Wootware: Strong dollar hurts sales less than release cycles

[Jan]

What a strong dollar and weak rand means for South Africa's PC hardware market

South African computer hardware retailers feel the effects of the strong dollar and weak rand in several ways, Dreamware Tech and Wootware have told MyBroadband.

This can be in the form of shifting buying habits, decreased demand for products, pressure on customers' disposable income, or hardware price fluctuations.

 

[GhostSixFour]

Haha! It means they'll raise their prices asap, and blame the exchange. Then, once the exchange goes back to normal, they will keep their prices there "cause we still have a lot of old stock, bought at higher exchange rates".
The distributors in SA sucks.

 

[Johand]

I suspect the Nvidia-Dollar exchange rate it the bigger problem

There needs to be a serious realism check in the hardware industry. The pandemic and shortages are behind, prices need to align to normality!

 

[ToxicBunny]

I suspect the Nvidia-Dollar exchange rate it the bigger problem

There needs to be a serious realism check in the hardware industry. The pandemic and shortages are behind, prices need to align to normality!

They are the new normal largely...

 

[PaulMurkin]

Haha! It means they'll raise their prices asap, and blame the exchange. Then, once the exchange goes back to normal, they will keep their prices there "cause we still have a lot of old stock, bought at higher exchange rates".
The distributors in SA sucks.

Tried-and-tested way of business schlentering... SA style.

 

[mastercylinder]

There's also the fact that hardware has plateaued for anyone not willing to shell out for 4k high refresh rate monitors. The bottleneck is now your screen resolution and refresh rate.

My 2070 and 5600X run everything I throw at them at 3840x1080x72Hz. Occasionally I drop a quality slider, but don't really notice the difference from doing so.

I remember when Metro Exodus came out, and raytraced looked different, sure. But it didn't look better. Yeah, that's subjective, but for the average person, do you really need to upgrade? Just blow the dust out and maybe change the thermal paste once a year. In 4 or 5 years time it will probably different, but upgrading on even a 5 year cycle seems excessive right now.

 

[RudderVator]

Tried-and-tested way of business schlentering... SA style.

Untill more people wake up and just import the stuff from Amazon etc.

So many products that where either not available over here or almost R4k cheaper even with all taxes and shipping.

 

[Johnatan56]

Just blow the dust out and maybe change the thermal paste once a year.

Just adding to this, no need to change it every year, just check when your temps are starting to trend up for stuff and repaste then.

GPU repaste is like 5-10 years, don't think I've ever needed to repaste one.

 

[Johand]

There's also the fact that hardware has plateaued for anyone not willing to shell out for 4k high refresh rate monitors. The bottleneck is now your screen resolution and refresh rate.

My 2070 and 5600X run everything I throw at them at 3840x1080x72Hz. Occasionally I drop a quality slider, but don't really notice the difference from doing so.

I remember when Metro Exodus came out, and raytraced looked different, sure. But it didn't look better. Yeah, that's subjective, but for the average person, do you really need to upgrade? Just blow the dust out and maybe change the thermal paste once a year. In 4 or 5 years time it will probably different, but upgrading on even a 5 year cycle seems excessive right now.

I have a slight difference of opinion here. CPUs have been on a tear with significant improvements year over year. Yes, most games are not bottlenecked by the CPU but not all PCs are game only machines.

I can't say I needed a 5900X but you can't take it away from me because it resulted in a definite quality of life improvement for me. Running a VM while playing a game and not realizing it is great. Compiling code in a jiffy is great. Hell - even Excel manages to use all my cores for complex spreadsheets (not the grocery shopping list kind).

I am thinking about a 7950X. Do I need it? Probably not right away. Will it make a difference in my life? Hell yes.

 

[mastercylinder]

I have a slight difference of opinion here. CPUs have been on a tear with significant improvements year over year. Yes, most games are not bottlenecked by the CPU but not all PCs are game only machines.

I can't say I needed a 5900X but you can't take it away from me because it resulted in a definite quality of life improvement for me. Running a VM while playing a game and not realizing it is great. Compiling code in a jiffy is great. Hell - even Excel manages to use all my cores for complex spreadsheets (not the grocery shopping list kind).

I am thinking about a 7950X. Do I need it? Probably not right away. Will it make a difference in my life? Hell yes.

I mean, if you need it, you need it. I don't run many VMs anymore. Compile times for the Pi Pico are seconds anyway. But are you really gonna spend 20k on new components to shave, what a couple of minutes per compile? If it's work related, then it makes sense.

 

[Johand]

I mean, if you need it, you need it. I don't run many VMs anymore. Compile times for the Pi Pico are seconds anyway. But are you really gonna spend 20k on new components to shave, what a couple of minutes per compile? If it's work related, then it makes sense.

Well in general people get paid to wait at work but personal time is limited I upgrade to buy time for myself.