Hardware news for the last week has primarily revolved around re-re-releases of hardware, like NVIDIA's GTX 1060 GDDR5X model and AMD's RX 580-not-580. Both are unimaginative, but worth covering. For its part, AMD's RX 580 is an RX 570, just 40MHz faster. It has the same FPU count as the RX 570, despite being named "RX 580." NVIDIA's launch, meanwhile, is a move from 8Gbps GDDR5 to GDDR5X on the 1060 6GB card, which has previously already been pseudo-re-released as a 3GB model and (now gone) 9Gbps model.

Other hardware news includes reduced RAM pricing, SSD pricing, and more. The show notes are below the embedded video, if you prefer articles.

We come bearing good news -- sort of. It looks like DRAM prices might drop 5% by end of year, which would sadly be a sharp change of course from previous targets. This coincides with plummeting SSD prices (250GB 860 EVOs now available for $55 on Amazon), though isn't nearly as severe. At this point, we'll take what we can get.

Separately, Intel's 14nm shortage has continued to a point of creating pipeline stalls for some of its motherboard and SI partners. We previously reported on Intel's push to reinvigorate its 22nm process for low-end chipsets. It is now becoming clear why that was a necessity. Other than this, our show notes below recap major industry news for the past two weeks, like tariffs, 8th Gen pricing increases, and more.

After our exhaustive in-person interview with Principled Technologies, published on our YouTube channel, we followed-up via email to clarify some questions that were left unanswered during the initial video. As we noted in the initial interview, we give credit to Principled Technologies for endeavoring to sit down with us for these discussions. We recognize that it is not an easy decision to make – one of ignoring the problem (us showing up unannounced, in this instance) or confronting it – and we appreciate PT’s willingness to partake in a rational discussion about test methodology.

For full details of the interview, check the embedded video below. This written accompaniment aims to address follow-up questions where PT technicians closer to the testing had to be consulted. We are not going to transcribe the 40-minute interview and encourage that you watch the content to gain full perspective on both primary sides of the debate. We have timestamped key points in the video (timestamps are rendered within the video).

You may have heard about the new tariffs impacting PC component prices by now, with increases upwards of 10% to 25% by January 1st of 2019. We’ve spoken with several companies and individuals in the industry to better understand how PC builders can expect prices to increase. On our list of those providing insight is EVGA CEO Andrew Han, NZXT, SilverStone, and Alphacool, among off-record insight from others. In the very least, North American buyers can anticipate price increases as a result of the current administration’s new tariffs – it’s just a question of how much of that is passed on to the consumer.

Here’s the “TLDR” of the tariffs: Nearly every computer component is affected in North America, and those prices can reach outward to other regions as companies try to stabilize for a downtrend in overall revenue. The tariffs were pushed into law by the US Federal Government, with the first 10% taking effect on October 1st of 2018. After this, an additional 15% tariff will be mandated by the US government on January 1st of 2019.

We’re finally nearing completion of our office move-in – as complete as a never-ending project can be, anyway. Our set table is now done, although not shown in today’s video, and the test room is getting filled. That’s the first news item. Work is finally getting produced in the office.

Aside from that, the week has been packed with hardware news. This is one of our densest episodes in recent months, and features a response to the Tom’s Hardware debacle (by Thomas Pabst himself), NVIDIA’s own performance expectations of the RTX 2080, AMD strategic shuffling, and more.

As always, show notes are after the video.