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Reports suggest that NVIDIA's 5090 Megadu will be up to 25% fast.

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Dude, this is what I've been waiting for. Why are you waiting? You could buy like a sick gaming rig right now for just a G.

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Yeah, that's so last-gen. This is gonna be worth the wait.

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In other news, tariffs on electronics that are manufactured outside of the United States,

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so almost all of them, are expected to result in major price hikes.

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Oh no! Now what am I gonna do? Should I build a computer now or should I wait for next-gen?

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That's a great question, viewer. Yes, you!

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And it's one we see all the time, especially around big CPU or GPU launches.

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And while the answer would normally be to plan a manageable budget for yourself

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and upgrade whenever your current system is no longer meeting your needs,

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with those potential tariffs inbound, things could get a little more complicated,

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especially for our American friends. But there is some good news, because believe it or not,

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this isn't the first time that we run into this type of consumer taxation.

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So we only need to look at the recent past to understand how tariffs could impact our purchases,

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be they on PC parts, washing machines, or even merch on LTT Store.

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I hope things don't go down this path. I want a 50-series GPU.

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But if this new tax comes into effect, now could be a really savvy time to buy a PC rather than waiting.

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Let's break it down and break down this segue to our sponsor.

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Reason number one to pull the trigger now is you know what you're getting.

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As cliche as it sounds, until there are third-party reviews, we don't really know what's coming down the pipe.

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Sometimes the pre-launch rumors end up being pretty accurate,

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but other times they aren't, and it can be a pretty poopy feeling to wait,

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sometimes months, for a pot at the end of the rainbow that turns out to be fool's gold.

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Number two, it's Q4, baby! Tis the season for inventory management.

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And as we outlined in our Holiday Buyer's Guide, you can pick up a machine that will handle any AAA game out there for less than you'd probably think.

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And in our recent review of the AMD Ryzen 9800X3D,

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we found that even an older AM4 and DDR4 system is still very capable of modern gaming

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and can save you a ton of money, money that can be spent on a better GPU for enhanced visuals.

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And guys, I know what you're gonna say. Buying an older CPU platform can limit your future upgrades, but look at this.

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We asked our staff here what parts they usually upgrade before they just give in and get a whole new platform.

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And while 40% said GPU, the cold hard truth is that most people don't upgrade their CPUs.

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Which leads us to reason number three. How often do you really need to upgrade your PC?

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Even our team of very techy, gamery folks seems to be on about a two to three year cycle.

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Just enough time to buy now and hopefully wait out the future tariff storm.

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Ah yes, the dreaded T-word.

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To find out more about tariffs and how they might impact pricing,

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I asked Elijah who wrote this video to ask Taren who has a friend

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who worked in the PC hardware supply chain last time a US administration peaked at Brazil's homework

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and thought, hmm, that seems like a good idea.

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He explained it to me by laying out two different scenarios.

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Imagine I'm Walmart. I'm buying a 59D at a bulk price of $100 and I'm going to sell them for $125.

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I make a tidy profit and you get your GPU.

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That's scenario one without any tariffs.

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Now for scenario two, let's say a flat 50% tariff is applied to a country where I purchased the GPU from.

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I reach out to order some more and there's an extra little line on my invoice.

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50% of the value of what my order was.

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Now I couldn't sell it for $125 even if I wanted to.

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I'd be losing money. So to keep my profit, I need to sell them for $175.

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But now my shareholders are upset because they see my gross margins shrink from 25% to 17%.

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Okay, let's go with $187.50.

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That looks terrible on a price tag. $189.99.

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Now last time around, the electronics tariffs were mostly targeting goods manufactured in China,

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which then resulted in manufacturers investing in factories outside of China so that they could avoid them.

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But there's a little hidden cost to the consumers there as well.

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Let's say I'm Foxconn now, different hat.

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I drop a quarter of a bill to build a new factory in Vietnam.

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There's no Chinese tariffs there, but someone still has to foot the bill.

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I know, I'll just charge $125 for that GPU now.

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It's less than $150, so I'm still competitive in the market.

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And in no time at all, consumers will get used to paying more for the same product.

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More gravy for me, baby. Obviously that's an oversimplification, but there also are examples of times when it's played out just like this.

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The pre-tariff RTX 3080, for instance, launched for $700 US and had a die area,

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so the size of the actual silicon chip, of 628 millimeters.

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The post-tariff RTX 4080 launched for $1200 US and has a die area of just 379 millimeters.

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Now some of this price increase can be traced back to external factors,

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like higher wafer costs for more advanced manufacturing process nodes,

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not to mention the global inflation that has taken place over the last half a decade.

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But a big part of it is just plain charging more for less now that they've figured out consumers are willing to pay.

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And this time around, it could be worse.

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Because so many companies diversified their manufacturing out of China last time around,

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there's a lot of talk amongst American policymakers about implementing import tariffs,

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rather than just limiting the tariffs to the exports of a particular country.

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That will result in manufacturers billing out for both their investments that they've made to diversify their manufacturing

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and the tariffs that are being surrendered to the US government.

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And it's not like the retailer is going to get caught holding the bag,

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they're just going to mark up accordingly, and if sales volumes decline, they'll simply order less.

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So now, the GPU from our example that used to cost $125 at the till is $235.

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And guess who paid for it? You. On Monday, November 25th, President-elect Trump announced a 25% tariff on all goods coming from Canada as well.

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We'll have to see if they actually follow through with that, but based on that announcement,

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our red, white, and blue friends are going to want to order your LTT merch right now.

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Now look, I'm not even going to bother reading comments on this video,

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because I'm sure that some folks are going to accuse me of getting political.

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But math is not political.

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Math is math. And as heartless as it sounds, the math says that our standard of living in the Western world is enabled

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by unfettered access to cheap overseas labor.

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And if you think that moving manufacturing back is going to solve inflation or even happen at all,

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I have some hard truths for you. One is that Americans don't want a lot of these jobs.

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TSMC, for example, has had a heck of a time hiring for their Arizona semiconductor fab,

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and for some pretty good reasons. One of the most obvious ones is the misaligned expectations of work-life balance.

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Now, American workers' rights are far from perfect,

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but what they are is worlds better than what you might find elsewhere around the globe.

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Americans rightly expect things like limited shift times, mandated vacations,

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the right to collective bargaining, etc., etc.

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Another less obvious reason is the eroded pipeline of qualified applicants.

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It takes decades to resolve the chicken egg dilemma and develop the steady stream of both

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new talent and new jobs that makes an entire industry tick.

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It's one of the reasons that our Labs team has struggled so much to hire subject matter experts.

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Like if we were in South Korea, for instance, and we wanted to hire a display expert,

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we would be tripping over applicants. Here? Not so much.

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And it isn't just us. Ratings, for instance, has had a job posting up for a display person for ages.

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Hard truth number two. Americans don't generally want to pay for American-made products.

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There are exceptions, many, many exceptions.

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All-American clothing even has this handy-dandy list of companies who make their products in America,

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many of which are crushing it. I'm personally partial to my onshore-manufactured darn tough stocks from Vermont.

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But that doesn't change that the overwhelming trend is toward bargain-basement overseas marketplaces,

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with Temu surpassing shopping apps from giants like Amazon and Walmart earlier this year.

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And more and more, I see an attitude of,

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if it costs a few dollars more, it's a complete scam.

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A sentiment that actually makes a ton of sense,

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given the ongoing economic challenges that have ballooned our cost of living since,

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realistically, the 1980s.

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Hard truth number three, maybe the hardest one of all,

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is that even if Americans wanted these jobs and were willing to pay a premium

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for goods that were manufactured by their friends and neighbors,

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they don't have enough neighbors. U.S. unemployment is sitting at about 4%.

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It's not exactly a historic low, and it has been creeping up,

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but it is well below the last sustained high that we saw during the 2008 financial crisis,

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and it's not that far above the deepest historic lows of about 2.5%.

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So, I don't know, maybe there's a scenario where folks want to make career moves into manufacturing roles,

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but what I suspect is that most don't.

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Ask yourself, would I rather do this all day?

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Don't forget, it's for minimum wage or less.

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So, that's the math.

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There is a political conversation to be had here,

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something around the deep societal change that would need to take place

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in order to significantly alter the math, but that's not something I'm going to touch on.

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So, let's come back to should you buy a PC right now?

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Well, based on the rhetoric we're seeing so far,

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it might not be a bad idea. The RTX 5090 was already rumored to hit the market at around $2,000.

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If the proposed tariffs go through, that could jump to more like $2,500 for parts that are manufactured outside of China

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and maybe even more for anything that's manufactured within China.

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Now, NVIDIA may absorb some of this in their margins, you know, as a favor to gamers,

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but they also might not,

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and you could build a pretty nice, I don't know,

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entire gaming machine for that much money right now.

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Another X factor is, do you guys remember the last time I made a video called

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Buy a PC Right Now?

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That was right on the eve of a crypto boom that drove GPU prices into the stratosphere for years.

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Well, guess what's booming again right now?

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Look, if you don't have the money at the moment,

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or you want to hold out for next gen, don't worry too much.

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This all might end up being a nothing burger, but if you were waiting for the right moment to strike,

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electronics are pretty affordable out there right now,

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and I expect that game developers are going to be targeting current hardware

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for quite a few years while we wait for a new generation of consoles.

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So, back 5090 probably won't be needed for a while.

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You know what we will need though, is this segue to our sponsor.

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If you guys enjoyed this video and you want to buy some parts right now,

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why not check out our Holiday Buyer's Guide. It's less of a holiday guide and more of just a buyer's guide.

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We cover four different price points and give you a really good starting point

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for how to configure a great gaming PC.