Gaming laptops are about to get more expensive, Razer CEO warns

Would like a good gaming laptop? Then you might want to buy now before the price rises, according to a warning from Razer.

The CEO of a laptop and peripherals manufacturer, Min-Liang Tan, warned in a Tweet that the cost of gaming laptops will get worse in 2022. “Just had a long meeting to review our line of gaming laptops for next year. – looks like component costs will go up significantly, etc and we’ll be told by the Razer CEO that he’ll be raising prices for next-gen gaming laptops (including the Razer Blade) next year next.

Aren’t gaming laptops – including Razer – already expensive?

Most Razer gaming laptops, like Blade 15 Advanced, Blade Stealth 13and Blade 17, are already some of the more expensive products on the market. That’s especially the case for Razer’s flagship laptops with RTX 30-series graphics cards and 360Hz displays, the types of which are inherently expensive to incorporate into the compressed frame of a laptop. gaming.

But thanks Chip shortage is happening, those prices are set to rise even more. The absence of GPUs has made gaming laptops and pre-built systems even more expensive over the past two years, and that demand is unlikely to subside. for at least another year.

Why is the price increasing?

Chip shortages broke out due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global supply chain, causing many factories to close, relocate or reduce output. The activation effect is also huge. For example, the auto industry started ordering fewer chips at the start of the pandemic on the assumption that people would travel less – and therefore auto sales would be lower.

But the opposite has happened: people are using their cars even more, wanting to avoid public transport due to pandemic concerns. The impact is expected to make The car industry alone has a turnover of about 210 billion USD – so it’s understandable why automakers are starting to make large orders of silicon going forward to secure future supply.

Automakers were then forced to make large orders in advance to address large shortages. But the real problem is that two-thirds of the planet’s semiconductors are made in Taiwan, specifically from a company called Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC). Worse yet, Taiwan has suffered its worst drought in half a century this year – here’s a major issue raised 170,000 tons of water are used every day by Taiwan’s Hsinchu Science Park, the area where most of the country’s semiconductor factories are located. (Officials from Taiwan’s Irrigation Administration even went so far as to organize March rain worship.)

That severe shortage has pushed the prices of gaming components like CPUs and GPUs up even further, along with lengthy delays for things like high refresh rate 4K gaming monitors. And when you add the essence of generational upgrade to everything like DDR5 RAM RAM, the next generation GPU that enables 4K gaming with real-time ray tracing and coming soon CPU creative use new architecture, the price increase is not surprising.

What to expect

Min-Liang TanHis warning makes sense, as chip shortages are expected to last through 2022. And while Razer’s laptops are already sky-highly priced, the one saving advantage is that they won’t. single. Component costs for all laptop manufacturers are on the rise, so Razer’s competitors (ASUS, ACER, Gigabyte, Alienware, Lenovo, Metabox, etc.) are likely to follow.