Loss of Mining Networks in China Due to Floods Could Increase Orders of GPUs by Crypto Miners

It has been a few months since GPU prices finally began to normalize after demands for units by crypto miners dropped. Due to flooding in China’s Sichuan province, however, a spike in orders of GPUs could occur. Several of the country’s largest crypto mining operations are basically underwater, which means that the operators will need to replace the graphics cards they lost.

Over 70 percent of China’s crypto mining operations were located in Sichuan province, Digitimes recently reported. With heavy floods damaging several thousands of mining units, a short-term surge of orders of GPUs by crypto miners is expected. This incident has had a worldwide effect as well, with crypto mining calculations being reduced by 30 percent.

This is unfortunate news for several reasons, but it can be especially disastrous for gamers. As the original target demographic of GPU manufacturers, video game enthusiasts have had to endure the effects of crypto mining operations on the prices of cards. The rise in orders forced retailers to sell GPUs at up to three times the original price in a matter of months.

As PCGamesN notes, this increase in price only just died down when demand for GPUs finally dropped. Companies were left with a surplus of cards, which meant gamers could get even high-end graphics units for cheaper than the standard prices.

This flooding incident in China is expected to change this since there really isn’t a choice on the part of the crypto miners. They will need to replace the crypto mining networks that they have lost if they want to continue mining cryptocurrency.

At this point, gamers can only hope that the spike in the orders of GPUs by crypto miners won’t happen between now and the expected launch of the GTX 11 series. If crypto miners decide to go after Nvidia’s latest cards, PC gamers on a budget might not be able to afford them for a while.