Industry Insider Warns of Incoming PC Case Price Hikes!

It’s certainly not a secret that since the latter part of 2020, stock levels for various tech products have, on the whole, been pretty terrible. While there have been many (unfortunate) factors at play here, one of the biggest has undoubtedly been the demand placed on global shipments. You can’t, after all, have a product on your shelves in Sheffield if it’s still sat inside a container somewhere in Asia. – Following contact from an inside source, however, we have been given a warning that based on this factor, consumers can likely expect PC case prices to rise rather significantly over the coming months!

PC Case Prices to Rise Sharply?!

As Andy has noted many times in steams since the stock issue became apparent (which you can check out here), there has been a huge increase in the last 12-months in regards to the cost of a shipping container. Put simply, the price of a ’40 footer’ (a fairly standard size) has increased by around 8-10 times in just that time period alone. While this isn’t so much of a problem for smaller components (based on the merits that you can fit a lot more of them inside) it has become a pretty huge problem when dealing with larger items. And in consumer PC terms, it doesn’t really get much bigger than cases/chassis designs.

The industry source has said that based on an average shipping container, they can largely fit around 1,500 cases inside. Based on the overall price increases, however, this has effectively resulted in each case being around £10 more expensive to get to its destination. While this has, to date, largely been sucked up by manufacturers and retailers though, the source claims that things are coming to a head and, ultimately, this cost is simply going to have to be passed onto consumers!

Consumers to Start Paying the Price!

The bottom line is that before the end of this year, the source believes that it’s exceptionally likely (if not a necessity) that PC case prices will have to go up quite notably just to make them mildly profitable for retailers. – This could see chassis designs that retail now for something in the region of £80-£90 costing closer to £100 before the start of next year. And worse, this is presuming that shipping prices remain somewhat stable at their already hugely increased costs.

So, if you are in the market for a brand new PC case, it seems that the clear advice here is to act sooner rather than later. No, the prices in the grand scheme of things are not seemingly going up by a huge amount, but as often is the case with anything PC-related, the more expensive the individual components get, the more compromises you possibly have to end up making to keep things within your budget!

What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!