I am currently in the process of building a PC for Megan, she wants to play The Sims again and misses having a desktop. Most of what’s going in her PC is essentially my cast offs.

She is getting my old case, a bunch of my old fans, a salvaged PSU, and my old 3400G as her CPU. I have bought for her a monitor, motherboard and SSD, but still need to get her some RAM, a mouse and a keyboard, once they are in, she will have a working PC.

The one missing thing is a GPU, I have intended for her to have my 1660 Ti, when I replace it with a 3060 Ti or a 3070, but alas the GPU market is absolutely crazy right now.

Thanks to a combination of an actual shortage of silicon, social distancing reducing production capacity, a logistics nightmare (now made worse thanks to a silly boat), a drought in Tiwan, demand through the roof thanks to lockdown, a cryptoboom, bots/scalpers, and the biggest generational leap in GPU performance in many generations, we are seeing prices of GPUs being sky high and availability at practically zero.

But what annoys me is that people are paying the prices being demanded by scalpers, for example I am seeing RTX 3070s being sold for over £1000, that’s a card that should be selling at £500 for the Founders Edition.

Because people are paying those prices, its keeping the price for everyone else artificially high, and I really think the only way to combat this is to basically tell people no, we will not pay those prices.

I have basically accepted I won’t be getting a new GPU this year, and I have a suspicion that my PC will probably miss the 3000 series GPUs and end up getting a 4000 series one, if this keeps going on the way it is.

So what I am imploring you guys, stop giving scalpers the money, refuse to buy cards above RRP, the supply situation isn’t going to resolve itself, but the more we keep making it easy for scalpers to make money, the longer the high prices will last!

We can only beat this if we all work together!

What I Am Modelling

I started the week by working on a squad of Sagittarium Guard for my Custodes.

A bit useless in game but they look really nice.

I also painted the 81mm Medium Mortar Team and 7.5cm LeiG Light Artillery for my Bolt Action Germans alongside these.

These will make up some nice support for my infantry.

And then I moved onto the Royal Wardens and Overlords for my Necrons, these were painted to be a lot more, all together there, and in better condition than the warriors.

For #MarchForMacragge I decided to face down the Primarch himself, Roboute Gulliman.

This model has say intimidating me for the longest time, and now I am not sure exactly what it is that I had to fear, he was a joy to paint.

That then lead me onto a German Heer Infantry and a Sniper Team for Bolt Action.

And avoiding the Dunecrawler, I started work on a set of leaders for my Custodes, two generic Shield Captains, one armed with a Sentinel Blade and Shield, another with the Castellan Axe, plus the characters Ixion Hale, Trajann Valoris, Valarian and Aleya.

I have now started on the Flesh-Eater Courts Abhorant Archregent.

What’s coming up next week on the painting queue?

  1. Zone Mortalis Terrain
  2. Adeptus Mechanicus Onagar Dunecrawler
  3. Flesh-Eater Courts Abhorrent Archregent
  4. Heralds of Nurgle x 3 & Horticulous Slimux
  5. German Heer Infantry Squad x 10, Lieutenant & Riflemen x 2
  6. Necron Crypteks x 4, Cryptothralls x 2 & Flayed Ones x 5
  7. Kill Team Arena & Pariah Nexus Terrain
  8. Blood Ravens Heavy Intercessors & Captain with Master-Crafted Heavy Bolt Rifle
  9. Mechanicum Termite
  10. Battlezone Objectives

What I Am Reading

I published my review for The Deacon of Wounds, which you can see here.

And I started on the next KeyForge book, The Qubit Zirconium, which I agreed to review for Aconyte, so far its really good and I hope to have a review up for you later this week.

What I Am Playing

No video games played this week 🙁

But I did play a game of Aeronautica Imperialis with Megan, and I am planning on doing a battle report for this later in the week.

What I Am Backing

Currently just backing Gloomier, but I need to talk to the girls about how we are funding it, Lindsays birthday has left me broke!

What I Am Cooking

Nowt cooked this week 🙁