Looking back at the 2017 PC DIY market: price rules are disrupted by memory and graphics cards

Undoubtedly, whether it is the products launched by chip manufacturers or the enthusiasm of consumers, 2015 was a relatively quiet year for DIY; and from the perspective of chip technology and personalized elements, players also felt a little disappointed in 2016. In 2017, the DIY market is not just in the stage of "recovery", but bursting across the board.

In 2017, there were too many new chip-level products launched, and these products have doubled the performance of the previous generation. Every year, the tastes and tones of the manufacturers are different. The whole industry is talking about "disruption", and this year the taste of "disruption" is very strong.

Today we will comprehensively analyze the major fields of the DIY industry in 2017, focusing on the four key words "breakthrough", "expansion", "heartfelt" and "extraordinary"; let's get straight to the point and talk about the CPU field, which is the hottest field this year.

CPU, motherboard: "turnaround" and "breakthrough"

2017 is a significant year for both Intel and AMD.

The launch of "AMD Ryzen" this year has given "AMD fans" more confidence. Whether it is core performance or cost-effectiveness, "Ryzen" has done everything. AMD has finally been able to significantly increase its market share in the mid-to-high-end consumer processor market. The "support" of major domestic motherboard manufacturers for "AMD Ryzen" is also obvious to all. On the day of its launch, many categories and models of motherboards were launched one after another, and the product positioning of these motherboards is also distributed in the entry-level to mid-to-high-end market. Judging from the platform brand's catering degree, AMD has indeed given Intel a strong punch this time.

2017 is a year of "breakthrough" for both Intel and AMD

Of course, Intel showed no mercy and its counterattack was loud enough.

I don't know if it's because of "AMD Ryzen", but Intel revealed the news of the latest 8th generation processor "Coffee Lake" in the third quarter of this year. This generation of processors is still developed based on the 14nm platform, and the pins also use the LGA 1151 configuration. Although the latest 8th generation processors cannot support 100 and 200 series motherboards, and currently only "Z370" is available for 300 series motherboards, the current 370 motherboard market range is very sufficient from entry-level to mid-to-high-end layout.

That’s right, Intel’s “counterattack” this time is not “squeezing toothpaste”. For the first time, Intel has launched a 6-core 12-thread processor product in the consumer i7 market. From our review of the 8700K, the improvement over the 7700K is very considerable. Overall, the entire series of processors seem very “sincere”.

The birth of 8700K is equivalent to launching the LGA1151 version of 5820K in the consumer market. It has a frequency increase of 0.4GHz and a very "beautiful" price.

Both the blue and red factories have great confidence in the market in 2017. It is unknown how long the stalemate of the "50-50" situation will last, but for them, this year is an extremely "breakthrough" year!

Graphics Card: BTC Inflates the Entire Industry

What made the most money in 2017? Real estate? Stocks? Perhaps the best financial product of the year should go to Bitcoin (BTC).

Since the Chinese New Year of 2017, the graphics card market has been extremely hot. In Chengdu, the supply has exceeded the demand. The blowout demand has spread rapidly in a very short period of time. From 6 cards to 8 cards, and finally to 12 cards, the number of graphics cards that can be installed on a motherboard is being refreshed almost every week. More and more users are installing mining machines for mining. These mining machines are like "money printing machines", producing profits every day. Some mining machines can pay back the investment in 2 or 3 months.

Mining machine? It is not an exaggeration to say that it is a "money printing machine"

It can be said that the "resurrection" of "Bitcoin" is indeed a "business" that is sure to make money, and there are many people waiting to get rich overnight. Bitcoin has almost cleared out all the inventory in the graphics card industry, so that game players in the consumer market have also encountered the embarrassing situation of "hard to find goods". With the birth and popularity of many competitive games this year, although the graphics card market has expanded to a very large shipment volume, you still can't buy a card with money.

Whether it is NVIDIA or AMD, this year's booming mining market has prompted the "development" of the industry. Although Bitcoin showed a slight downward trend on the eve of the fourth quarter, it has recently rebounded to the 100,000 RMB mark.

In fact, there has been a significant price drop in the second half of the year for gaming cards. The two major N\A factories have used "mining" technology to launch products with higher computing power and more suitable for this field, gradually differentiating it from the DIY market. Up to now, the major brands in the current graphics card market have gradually replenished their stocks, and prices are relatively stable.

The graphics card industry in 2017 has expanded too much. Once virtual currencies such as Bitcoin collapse in the first half of next year, a large number of early "mining cards" will flow into the market. As for how to deal with these "tails", it is still worthy of attention and resolution by major brands. However, we believe that the current graphics card market has gradually "returned to the right track". Although there are still many "historical problems", it has also become relatively stable.

Storage: Increasing production capacity but still increasing prices

After talking about CPU, motherboard and graphics card, let’s take a look at this year’s storage field.

Memory sticks and SSDs have been rising in price for a year. Many DIY users have been reluctant to build their own new machines, which is directly related to the surge in storage products. The price, which is nearly three times that of the same period last year, has changed the overall DIY landscape. Users have to spend hundreds to thousands more on memory products for the same configuration as last year.

DIY storage products have been rising for a whole year

As for the DDR4 8G 2400 common strip, its price once exceeded RMB 900, and the current market average price is around RMB 700. If your new machine is equipped with two 8G strips, then the memory alone will cost RMB 1,400 or even more. This price is close to the current price of the GTX1060 3G graphics card. Two strips of memory are equivalent to a quasi-gaming graphics card, which really subverts the user's "DIY values". The price of memory is now rising at the same rate as the price of housing prices, and perhaps only Bitcoin is rising faster than memory. I vaguely remember that the price of a DDR4 8G common strip was less than RMB 400, and memory products are doubling in price.

Now users who are in a hurry to assemble a host can only helplessly cut the budget of other components in your configuration list. For example, if you wanted to get a GTX1070 to play games, then you can only use a GTX1060 for a while.

Recently, Samsung announced that it has begun mass-producing DRAM memory chips through its own second-generation 10nm process technology. The successful mass production of this new process has improved product quality and product size; after increasing production capacity and designing technical equipment, I think the price of memory will rise again in the foreseeable future...

Electromechanical cooling: the product is indeed more thoughtful

Of course, not all areas of DIY are as surprising as storage. In 2017, the electromechanical cooling industry did reach its peak in recent years. With the continuous application and development of "RGB", its use has gradually expanded from peripheral products such as keyboards and mice to many other areas such as original chassis light strips and fan light columns. If you don't install a large-area side-transparent + RGB PC host now, you are embarrassed to say that you have kept up with the DIY trend.

RGB comes to the electromechanical cooling industry and becomes mainstream

Too many products such as motherboards, graphics cards, and fans are equipped with RGB lights, but dedicated DIY players have long discovered a big problem. All RGB light configurations work independently, and the light brightness, flashing frequency, speed, and quality of all components of the entire machine are all different. These hardware look beautiful individually, but when paired together in a host, they are indeed out of sync, and the visual effect appears very messy.

But in the second half of this year, these "related" products have gradually achieved RGB synchronization, allowing multiple fans in a chassis to achieve lighting synchronization, and some memory manufacturers have also introduced a line connected to the RGB motherboard to make the RGB lights of the memory and motherboard consistent. Some large imported electromechanical manufacturers have already launched such products.

We still need to give the industry some time to fully synchronize core hardware with electromechanical cooling products. However, as of now, multiple components in similar fields have achieved synchronization. Some major electromechanical manufacturers are also in in-depth negotiations with many motherboard brands. I believe that in 2018, we will be able to see a system that achieves full RGB synchronization. The credit for the full RGB linkage is also a boost to the electromechanical cooling field, and the products are indeed more thoughtful in design.

Monitors: E-sports promotes industry progress

The display industry has gradually changed from "competing for resolution" a few years ago to "competing for refresh rate". Display products with high refresh rates (Hz) are defined as "e-sports products" by industry users. The e-sports industry has indeed promoted the latest development direction of the display industry.

In fact, no one has been able to fully define "e-sports monitor" until now. This category has only branched out from gaming monitors in recent years. However, judging from the current demands of FPS e-sports users, products with higher refresh rates and higher response speeds are more adaptable to the fast-paced competitive operations of PFS e-sports games. However, the fact that major display manufacturers have flocked to launch high-hertz products this year has just verified this point.

However, problems also arise one after another. To achieve the "extreme" of a single parameter still requires giving up many other excellent designs.

This is just like the concentrated "assault" on resolution by display manufacturers around 2013. If you didn't have a "4K" label, you would be embarrassed to say how great your monitor was. So in 2012-2014, high resolution became an important parameter to define whether a monitor was good. At that time, too many 30Hz TN screens with poor display effects joined the 4K army. Although they had a 4K resolution, the experience of using them was indeed not very good.

This year, industry leaders are gradually balancing the two major parameters of "color" and "refresh rate". Of course, "response speed" and "color reproduction" are also balanced. At present, it is almost impossible to achieve perfection in every link, but the display field is indeed the most worthy of people's expectations.

The future trend of high-end and humanized

An entry-level "Intel i3" or "AMD Ryzen 3" has nearly double the performance of the previous generation, and even a small platform HTPC without a dedicated graphics card can have relatively good performance; entry-level gaming graphics cards can gradually handle more than 70% of current e-sports games, and even the frame rate remains smooth with medium special effects; for an entry-level price of more than 200 yuan, you can choose a thick and good-looking tower case, which can have a complete air duct and design even if the internal heat dissipation requirements are high.

That’s right, the entire DIY field has made great strides. Users can have a better performance experience at a similar price to before. This is the true meaning of the gradual development of the PC industry.

"Value for money" is the most appropriate phrase for today's DIY market.

On the other hand, in the high-end market, a boxed i9 7900x paired with an X299 motherboard costs over ten thousand yuan, and a host built with this platform may have already cost more than 20,000 or 30,000 yuan. Of course, seeing this, you may say that such people are naturally a minority, but in the entire industry, there are more and more users who spend a lot of money to buy DIY hosts. It's not that people have more money, but that there are more and more ways and methods of high-end DIY.

This year's DIY industry is indeed a real "iteration". Unlike previous years when people just shouted slogans and then waited and watched the chips, the mutual competition in the industry has led to its rapid development. The gradual failure of "Moore's Law" has also laid the foundation for 2017 to be a year that will go down in history.

The DIY market in the future will continue to develop in the direction of humanity and high-end. In addition to the demand for professional applications, the huge number of game users is also increasing rapidly. What DIY lacks now is not user purchasing power, but more sincerity and practical actions.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.