You might be able to buy a graphics card again in the second quarter of 2022

Stock issues set to continue for a while yet

Nvidia RTX Super Turing graphics cards

While Acer hopes that the PC chip shortage will improve this year, other big players in the tech world think otherwise. Digitimes reports that the CEO and chairman of Foxconn, Young-Way Liu, holds a much bleaker opinion on the slate of component stock issues, as he claims that the worldwide shortage could rage on until at least the second quarter of 2022.

Currently, the backlog for some of the key raw materials required for PC component manufacturing is running up to 52 weeks, going some way to explain Liu’s pessimism of the situation. And since Foxconn is a key player in supplying Apple with chips, it’s safe to say he knows his stuff and it could be a while longer before you can get your hands on the best graphics card again.

Liu pins the shortage partly on events such as the increase in working from home causing excess demand for PCs and laptops, factory production affected by the pandemic, and the rise of 5G technology. For graphics cards in particular, those factors are strained further by gamers and crypto-miners who want to grab the latest cards with their sky-high hash rates.

This is no surprise, however, with no respite in sight and some countries only receiving 20 GPUs per month, but to hear this backed up from one of the biggest manufacturers of electronics further fans the flames.