Copper price surge threatens to push up PC hardware costs

On his PC hardware YouTube channel, der8auer posted a video about surging copper prices and the knock-on effects for PC components. Hartung says a routine order for copper plates placed in October could not be confirmed and would not be delivered until February; another supplier offered plates at about 40% higher than before.

Thermal Grizzly was paying around 190 euros per plate last year, with each plate enough to make four RTX 5080 GPU water-cooling blocks. Today the company would have to pay 280 euros per plate, a rise that could make the cooling block product non-viable and is likely to push the block price from about 500 to 550 euros.

Copper has climbed from $9,000 per tonne a year ago to an all-time high of over $13,000 per tonne, and is up more than 30% in euros over the last year. Hartung notes aluminium and nickel are up around 5% while steel is down, but tin prices have spiked too; tin is used in PCBs and power supplies, and Hartung speculates servers and data centers are implicated in rising demand.