up our community for Twitch. Will we stop the Bigo stream at that point? No. Take this as advice: always have a backup plan. We will maintain a presence there as a backup. We also want to remain accessible to those who can use Bigo but can't use Twitch.
Though we've pretty much quit mobile gaming, we'll be making a small return. We'll explain why we quit in one of our bigger posts. Anyway, we'll be picking up Diablo Immortal, which is currently only good as a mobile game. We got the recommendation from our future collaborators, and did the research on the PC version. It's bad - REALLY bad. The team didn't even try to port it over in a satisfactory way. If that ever changes, we'll make the switch and enjoy cross-platform play with the team. Once we have things set up on Bigo, we'll release our ID so that anyone can follow and join our stream. Please be on your best behavior. Bigo is really strict, and we can't afford to be banned because having no agent means that a permanent ban will never be reversed there. But we have a couple of interested gamers who may be joining us. They're also quite talented, so our first mobile / PC title may be entering production later this year! Beyond that, we're swapping parts on the custom build. Not only will it be significantly more powerful, it will also be noticeably more attractive. We managed to keep the overall cost of v.2 the same as what we originally paid when we first introduced our challenge. Be on the lookout for the full reveal! We'll do video this time. That's it for this one! Yeah, that headline is real. We've been playing a whole lot of Dauntless lately. It appears that Fortnite isn't the end of Epic's free-to-play successes. This company appears to be chock full of winning ideas. Dauntless is another hit that's now several years old. We were digging through YouTube when we came across a recommendation from Gameranx [we'd be honored for you to be friends of the site]. They gave a quick rundown of the game and we were sold.
There is no shortage of Dauntless players. It's not truly a sleeper hit, it's more of an actual hit. For a few years' old title, it's quite popular, with a player count of over five million as of 2019. That's no small feat. It's also a genuine cross platform title. We've met and teamed up with players from the Switch, Xbox, PC, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5. It's beautiful and ranks as one of the top free-to-play titles in the world. To put these numbers into perspective, because everyone has CoD brain, 5 million players is the same as going 5x platinum for a musician. Is that a minor achievement? No, not by any stretch of the imagination. You can still get it for free, so look it up, install it, then comment LFG so that we can exchange gamer tags and run a few hunts together. Don't worry. If we add you, we won't delete you unless you're unruly. We have thick skin, so we'll tolerate a lot before something like that happens. Our primary player needs to maintain privacy because we'll be covering the game [more on that later in the post], so we ask you to please refrain from spreading his gamer tag around. If you're streaming or uploading footage, please censor his gamer tag. We can only play with our community members if our players can remain private. Onto the next news! We'll be streaming our Dauntless runs on weekends! We're planning to do this on Twitch and Bigo. See why it's important to behave yourselves? We don't want to face bans. We'll get set up for streaming and go live as we are able. After we get a good rhythm going, we'll do it regularly. Yes, you may record highlights and, yes, you may publish it to your channel(s). You may not, however, use the entire gameplay. We'll be needing complete gameplay sessions for our own channel. We plan to start doing gameplay commentary so that we can hold discussions and provide options for those who would like information in a more digestible form. We're waiting for our microphone and acoustic shield now. We're that serious. Keep an eye out for updates. That's all for this one. Peace! Calling all serious console gamers! The rumor mill is aflame again, and the word is that Sony is setting up to reveal a PlayStation 5 Pro controller soon. How soon? Well, some are predicting the reveal will happen as early as this year. Is that feasible? We don't know. The news just broke starting only a few days ago, so we guess we'll see. For now, this is exciting because it allows Sony to compete on the pro circuit. Microsoft, watch your back. The actual best console controller maker in the world is coming for you. Yes, we said it. Sony offers the best hand feel and tactile experience in a console controller. Don't like that? Tough. Fight us.
Anyway, that's not all for Sony and PS5 news. It looks like a new PS5 model has also been registered by Sony. We're not talking about a smaller heat sink that may lead to small improvements, we're talking a redesign. Word is that the Digital Edition, the one that we would like to get, is expected to have a lighter version - approximately 300g lighter, in fact. Could it be just a smaller heat sink? Possibly, but we think that the total area and volume of the Digital Edition will be reduced as well. Both PS5 editions are huge, so we're hoping that smaller iterations are on the way. It's just better for a clean set up. That's all we've got to work with so far, but we'll keep an eye out for more word on this. That's all for this one! Thanks for reading! |
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