A GPU vendor warns price hikes are coming later this year, and I can't help wondering if that means now is the right time to pull the trigger. Well okay, now might only be the second-best time to buy a GPU--the best time was probably just before AI-crazed companies started hoovering up all the memory and storage. But unless you can go back in time, right now might be the best time for anyone considering a graphics card purchase to pull the trigger. I say that because on this week's episode of The Full Nerd I heard the hosts discussing a recent Tom's Hardware story about a GPU vendor warning that card prices are going to rise significantly in the back half of this year. The vendor, PC Partner, also predicts that "entry-level" cards will be the hardest to get.

Mashable Selects Look Up Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Say More Safety Net Creator Hub Versus Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Switch Off Trending Now In My Bag VidCon with Mashable All Series Amazon's $400-off deal on the MacBook Pro with the M5 Pro chip erases Apple's price hike (and then some) Haley Henschel is a Chicago-based Senior Shopping Reporter at Mashable who reviews and finds deals on popular tech, from laptops to gaming consoles and VPNs. She has years of experience covering shopping holidays and can tell you what's actually worth buying on Black Friday and Amazon Prime Day. Her work has also explored the driving forces behind digital trends within the shopping sphere, from dupes to 12-foot skeletons . All products featured here are independently selected by our editors and writers. If you buy something through links on our site, Mashable may earn an affiliate commission.

Look Up Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Say More Safety Net Creator Hub Versus Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Mashable Selects Switch Off Trending Now In My Bag VidCon with Mashable All Series Alex Perry is a tech reporter at Mashable who primarily covers video games and consumer tech. Alex has spent most of the last decade reviewing games, smartphones, headphones, and laptops, and he doesn't plan on stopping anytime soon. He is also a Pisces, a cat lover, and a Kansas City sports fan. All products featured here are independently selected by our editors and writers. If you buy something through links on our site, Mashable may earn an affiliate commission. Google delivered a much better device this year.

Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Look Up Say More Creator Hub Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Mashable Selects Versus Switch Off Trending Now Safety Net In My Bag VidCon with Mashable All Series Haley Henschel is a Chicago-based Senior Shopping Reporter at Mashable who reviews and finds deals on popular tech, from laptops to gaming consoles and VPNs. She has years of experience covering shopping holidays and can tell you what's actually worth buying on Black Friday and Amazon Prime Day. Her work has also explored the driving forces behind digital trends within the shopping sphere, from dupes to 12-foot skeletons . Windows laptops just can't catch a break. As the memory chip shortage rages on, a new report from the Taiwanese newspaper United Daily News (UDN) says PCs are facing further price hikes as Microsoft raises its Windows 11 licensing fees for device manufacturers.

Look Up Say More Versus Creator Hub Switch Off Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Trending Now Safety Net In My Bag VidCon with Mashable Back to School Furtastic All Series MacBook Air deal alert: Amazon's rare sale beats Apple's price hike The 13-inch M5 MacBook Air with 1TB SSD is $180 off and the 512GB SSD is $165 off. Lauren Allain is a freelance journalist covering deals at Mashable. She graduated from Western Washington University with a B.A. in journalism and holds an M.B.A from Webster Leiden. You can find more of her work online from publications including Reader's Digest, U.S. News & World Report, Seattle Refined, and more. When she's not writing, Lauren prefers to be outside hiking, bouldering, swimming, or searching for the perfect location for all three.

For years, buyers of tech could rely on a familiar trend - that older devices would get cheaper over time. That now seems to have stopped, or in some cases, completely reversed. Apple and Microsoft's Xbox have joined the firms hiking prices for devices and games consoles which are years old. They and other tech companies have pointed to the rising cost of crucial components needed to build their machines, laying the blame on AI. Compute-hungry data centres, which power AI, need more and more chips to keep up with demand from AI companies - which means the demand for them is far outstripping supply.

Maybe it was the sight of Sengled users literally left in the dark by their useless Wi-Fi bulbs, maybe it was another price hike, or just an overall sense that my smart devices weren't truly under my control. Whatever the reason, I'd developed a growing desire to build a smart home setup that wasn't a hostage to the cloud. Specifically, I'm talking about a locally hosted smart home setup, and I'm currently in the process of building one. And while I'm a smart home expert thanks to my six years' experience here at TechHive, I'm quickly realizing how much I still don't know as I tackle the steep learning curve of a DIY smart home. This isn't a step-by-step guide of how to build your own smart home system--that might come later--but more of a journal about where I am in my self-hosted smart home journey, where I started, and what I'm hoping to achieve.

Japanese entertainment giants Nintendo and Sony are likely to raise prices on their game consoles in response to U.S. tariffs, according to the latest research from Bloomberg Intelligence. American consumers would pay as much as 30% more for a Switch 2 or PlayStation 5 under the base-case scenario, which would imply pricing close to 590 for the soon-to-be-released Nintendo flagship machine or Sony's PS5 Astro Bot bundle. Both devices are assembled in China, which is now subject to a 125% duty for shipments to the United States, although Nintendo also has an expanding production footprint in Vietnam, which has a 90-day reprieve from elevated tariffs. Console makers are the most vulnerable players in the video game industry, said BI analyst Nathan Naidu, due to their hardware businesses and need to ship physical goods. The U.S. accounts for 29% of revenue for Tokyo-based Sony and 37% of sales for Kyoto-based Nintendo, he said.

Google Nest device owners will have to pay at least $20 more if they want access to their security cameras' and doorbells' more sophisticated features and lengthier footage history. As reported by 9to5Google, the tech giant has sent out notices to subscribers in the US, telling them that the standard Nest Aware subscription now costs $8 per month or $80 a year, up from $6 a month or $60 when paid in an annual basis. The company started offering whole-home Nest Aware subscription plans that cover all a user's devices back in 2019. Before that, they've had to add a subscription for each of their cameras. The plan gives users access to intelligent motion detection, which can differentiate between several types of activities, dog barking alerts and person speaking alerts.

In July, Meta, formerly known as Facebook, made a similar move when it announced a $100 price increases for both versions of its virtual reality headset, the Quest 2, adjusting the product's prices to $399.99 for the 128 GB model and $499.99 for the 256 GB. The cost of the Quest 2's accessories and refurbished headsets also increased. Meta wrote that the price changes were made to fund the company's future VR ventures and "keep driving the VR industry forward," on its website. At the time of the announcement, the Quest 2 was also nearly two years old.