Intel running out of wafers – shortage and extreme price jumps expected for Rocket Lake S in Q2 2021
6. April 2021
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Intel has been reporting substrate shortages to key partners all last week. Intel’s Q1 allocations for Rocket Lake are still pretty good, so the SKUs have been available for at least a couple of weeks, if not longer, near MSRP and still will be. So if you are planning to buy a RKL CPU, you certainly shouldn’t wait too long, because it won’t get any cheaper for a while. More expensive at most. The reason: unfortunately, Q2 allocations for Rocket Lake will be hit hard due to the substrate shortage. Since Core i9 is prioritized, Core i7 and Core i5 should be the most affected.
Considering that Intel is in a far better position than TSMC to manage supply itself, as TSMC is not only substrate constrained but also capacity constrained unlike Intel’s Foundry, Intel partners, including distributors and retailers, are expected to have a decent initial inventory of Intel Rocket Lake CPUs that could last a month or more. This is the Q1 allocation and part of the initial order. The Q2 allocation is a different story, however, as Intel will most likely not be able to match the initial volume for the entire stack. And considering that currently every chip you can possibly make sells best, they will focus on the higher margin stack first, which should drive market prices up hard as a result.
. I don't need it that bad. Hell, thats why I got out the sneaker game.
Remember how Nvidia hiked the prices up with the 20 series due to cryptomining, we know there's an good chance the 40 series, AMD and Intels CPUs and GPUs will go up again and use cryptomining and the pandemic as an excuse.
