If you are a US-based PC gamer and have kept your rig upgrades off, the increase could be as much as 25%, depending on the price items for graphics cards, motherboards and even PC cases, and getting a new GPU can be very expensive.

In 2018, the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) issued a report declaring that "the actions, policies and practices of the Chinese government regarding technology transfer, intellectual property and innovation were unreasonable or discriminatory and burdened or restricted U.S. commerce.""The result was import duties on a raft of products manufactured or assembled in China, including all kinds of PC components and peripherals," he said.

However, in 2022, the current US administration created an exclusion list of 350 products (graphics cards and motherboards are 2 such cases).This is intended to give the industry enough time to shift as much of its upstream supply chain and assembly operations outside China as possible.

That was not particularly successful, and as reported by PC Mag, the USTR told the White House that it recommended that all tariffs should be maintained, including those that were temporarily lifted.

At the moment, neither the USTR nor the White House has officially stated that it will revive all tariffs, nor has it provided any indication as to when they could occur. But as the U.S. heads into the 11th presidential election, it is more likely that the current administration will implement massive tariffs to create a sense of control over the market, even if consumer prices rise.

In terms of graphics cards and motherboards, some vendors have all the assembly lines in China, such as Zotac, while others are based in Taiwan, such as Gigabyte. But even though GPUs and memory chips are mostly manufactured in Taiwan and South Korea, they still rely heavily on suppliers based in China for things like printed circuit boards, capacitors and voltage regulators.

Less complex parts, such as keyboards, mice, and PC cases, are almost exclusively assembled in China, and it finds something for gaming PCs that are built entirely outside that particular country.

Earlier this month, the White House also cut import duties on semiconductors manufactured in China from 25%. It raised it to 50 percent by 2025, and announced that tariffs on electric vehicles will surge from 25 percent to 100 percent at some point this year.

You have to imagine that many people were waiting to get a new motherboard or a full PC upgrade until the next-generation models were released by amd, Intel, and Nvidia later this year. But given that the graphics card, which currently sells for4499 at the moment, costs up to6624 with a 25% import duty, and is already quite expensive, US-based PC gamers could do well without it.

So it might be worth looking around now to see what deals are available. Fortunately, the anniversary is just around the corner and it could be the ideal time to get some new parts before getting silly at all prices. At least, that probably means some brands will be much more expensive than others and that will narrow your choice somewhat.