ASUS says that the company is lowering the price of its RTX 30-Series GPUs by up to 25% in the coming weeks. Some GPUs will drop substantially such as the Strix RTX 3070 8GB which is going from $825 to $618. The Tuf 3080 12GB is going from $1500 to $1125.
Sadly, the price changes will unlikely affect South African retailers. ASUS says starting from 1 April (this is not a joke) the prices will start to reflect across distribution chains.
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The new price adjustments are thanks to the new tariff lift on Chinese imports from the Office of the United States Trade Representative. In 2021, the Trump administration imposed a 25% tax hike on graphics cards imported from China. As a result, GPU prices skyrocketed in the US.
The United States Trade Representative has now informed an exemption for GPUs that will last up until 31 December. As such, GPU prices are decreasing thanks to the 25% less tax cost companies need to pay when importing them.
Will this affect SA? Unlikely. South Africa doesn’t import GPUs from the US so this 25% tax decrease won’t change anything. In fact, SA just got slapped with another price hike on GPUs further increasing the price of the hardware in the country. Given the current economic issues in the region, I doubt we will see these prices dropping any time soon.
With that being said, these new US prices might make importing a GPU a bit cheaper. However, we will have to wait and see what they work out in April when the new price adjustments come into effect.
Source: ASUS
