Intel is reportedly cutting the price of its Alder Lake CPUs for the second time this year, in a move designed to counteract reduced gaming PC demand. The reduction will be the second discount offered to machine makers this year, as insiders say there’s already been a 10% drop.
According to Digitimes, Intel plans to knock an additional 5% off current-gen gaming CPU prices in Q3 2022, including top-end i5 and i9 chips (via Tom’s Hardware). The publication suggests that the price drops are unprecedented, as the firm usually only discounts niche products and older processors.
Gaming PC price reductions are normally a good thing, but Intel’s cuts are potentially a foreboding sign for the industry. Digitimes says the top five prebuild brands could reduce orders by up to 80%, a reaction to demand being “far weaker than expected.” This could be due to enthusiasts holding off from buying a new rig, as the best graphics cards and CPUs are still expensive. Yet, there’s also a global recession brewing, which could slow down sales in the near future.
2022 is set to be a busy year for PC gaming, with new Intel Raptor lake CPUs, Nvidia RTX 4000 GPUs, and AMD RDNA 3 cards all set to release in a few month’s time.
However, the tech industry is experiencing a slow down across the board, as even DDR5 RAM is forecasted to drop in price (via The Register). Ultimately, the industry’s downturn might lead to reduced gaming PC costs, but we’ll need to wait and see how the situation affects consumer prices.