2017 has seemed like such an amazing year for PC Hardware. The 1080 Ti launched AMD returned to relevance with the Ryzen launch and then the follow-up surprise launch of Threadripper, Intel refreshed their enthusiast lineup with Skylake X and then they followed up by giving 6 core CPUs to the mainstream with coffee lake. EVIA, even the radion Vega 56 and 64, although late to the party and not quite as powerful as expected, can still be added to the list of options PC gamers have to choose from. So with all of this having happened and considering that most of the products expected to launch this year have already launched, you'd think that it would be prime time to build a gaming PC right now, but it's not. In fact, it kind of sucks. Here are four reasons why. Item number one, the obvious culprit, GPU prices. This is the result of cryptocurrency mining and it has been a pain in the backside of anyone looking to buy a reasonably priced mid-range graphics card since about mid-summer 2017. The rise of alternative cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum that are resistant to Asick based mining has brought GPU mining back into popularity, with cards based on AMD's Polaris architecture like the RX480 and 580 in particular demand due to their efficiency and flexibility. Nvidia's cards suffered price jumps as well, but thankfully they've settled down a bit, which you can't say for any of AMD's cards that are priced above $100. Even though the GTX 1063 and 6GB do give gamers looking for a GPU in the $250 range and option, there's not much competition for these cards thanks to AMD's high prices, so the prices for Nvidia are generally still the same or higher than when the GTX 1060 launched over a year ago, 200 or more for the 3GB and 250 or more for the 6GB. Next up, have you seen memory prices lately? If budget builders weren't set back enough by the GPU situation, consider that the average price for a simple 16GB 4x4GB DDR4-2400 memory kit has more than doubled in price since early 2016, according to PC Part Picker, going from less than $90 to over $180. And while that's one of the more extreme examples, 50-100% price increases over the past year is pretty much the norm for DDR4 and DDR3 memory. We were warned about this of course, market trends and all, there are explanations like the fabs or switching over to a smaller manufacturing process or defect rates or high or they encountered setbacks related to sampling and yield, so the supply situation remains tight. Or Apple just bought it all, like all the memory Apple just bought it. Or maybe they just wanted to squeeze the supply to up the price in order to earn record profits for themselves this year, but I don't know where we'd find any evidence of that. Now third up, you may have spotted Intel's recent coffee-lake CPU launch and you might have been excited because clearly here is some evidence of AMD's new competition from Ryzen paying out. Mainstream, 6 core Intel CPUs, and an unlocked quad core i3. Not bad from Team Blue, but right now there are some definite limitations to this platform and motherboard selection is chief among them. There are only Z370 motherboards available for this platform until 2018. There are some budget Z370 options in the $120-$140 range, but that's still pretty expensive considering that AMD has competitive B350 motherboards for their Ryzen CPUs for $70-$80 each that can even do some overclocking. Speaking of budget, a Z370 motherboard with a chipset that costs more in order to unlock overclocking for unlocked chips makes a bit less sense with their new locked CPUs like an i3-8100 or i5-8400, but Z370 is your only choice for a motherboard right now. I'm hoping Intel considers a lower price chipset that still has some overclocking options unlocked. Maybe call it Z350. Now lastly, if I had to choose the most impactful PC technology that's become widely available in the past 10 years or so, I would have to go with SSDs. But my second choice would be variable refresh rate monitors. Don't worry, it was a vertex too. At least when it comes to PC gaming, but I wish widely available could also align with widely affordable when it comes to these fancy new gaming monitors. The experience of playing on a variable refresh rate monitor, which synchronizes the framerate output of your graphics card with the refresh rate of your monitor for a buttery smooth gameplay that also makes the most out of your graphics card's performance, is one that once you've tried, you just won't want to go without, especially if you play fast-paced PC games. But monitors with this feature that are compatible with Nvidia GPUs, dubbed G-Sync, are typically $100-$200 or more expensive than a free-sync monitor with the same specs that's compatible with AMD GPUs. So that's fine, just go with an AMD GPU for their consumer-friendly free-sync monitors that aren't horribly marked up, and pair it with an AMD graphics card that is horribly marked up. So pick your poison, overpay for your AMD GPU and a fairly priced free-sync monitor, or get a fairly priced Nvidia GPU and overpay for your G-Sync monitor. The choice is yours. So guys, I know this was a negative video, but it just sort of occurred to me the other day that things aren't all sunshine and daisies in PC building land. But nevertheless, we soldier on, and I know I'm going to keep building computers, and I'm pretty sure you guys are going to do the same. But there is something to be said for waiting until 2018 to invest if you're considering it. Maybe for now, just go with AMD CPUs and Nvidia GPUs, and you'll be fine. If you're looking for ideas for parting out a PC without suffering from one of these previously mentioned pitfalls, check out my monthly build series. Thanks for watching this video, though, subscribe if you enjoyed. Let me know if you'd like to see more like it in the comment section down below. Of course hit that like button on your way out, and we'll see you guys next time.